THE CRYING ROCKS
Janet Taylor Lisle
Atheneum
Fiction
ISBN: 068985319X
224 pages

• Read an Excerpt

Fourteen-year-old Joelle, who is adopted and lives in Marshfield, Rhode Island, doesn't know much about her past. All she is aware of is that she was brought in from a train station when she was just five years old. "I can't remember anything so don't ask me!" she yells irritably to anyone who snoops, including Carlos, an eccentric kid in her Spanish class. But when Carlos, a collector of arrowheads and Native American lore, tells her that she resembles an Indian girl in an old mural of Narragansett Indians in their school library, she can't resist taking a look. She is dumbfounded by a spark of recognition.

When Joelle asks her adoptive parents, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Mary Louise, about her past, they tell her what happened but she doesn't believe them. Then, while on a hike, Carlos tells her about the Crying Rocks, where howls on windy days are thought to be the spirit voices of children who were flung from the boulders to an early death. Joelle doesn't believe that story either until one day, while at the Crying Rocks with Carlos, she hears crying and screaming. After her Aunt Mary Louise dies, she grows more and more curious about her past, not to mention the cries and screams. Will Joelle ever discover the truth behind the Crying Rocks and her past? Or will both stories be a secret forever?

THE CRYING ROCKS had an incredible ending, and I agree wholeheartedly with Joelle's attempts to learn the details of her past. If you enjoy reading touching books about friends and family, read this one to find out what happens to Joelle and her family.

   --- Reviewed by Ashley Hartlaub

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