Tangerine is an all-around awesome title for this book. It's actually got a triple meaning—that's three times the tangerine-y goodness!
- It refers to the name of the county the Fishers move to in Florida—Tangerine County. It's not a real place, but who cares—it sounds delicious. The location of their new home in Tangerine is an incredibly important aspect of the story—check out "Setting" to get the scoop on that.
- It's the name of the school Paul ends up transferring to, where he finally makes friends and fits in. Tangerine Middle School and its soccer team change Paul himself, into a stronger, more confident person. So yeah, it's probably important enough to be in the title.
- In case you didn't know, a tangerine is a type of fruit. (Okay, duh, sorry—we couldn't resist.) But that's actually a really important part of the story. Paul loves the citrus groves all around his new town, and jumps at any opportunity to help the Cruz family work in their tangerine groves. By helping, he learns about his community and himself, and finally gets the strength to recover his memories and confront Erik.
So if you peel back the thick orange skin of this title and take a peek inside, you'll see that there are many segments to its meaning—many seeds of great ideas hidden inside—and it's definitely not just pulp fiction.