Defiance

by Valerie Hobbs

Can you understand why eleven-year-old Toby Steiner talks back to his mom and hangs out on a farm with a spunky old lady and her cow? Toby may look like a normal boy who wants to have fun on his summer vacation, but he’s going through something a little different than most kids—he’s been fighting cancer, and the last thing he wants to do is go back to the children’s hospital where his painful treatment finally ended. When he starts enjoying his time on the nearby farm with old Pearl and her broken-down cow, Blossom, he sees all the more reason to keep the new lump on his side a secret from his parents.

Meet the Author
“We are storytellers, every one of us,” says Valerie Hobbs, who writes books about teenaged characters forced to make serious decisions about their lives. “Each of us has at least one special story to tell,” she says. “Some stories are sad, some funny, but all are as unique as our fingerprints.”

Hobbs didn’t always want to be a writer, though. Growing up, she really wanted to be an ice skater, but when she was 15 her family moved across country from New Jersey to California—and “there went the ice,” she says.

The first short story she ever wrote was based on something tragic that happened in real life: her friend lost his life in an accident. The story was so important to her that it became her very first novel, How Far Would You Have Gotten If I Hadn't Called You Back?

Since then, Hobbs has written many books for teens and now lives in Santa Barbara, CA, with her husband, Jack, a high school English teacher, and Molly, her cat.

Want to know more about the books and life of Valerie Hobbs? Visit her website.