Hope is a Ferris Wheel, Robin Herrera. Star Mackie lives with her older sister, Winter, and her mother in the Treasure Trailers trailer park, for which she is teased. To make new friends, she asks her teacher, Mr. Savage, if she can start an after school club about trailer parks. Despite hanging flyers, the only two to show up are brother and sister, Genny and Lenny Libra, and for some unknown reason, Lenny does not like her. Because Star chooses not to turn in her vocabulary sentences each week, (despite writing them), she serves detention with Mrs. Ferguson and must forgo her trailer park club. But because of poems that Mr. Savage puts on the board each day, a new club is formed: The Emily Dickinson Club. Two new members join: Eddie and Langston and they meet in Mrs. Ferguson's room. Hope is the theme and Star asks each member to share their idea of hope. To Star, hope is a ferris wheel, because when she was at the top of one the previous summer, she saw her mom and sister down below talking to her dad, whom she had never met, but knew it was him. Yet, when she came off the ride, he was gone. Winter decides to take Star with her to see her dad for an unexpected visit, where Winter tells him that she is pregnant. Star learns some startling information that leaves her wondering if she has any reason to be hopeful.

This is a first book written by this author and she delivers with heart and an eagerness to look forward to her next. Star and her family are poor and yet we don't feel sorry for her because she is spunk and spitfire. Throughout the book, we see Star's sentences, that are never turned in, and get to know her on a deeper level and love her all the more.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've hear it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

--Emily Dickinson
December 10, 1830-May 15, 1886