And then Alice, the heroine of the book, who just wants a really perfect 10th birthday. The 6 year old who doesn't understand how to curb or harness her feelings. The railing octogenarian who is not cool with how things have turned out. The comfortable, confident early middle aged parents. (See the picture book 'Old Bear' - if it doesn't make you tear up a little, you're probably not old enough yet.) Every single character in the book is at a different stage in their lives. Kevin Henkes writes the passage of time so beautifully, so artfully. It's what you do with the elements that make it a success.

It's simple, though, in the way that potato-leek soup is simple: leeks, potatoes, salt, butter, and water. The dramatic things that happen are pretty simple: a summer vacation doesn't turn out as a young girl hopes it will. Nobody is riding cross country via dragon. Nobody is forced to live in a broom closet by their stingy, jerky relatives. At least, not in terms of your average kids' novel. The story is slow, and more or less an internal story about a nice kid who is growing up. Other readers seemed to have the same reactions to this that I did. That said, maybe it's a selling point that the book is completely not scary? I know a lot of kids who get stressed out by suspense and adventure, and the fact that this is so quiet may be appealing to them. I think only kids who ruminate a lot will want to read this, but I don't think a kid under 8 will GET it, and will older kids want to read about a younger one? That's a small window of readership. My own very-much-in-her-head 9-year-old will love it, I think, but the fact that there's no big sweeping external drama and there's really only one kid in the book (the 10-year-old narrator - OK, there's also an unlikeable, uncute 5-year-old) may turn a lot of young readers off.

I do worry that this very short novel (I would say novella but after reading that Eudora Welty hated the word novella, I try not to say novella b/c what if I accidentally insult some novelist who hates the word novella? GAH) will have a hard time finding an audience. Nothing HAPPENS - the book is all about the emotions and tiny changes in our female protagonist's head - but it's so real and so touching and so momentous despite being writ so small. Another Goodreads reviewer compared it to Mrs.

Junonia by kevin henkes