Booklists

CCBC Review:

An abandoned building still housing remnants of its history as a museum, including an intriguing painting of two young women in the early 1970s, inspires sixth grader Vanessa (white) to curate an exhibit of her own. The focus: Her long friendship with Bailey, which recently ended for reasons Vanessa doesn’t understand. When Vanessa’s Hebrew school classmate Eli stumbles on the museum, he asks to add a display about his late dog, Einstein. Then Vanessa’s brother, high school freshman Sterling, brings in the baseball card collection he’s maintained to have something in common with their dad, who’s deploying to Afghanistan. Vanessa is worried about her dad; she’s also angry that he’s always telling her to stop picking her cuticles, as if stopping were easy. It isn’t—she’s tried. Her curiosity about the painting of the two young women is a distraction that leads to an exciting discovery: It’s rumored to be the lost work of a famous, still-living artist. The museum storyline provides an unusual and intriguing framework for this honest, nuanced look at loss, transitions, and change. For Vanessa in particular, the exhibit she curates, and later the one Bailey creates in response, provides opportunity to consider and reconsider their friendship from various perspectives. Vanessa also learns that her cuticle picking is something called a Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior—more than a label, like so much else she’s recently discovered, it’s information that gives her hope. ©2023 Cooperative Children’s Book Center 

CCBC Age Recommendation: Ages 9-13
Age Range: Grades 3-5 (Ages 8-10) Grades 6-8 (Ages 11-13)
Format: Novel
Subjects: Art and Artists Change Families Friendship Grief and Loss Jewish People Mental Health and Illness Mysteries Perspective/Point of View Soldiers/Military
Diversity subject: Jewish Psychiatric

Publishers: Abrams, Amulet
Publish Year: 2023
Pages: 297
ISBN: 9781419754517
CCBC Location: Fiction, Sales

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