The Wise Owl Tween Book Club meets every month to discuss a book and meet the author! September's pick is How To Make Friends With the Sea with a visit with Tanya Guerrero, who will join us to lead a discussion of her book! The first 15 readers who register will receive a copy of the book to keep, limited to one copy per household, available to pick up starting Thursday September 1st. To make the most out of the author visit, please finish reading the book by the time of our discussion on Thursday September 29.

We will be meeting in person in the B Room at Central Library, with an option to Zoom in from home.

The book is also available to check out from the library here.

Pablo is homesick.
 

He’s only twelve years old, but he’s lived in more countries than he can count. After his parents divorced, he and his mother have moved from place to place for years, never settling anywhere long enough to call it home. And along the way, Pablo has collected more and more fears: of dirt, of germs, and most of all, of the ocean.

Now they’re living in the Philippines, and his mother, a zoologist who works at a local wildlife refuge, is too busy saving animals to notice that Pablo might need saving, too. Then his mother takes in Chiqui, an orphaned girl with a cleft lip—and Pablo finds that through being strong for Chiqui, his own fears don’t seem so scary.

He might even find the courage to face his biggest fear of all…and learn how to make friends with the sea. 

About Tanya Guerrero

Tanya Guerrero is Filipino and Spanish by birth, but spent her childhood living in three continents—Asia, Europe and North America. Upon graduating from high school, she moved to Boston and attended Boston University, where she studied screenwriting. Over the course of eleven years, she’s worked as photo editor in children’s educational publishing, operated her own photo studio and freelanced as a writer.

​HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE SEA, her debut middle-grade novel will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers/Macmillan on March 31st, 2020.

Currently, she lives in a shipping container home in the suburbs of Manila with her husband, her daughter, and a menagerie of rescued cats and dogs. In her free time, she grows her own food, bakes sourdough bread and reads lots of books.

You can learn more about the author on her website tanyaguerrero.com

Thank you so much to the Friends of the Children's Library for sponsoring events like these to help us bring more fun programs to our readers.