Another book by my intrepid students who decide that if they’ve ever read a book, they should ask me to read it. No worries, this one is perfectly good.
I liked this book just fine. I am glad that my student asked me to check it out. I have read two other books by Sharon Creech, Love that Dog and Hate that Cat, about a student who is earnestly fighting against an assignment designed to make him love poetry. This one is a little different.
In this story, our narrator is searching for her lost mother. Indeed, this is a story about lost mothers. Partly a road trip and partly a new kid in a new town story, this short novel deals with loss, identity, love, fathers, mothers, and fear.
Our protagonist has been uprooted from her Kentucky home and moved off to Ohio. Her father has been meeting up with a weird woman who might be a murderer, she has a teacher who is way too earnest, and her best friend’s mother is not only receiving weird messages at their house, but even runs away from home for a while.
This is a solid novel and I think kids can really take to different parts of it. In part, because our main character is part Native (Indian if you ask her grandmother) and because she has experienced loss and because she’s new to town, I get why my students wanted me to read it. It’s not the most challenging book, even for teens, but it’s good at what it does.
Fellow teacher here! I really fucking hated this book. So did my students. It’s nice when we agree on something.
Nice review, though, and, uh, I’m glad you liked it.