This book is one of my FAVORITE BOOKS EVER!!!!!! The author, Christina Uss, tells the story of a very quiet orphaned girl who, one day when she was around four, showed up on the doorstep of a monastery in a pink shirt with a bicycle on it. Since she has no name, one of the nuns that live in the monastery, Sister Wanda, names her "Bicycle" after her shirt. She grows up living and being homeschooled in the monastery. Bicycle is a very quiet girl who has trouble making friends and is happy to stay in the monastery with Sister Wanda, the monks, and her beloved bicycle Clunk. But Sister Wanda thinks she should make more friends, so she signs Bicycle up for a summer camp called the "Friendship Factory" that promises "three guaranteed friends by the end of the summer". Well, Bicycle does not like this idea ONE BIT, so she decides to make a friend on her own terms. Bicycle runs away to bike all the way across the country to meet her idol, a famous biker who is holding a bike festival in California. She thinks she can convince him to be her friend so that Sister Wanda will se that she CAN make friends. On the way, her bike gets haunted, she meets a lady with yummy cookies, gets knocked unconscious, rescues a bicycle-obsessed racehorse, and saves a slow-food food chain. I think this book is amazingly funny and I totally reccommend it!
The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle
By Christina Uss
"Raised in a Washington D.C. monastery, Bicycle is an unusual girl who absolutely does not want to go to camp and learn how to make friends. Instead, Bicycle takes off on a cross-country quest to meet her idol, a famous cyclist, and on her journey discovers much about herself and, most unexpectedly, friendship." - Seira Wilson, Amazon Editor
Selected for the 2019-2020 Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
A determined 12-year-old girl bikes across the country in this quirky and charming debut middle grade novel.
Introverted Bicycle has lived most of her life at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, D.C. When her guardian, Sister Wanda, announces that Bicycle is going to attend a camp where she will learn to make friends, Bicycle says no way and sets off on her bike for San Francisco to meet her idol, a famous cyclist, certain he will be her first true friend.
Who knew that a ghost would haunt her handlebars and that she would have to contend with bike-hating dogs, a bike-loving horse, bike-crushing pigs, and a mysterious lady dressed in black. Over the uphills and downhills of her journey, Bicycle discovers that friends are not such a bad thing to have after all, and that a dozen cookies really can solve most problems.
A Junior Library Guild selection!
Selected for the 2019-2020 Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
A determined 12-year-old girl bikes across the country in this quirky and charming debut middle grade novel.
Introverted Bicycle has lived most of her life at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, D.C. When her guardian, Sister Wanda, announces that Bicycle is going to attend a camp where she will learn to make friends, Bicycle says no way and sets off on her bike for San Francisco to meet her idol, a famous cyclist, certain he will be her first true friend.
Who knew that a ghost would haunt her handlebars and that she would have to contend with bike-hating dogs, a bike-loving horse, bike-crushing pigs, and a mysterious lady dressed in black. Over the uphills and downhills of her journey, Bicycle discovers that friends are not such a bad thing to have after all, and that a dozen cookies really can solve most problems.
A Junior Library Guild selection!
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson Books
ISBN-13: 9780823445738
ISBN-10: 0823445739
Published on 2/18/2020
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 320