Helpful Score: 1
Gr. 5-7. Fans of Kevin Henkes' restrained, character-driven novels will be similarly pleased and moved by this tale of a child who finds keys to her family's present in the past. Knowing Grandma Aurelia only as a mean-spirited woman, whom Ellie's uncle despises, Ellie is bemused to learn that Aurelia has left Hart Farm to her in trust, including a suitcase of old diaries. As Ellie reads the diaries' terse entries, some of which are in code or shorthand, and explores the farm, she begins to piece together the lives of the six generations of women preceding hers and find her own place among them. She also discovers a hidden history of child abuse that goes a long way towards explaining why Aurelia treated her own children so cruelly. Surrounded by loving, likable, sometimes vulnerable adults, Ellie is a perfectly tuned protagonist. She's strong-willed but sensitive and mature enough to help her father over rough spots in his life, and she has a clear-eyed understanding of human nature that is not, refreshingly, beyond her years.
