The Best Medicine

Poems

Ruby Starr

Silver Meadows Summer

The Adoption Angel: A Heartwarming Story for Adopted Children

Moon of Two Dark Horses

Magnificent Homespun Brown: A Celebration

Loneliness

Two sisters, Jeannie and Sarah, tell their separate yet tightly interwoven stories in alternating narrative poems. Each sister - Jeannie, who leaves Scotland during the Highland Clearances with her father, mother, and the younger children, and Sarah, who hides so she can stay behind with her grandmother - carries a length of the other's hair braided with her own. The braid binds them together when they are worlds apart and reminds them of who they used to be before they were evicted from the Western Isles, where their family had lived for many generations.

The award-winning poet Helen Frost eloquently twists strand over strand of language, braiding the words at the edges of the poems to bring new poetic forms to life while intertwining the destinies of two young girls and the people who cross their paths in this unforgettable novel. An author's note describes the inventive poetic form in detail.

The Braid is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Discover Your Child's Next Read

The Best Medicine

Christine Hamill, 2016

Poems

Elizabeth Coatsworth, Vee Guthrie, 1957

Ruby Starr

Deborah Lytton, 2017

Silver Meadows Summer

Emma Otheguy, 2019

The Adoption Angel: A Heartwarming Story for Adopted Children

Sarah E. Lutz, 2023

Moon of Two Dark Horses

Sally M. Keehn, 1995

Magnificent Homespun Brown: A Celebration

Samara Cole Doyon, Kaylani Juanita, 2020

Loneliness

Meg Gaertner, 2022