Kevin Henkes

First sentence: If you found a little ball on the grass and it was there for days, you could take it home. You could play with it.

Premise/plot: A picture book about finding things. "You" find a series of things leading up to a homeless street kitten. Magically, all previous findings help "you" out when it comes to homing the kitten.

My thoughts: I am not being sarcastic with "you." The book is written in second person. It is a slower picture book, it has its own pace. It isn't a story with a lot of thrills--which is fine. Previous love with Henkes might help "sell" this one to readers.… (meer)

Martha is surprised when her classmate Olive's mother stops by with a page from Olive's journal where she wrote about Martha. Olive was killed by a car while riding her bicycle, and Martha thinks about the ways in which she could have been a friend to Olive as her family packs and travels from Wisconsin to Cape Cod to visit Martha's grandmother, "Godbee." Most of the story takes place at Godbee's, where Martha has her first kiss from one of the neighbor boys and is betrayed by him, and protected by one of his brothers. Throughout, Martha ponders becoming a writer. A quiet, moving story of a girl on the cusp of adolescence (pre-social media).

Quotes

The world was changing before Martha's very eyes, and she hated it. (44)

But the things Martha could not live without at home, she barely missed when she was at her grandmother's. (54)

She felt jealous, and then silly for feeling so, and then was baffled by how changeable and brief her feelings could be. (158)

The world can change in a minute, and at the same time remain unchanged. (165)… (meer)

This has the beautiful simplicity of all Henkes/Dronzek books. Along with a brown dog, readers find a red ball, a purple flower growing in a crack in the sidewalk, an empty cardboard box patterned with oranges, and finally, a white kitten. The necessary caveats are given - the ball has been abandoned for many days, the box was out on garbage day, permission was obtained for the kitten - and suddenly, there's everything the kitten needs: a home, something pretty to look at, something to play with. A perfect storytime book for littles.… (meer)