I really liked this a lot. It's about a 13-year-old girl named Ratchet who gets sent up to the Maine coast to live with her ancient eccentric aunts Tilly and Penpen AKA "those queer Menuto women" AKA "the blueberry ladies". I tagged it as adoption because I thought it was a great story about choosing your family as well as living intentionally, albeit in this case unusually. Horvath's sense of humor is wacky and dark and probably a little too grown up for 8- to 10-year-olds. There's death, abandonment, and killer bears within, but I was just tickled by it. This is a good one for readers who are mature and open-minded.

P.S. There's some swearing in this (not just blasphemy but the f-word a couple times). ( )

That was far and above one of the *weirdest* books I've experienced yet. In some parts, it feels like Horvath threw together a whole Mad Libs set of words to make a book that is random and inexplicable. Like, it just didn't make *sense.* I appreciated the relationships the aunties had with Ratchet and Harper, but it was just kind of strange.

And you know how I feel about neglect and bad housekeeping in novels. That abounded in the first part of this novel, and well, yuck. Not. My. Jam.

Also, this is not for young children. I don't even know how teens would feel about this book. ( )

poco entusiasmante.....una storia psichedelica per bambini?? ( )

poco entusiasmante.....una storia psichedelica per bambini?? ( )

If there wasn't a Polly Horvath, we'd have to invent one. I love her sense of humor and the feeling that life is really weird, but most of us work hard to not notice.

But why so many bears? I've spent a lot of time in the Maine woods and only seen one. They must be all hanging out in The Canning Season. ( )