Other editions of book A Simple Gift

Ten-year-old Carrie O'Connor has lots of questions. Where does her mother, a famous New York children's writer, find ideas for her best-selling Michael Madigan series? Why does her father, a busy surgeon, sometimes spend more time curing people than caring for her? How would her life change if she landed a role in a play directed by a Broadway director? Carrie unwraps the answers in a Junior Library Guild selection called "a love song to the theatre...a love song to life." Selected for William Allen White and Mark Twain Master Lists.

Finding the courage to make amendsTen-year-old Carrie O’Connor wants to be an actress. After starring as a singing tooth in her class play at a New York City school, she convinces her parents to let her audition for a summer theater production in the mountains of North Carolina. And not just any production – it is a play based on a beloved children’s book written by her own mother! By virtue of a plucky audition (and not, she makes certain, her relation to the book’s author), Carrie is invited to join the cast. But as Michael Madigan’s Curtain Call wends its way toward opening night, Carrie makes a blunder so big it threatens to topple the whole production. Young readers will identify with this spunky young heroine as she finds a way to put things right – and makes some unexpected discoveries about her writer-mother’s past in the process.

Finding the courage to make amendsTen-year-old Carrie O’Connor wants to be an actress. After starring as a singing tooth in her class play at a New York City school, she convinces her parents to let her audition for a summer theater production in the mountains of North Carolina. And not just any production – it is a play based on a beloved children’s book written by her own mother! By virtue of a plucky audition (and not, she makes certain, her relation to the book’s author), Carrie is invited to join the cast. But as Michael Madigan’s Curtain Call wends its way toward opening night, Carrie makes a blunder so big it threatens to topple the whole production. Young readers will identify with this spunky young heroine as she finds a way to put things right – and makes some unexpected discoveries about her writer-mother’s past in the process.