The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips Booktalk

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Scholastic Booktalk

A young soldier preparing for D-Day, a twelve-year-old girl searching for her lost cat, a promise made and long remembered, and the coincidences that linked them together and echoed down the years.

In 1943-44, American soldiers trained along the beaches of southern England, beaches much like the ones in France, where they would land on D Day. Without a chance for them to practice their tactics, the invasion would fail. They used real bombs and real bullets, and the people who lived close to he beaches had to be evacuated. They were given only seven weeks to pack up everything they valued and leaves their homes and farms. Three thousand people, 750 families, had to be moved, and 30,000 acres of land had to be cleared. Among them were 12 year old Lily, her cat Tips, her mother and her grandfather. Her father was in the army, fighting Hitler, and had been gone for years.

Lily didn’t have a lot of friends, and she and Tips were inseparable. She hated leaving the farm to go live with her mother’s brother, but she knew she’d be okay if she had Tips. And then, on the very day they moved, Tips vanished. Lily searched, her family searched, even the soldiers helped them search. Two of them, Adie and Harry, promised Lily that they’d keep looking. Lily believed them, but she still snuck under the barbed wire surrounding the training grounds almost every day to search for Tips. Once she was nearly killed by gunfire, and once she was caught. She didn’t care—nothing was more important than Tips.

It’s a difficult and dangerous time. Soldiers are everywhere. Lily’s father may never come home. Their farm may not survive the American shells and bombs. But Adie, Private First Class Adolphus T. Madison, has promised Lily that he will make sure Tips gets home alive. And Adie is determined to keep his promise, no matter what the cost.

This Booktalk was written by librarian and booktalking expert Joni R. Bodart

 

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