If this narrative does not pull on year heartstrings, do you even have a heart? In all seriousness though, O’Shaughnessy wrote a narrative that shows the complexity of building a family through the foster care system. The main character’s world change when her grandmother (and guardian) dies. Her grandma assumed that her son, the main character’s uncle would assume custody but he declines, meaning that the main character
is sent into foster care, eventually landing in a foster to adopt placement. Throughout this time, the main character discovers that she enjoys cooking and specifically starts searching for family recipes since she has none. When the title comes into play, watch out for those heartstrings.
Katherine Marsh did an outstanding job with this novel. Had I not read Red Famine a couple years ago, I would have known nothing about this horrible, government inflicted family, the Holodomor, that caused the death of 80% of the Ukrainian population, over 3 million people! Marsh writes from a place of authenticity, telling fictionalized versions of what could have been her own family’s story. I also really
admire the way that she chose to tell the story with two of the three point of view characters being directly connected to but not experiencing the famine firsthand and the third point of view connecting back form the height of the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. The main story, set during the famine, revolves around three cousins who have never met – one in the United States, one in the countryside directly affected by the famine, and one in Kiev who lived in blissful ignorance of the famine until the unexpected arrival of her emaciated cousin on her doorstep. The 2020 point of view focuses on the great-grandson of one of those cousins, his attempt to navigate the new, weird lockdown world, especially difficult for him because of his dad’s new job posting in Paris with no end to the separation in sight. All of these characters, especially the cousin in Kiev, had to unlearn and relearn what they believe and why they believe it, a powerful message, especially for today.
This year’s SCASL list has quite a few hard-hitting, emotional books. In this book, the main character, Clementine, struggles with the death of her sister the year before from an allergic reaction to peanut butter. The main character has sunk into a deep depression that has, prior to the start of the narrative, led her to attempt to take her own life. Her mom, struggling with her own grief, tries a number of different things to help
Clementine. This book is raw and real and incredibly hard-hitting for all ages yet written so well for the target age group.
I think I have discovered the best book I have read all year. I know that this book will make my top ten if not take the top spot [spoiler alert from the future…another contender came a couple days later so we shall see on that front]. This book features Maudie McGinn, a middle schooler with autism who spends the school year with her mom and new stepdad in Texas and summers with her dad in California. The narrative opens with a
sudden wildfire forcing Maudie and her father into a shelter. This provides opportunity for the supporting characters/family members to show their true colors. I will refrain from writing some of the thoughts I had about her mom and especially her stepdad. Pla creates a beautiful, vulnerable character in Maudie that I wanted to protect at all costs, to shake sense into those who dared to take advantage of Maudie because her brain works differently. It’s difficult for me to write a coherent review because of how this book connected with me emotional. I cannot recommend the book highly enough.
Since I previously experienced Sumner’s writing as a narrative in verse, I thought that this book might be the same. It is not. I still found this to be a decent entry on the current year’s SCASL list. In this narrative, the main character lives with her mom and her mom’s close friend and sponsor. In her past, the main character’s mom has struggled with addiction leading to a rock bottom hospital stay and the drive to get and stay clean. When
the story opens, the main character’s mom cleans homes and drives for Uber to earn an income until a car accident – not her mom’s fault – severely injures her mom and opens the potential for relapse as well as throwing the finances into a mess. The main character takes it on herself to keep all of her mom’s regular cleaning clients by doing the cleaning herself while trying to not get found out, deal with a school bully, and still complete her homework al while worrying about her mom’s sobriety. Sumner does a good job showing the effects of a parent’s addiction on their child even after that parent has gotten clean. I enjoyed and appreciated this story.