Heartbeat / Sharon Creech / 180 pages / 6 Geese-a-Laying Christmas Challenge

Annie "likes getting everything in the right place and knowing there was plan for how to do it right."  That's why she liked, and uses, the concept of footnotes introduced by her English teacher.  She is also a runner and an artist intrigued with the wonder of life and the new baby growing inside her mother.  That's why she loves the thesaurus.  It enables her to express her complex feelings more accurately.  She is also struggling with her live-in grandfather's failing memory.  "If you forget, is it as if it never happened?"  Annie's best friend, Max, is also a runner, but he wants to run competitively as did Annie's grandfather.  She wants to run for the fun of it.  Her drawings of 100 daily apples and her responses to family and friends illustrates the circle and rhythms of life.