LARS'S LIBRARY: THREE RECOMMENDATIONS

For sixth graders and up:

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt

I avidly read the Tillerman cycle (seven books) several years ago, and since then, have constantly recommended them to others. Revisiting Homecoming, the first book, in audio was a real treat. Barbara Caruso, the narrator, does a stellar job. Homecoming was even more powerful and engrossing the second time around.

It's a Boxcar Children with profound depth and character development, a novel with a YA label that is far too limiting. It is a book about and for children, but just as much a book for and about adults. Cynthia Voigt's writing is lyrical and evocative, and her characters are unique and true.

Thirteen-year-old Dicey Tillerman, abandoned by her mother, along with her sister and two brothers, turns her family's bleak circumstances around in a journey as compelling as the Odyssey. At the end of Homecoming, the Tillermans end up on the eastern shore of Maryland, but they will keep traveling through your mind, and will likely persuade you to read more of the Tillerman cycle.

For fifth graders and up:

The Girl Who Threw Butterflies by Mick Cochrane

Forget about the baseball on the cover. Knowing about baseball is not a requirement for enjoying The Girl Who Threw Butterflies.

A supporting character, Celia, could care less about baseball, and Celia is just as cool as cool can be. Mick Cochrane could have written a book about Celia, who is Molly’s best friend.

Molly wants to pitch on her elementary school’s baseball team, the real baseball team (as opposed to the girls’ softball team). Categorizing The Girl Who Threw Butterflies as a girl-power novel, though, would be doing it just as much a disservice as calling it a sports novel.

Sports and gender equality are important to The Girl Who Threw Butterflies, but not as important as the story—a story about families, about eighth grade boys and girls, about adults and children, about death and loss, about friendships, about never really knowing your friends or your enemies, and about finding out who you are. If the book is making a point, it’s to pay attention, to look closely, to work hard on the details.

The Girl Who Threw Butterflies has it all—Cochrane’s skillful writing, unforgettable characters, parts that make you laugh out loud, and parts that bring tears to your eyes.

For fourth graders and up:

Doodlebug by Karen Romano Young

Doodlebug is an extraordinary graphic novel. Doreen Bussey, aka DoDo, aka Doodlebug, chronicles her family's move from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and her adjustment to a new school, in handwritten text and hand-drawn pictures. Her wonderful and not-at-all weird family is not at all like any family I've ever met in children's fiction. Their reasons for moving to San Francisco are not like any plot device I've ever encountered, even though they are totally realistic, and all too likely.

Doodlebug herself is irrepressible and irresistible. Don't you worry, she, and her sister Momo, are going to win the day. And that's not giving anything away.