Where the Watermelons Grow by Cindy Baldwin

Where the Watermelons Grow by Cindy Baldwin

Fans of The Thing About Jellyfish and A Snicker of Magic will be swept away by Cindy Baldwin's debut middle grade about a girl coming to terms with her mother's mental illness. An Oregon Spirit Award Honor book. 

When twelve-year-old Della Kelly finds her mother furiously digging black seeds from a watermelon in the middle of the night and talking to people who aren't there, Della worries that it's happening again--that the sickness that put her mama in the hospital four years ago is back. That her mama is going to be hospitalized for months like she was last time.

With her daddy struggling to save the farm and her mama in denial about what's happening, it's up to Della to heal her mama for good. And she knows just how she'll do it: with a jar of the Bee Lady's magic honey, which has mended the wounds and woes of Maryville, North Carolina, for generations.

But when the Bee Lady says that the solution might have less to do with fixing Mama's brain and more to do with healing her own heart, Della must learn that love means accepting her mama just as she is.

Cindy Baldwin is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. She grew raised in North Carolina and misses the sweet watermelons and welcoming accents every day. She kept a book beneath her bathroom sink as a middle schooler to read again and over while straightening her hair or brushing her teeth, and she dreams of producing books that readers can't live without. She and her husband and daughter live in a house surrounded by big trees and wild blackberries in Portland, Oregon. Her debut work, Where the Watermelons Grow, was followed by Beginners Welcome. Cindy Baldwin's website is www.cindybaldwinbooks.com, where you may learn more about her.