Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World

When twelve-year-old Ivy's rural Georgia home is destroyed in a tornado, her distress over the upheaval experienced by her large, now hotel-dwelling family is compounded by the loss of her notebook full of drawings of herself holding hands with another girl. Someone has begun returning the drawings to her locker with notes: "You can have your notebook back when you talk to someone about it." Ivy's world does include a few queer role models, but an overheard conversation makes her wary of coming out to those closest to her. Blake believably melds this internal conflict and the story of Ivy's first crush (on awkward, excitable newcomer June, who has secrets of her own) with other concerns. The major crisis in her family's life, made even more difficult when one of her twin baby brothers falls seriously ill, intertwines with Ivy's worries about where she fits in as a middle child-especially after her parents ask her to stay temporarily at a friend's house to, as Ivy sees it, get her out of the way. A few credulity stretching, too-articulate moments notwithstanding, Blake creates a sensitive portrayal of a preteen who's begun to figure herself out but isn't sure how she meshes with others, and of the bumbling and overstressed, but well-meaning, friends and family around her. shoshana flax