Available Formats
Finding Normal
By (Author) Stephanie Faris
Simon & Schuster
Aladdin
16th April 2025
Reprint
United States
Children
Fiction
Childrens / Teenage personal and social topics: Friends and friendships
Childrens / Teenage: Social topics: Poverty / precarity
Childrens / Teenage: Personal and social topics
FIC
Paperback
304
Width 130mm, Height 194mm, Spine 17mm
Perfect for fans of Jamie Sumner and Barbara Dee, this sincere and heartfelt (The Horn Book) middle grade novel about friendship, belonging, and the power of community follows a girl whose family is uprooted after a flood destroys their house.
After a horrible storm floods her neighborhood, twelve-year-old Temple and her family are forced to move to a new town. They are some of the lucky ones, able to secure temporary housing relatively quickly. But Temple doesnt feel so lucky starting over at a brand-new school halfway through the year and feeling a weird spotlight on her familys situation from her new classmates. At home, things arent any better as her family struggles to adjust while figuring out how they can afford to rebuild.
When Temple sees a flyer for a local fundraiser, she decides she can do the same thing for her family. It would get her one big step closer to her old school, friends, and life. After enlisting the help of some new friends, Temple kicks her plan into action, quickly realizing it needs to be much bigger to help not only her family, but the dozens of others affected by the flood.
But adding the pressures of the fundraiser to the strain of grappling with all the recent changes may be more than Temple can handle. As she searches for a return to normal, can she figure out whats truly important
Stephanie Faris knew she wanted to be an author from a very young age. In fact, her mother often told her to stop reading so much and go outside and play with the other kids. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University, she somehow found herself working in information technology. But she never stopped writing. When she isnt crafting fiction, Stephanie is indulging her gadget geek side by writing for online technology sites. Her work is regularly featured on the small business blogs for Intuit and Go Payment, and she is a featured columnist for SmallBizTechnology.com. She lives in Nashville with her husband.