Pulitzer Prize nominee Alison McGhee (Shadow Baby) and Kathi Appelt, who was awarded a Newbery Honor for The Underneath, about an unloved cat and dog living under a house, have teamed up to tell this gently beautiful story of how we deal with death.
Jules and Sylvie are sisters, living with their dad in leafy, snowy Vermont. Jules doesn’t remember their mother, who died suddenly from a heart defect when the girls were younger, but she and Sylvie play the ‘Maybe’ game to help cope with the loss: ‘What happens after you die?’ ‘Maybe you turn into wind’, ‘Maybe you turn into stars’.
When keen sprinter Sylvie defies their father’s rule to steer clear of ‘the Slip’, where the raging Whippoorwill river disappears into a cavern, to throw in a wish stone, she disappears, leaving Jules behind.
At the same time, in the woods, a mother fox gives birth to three cubs, including a girl Kennen, an animal spirit guide of sorts akin to Harry Potter’s Patronus.
As Jules slowly goes back to school, and her friends Sam and Elk, who’s returned from war in Afghanistan without his buddy Zeke, she realises she needs to find the fabled grotto to find her sister.
So tenderly written, with the woods of Vermont and its creatures as strongly conjured as the human characters, this is the perfect book for 10-year-olds plus to curl up with on a winter’s night.
Published by Walker Books