For every hyperscheduled, extracurricular-activitied, turbo-texting, iPad-gaming middle schooler in America, there are those we don’t hear about: the children whose parents dread the annual school supply list because they can’t afford colored pencils and three-ring binders. The children who rely on their public school cafeteria for a free breakfast. The children who don’t worry if they’re wearing the right American Eagle top, because they’re clinging to the few shirts they have.
Sarah Dooley’s subdued, thoughtful novels for middle-grade readers are set in this hidden world. Her Southeastern families live on the poverty line, always looking for a stable place to land. They’re not the kinds of people who’ve suddenly fallen on hard times; for her characters, money has always been tight, giving them a matter-of-fact, unapologetic, that’s-just-how-things-are approach to being poor that eradicates any whiff of a reader’s pity. In Dooley’s moving debut, “Livvie Owen Lived Here,” 14-year-old Livvie’s autistic outbursts keep her parents from staying in the good graces of nosy neighbors and angry landlords and finding a permanent home; “Body of Water,” similarly grapples with what makes a real home and a solid community.
Dooley isn’t as skilled with another crucial aspect of Ember’s family: the fact that they’re Wiccan in an intensely Christian community. Ember’s mother reads tarot cards and wears a tattoo of runes around her ankle; the family’s deeply held Pagan beliefs (“our nature-based religion,” Ember calls it) and their spells and ritual practices permeate the book. Their paganism is why the one family member who is able to help them after the fire — Ember’s paternal Christian grandmother — refuses to offer assistance beyond her meager $50 gift, and could possibly have been the cause of the fire itself: Ember believes Anson set the fire after his parents discovered a borrowed deck of Ember’s tarot cards.
Sounds like a good read!
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