Big & Little Questions

Wren, nine years old, has been away for two months staying with her grandparents. She hasn’t texted or talked with her best friend, Amber, all that time. She just doesn’t know what to say or how to tell Amber that Wren’s family isn’t a family anymore. Her parents are getting a divorce. But when Wren gets back at the end of summer, she discovers Amber is pretty mad and she has made a new friend, Mariana, who doesn’t seem very nice. But things aren’t always what they seem to be. Navigating middle school is tough enough without a disintegrating family, but Wren finds her way through the morass of having divorcing parents and living in two homes, and she also finds some new friendships and renews some old ones.

Julie Bowe has written a very engaging book for younger middle-graders that tackles some tough topics — divorce, friendship, lying, secrets, and more. The voice (first-person narration) is spot-on, the characters, both children and adults, are very believable, and the small-town setting is perfect to contain this story. This should be very popular with the middle-grade set and beyond.