And Then Life Gave You O.J.

I have to admit, it has been a long time since a book made me cry.  Maybe I was all cried out?  Maybe I was just reading really crappy books.  Either way - I guess I wasn't quite sure what to expect when picking up the book, When Life Gives You O.J. by Erica Pearl.  I guess perhaps I was thinking it was going to be an odd sort of 'make the best of what you have' story.  Instead, I found a heartwarming story of the new girl in town.  Zelly isn't just the new kid, she also looks different than all of the other people in her new town.  Everyone in her small town in Vermont has blonde hair and blue eyes... she has a crazy brown 'fro; talk about feeling like you don't belong.

After moving into town in the spring when her grandmother, Bubbles, passed away,

she makes one good friend, Allie, before the school year ends and her new friend goes off to camp.  Left all alone, Zelly feels like the only thing that will make her feel less lonely is if she either gets a letter from her friend at camp or gets the dog she has been asking for forever.  When they lived in Brooklyn, Zelly understood why they couldn't have a dog.  Now that they live in Vermont, if she can't look like everyone else, perhaps she can have a dog just like everyone else in town.

Her grandpa, Ace, comes up with a great plan for how to show her parents how responsible she is by taking an old orange juice jug and treating it as if it were the dog she has always wanted.  At first it just seems silly, but when she meets a new boy in town (who looks just like her), he convinces her to take it seriously.  I will let you guess what she names her 'practice dog'.

All goes well until Allie returns with new camp friends and Zelly begins to feel like a dog isn't worth all of the ridicule she is facing.

Throughout the book, Zelly is a great example of what life is like when you are the new kid - especially when you don't quite fit in with your surroundings.  The interactions of Zelly and her grandfather show both love and the understanding that comes as a child grows older and realizes that adults have feelings too; that point in each persons' life when they realize that the world doesn't revolve around how they feel and what they are doing.  The loss of Bubbles has affected Zelly deeply, but it isn't until she realizes how much her grandfather misses his wife that she begins to understand what life might be like for her 'crazy' grandfather.  

Will all of her hard work pay off?  You will just have to read to find out, but enjoy the fun and frustration until you get there.

Dealing with Grief

As a reader, I tend to shy away from reading books about dead family members.  It hits a little too close to home and brings up sad memories.  This time of year, however, the sadness is here whether I read the books or not, so I thought I would pick up a book that had been recommended to me several times by different librarian friends of mine.... and that book is Love, Aubrey.

Love, Aubrey is about a young girl whose father and sister are killed in a car accident and whose mother is so consumed with grief she leaves home not remembering that Aubrey is still there.  For weeks, Aubrey is left alone in here house until her Grandmother comes to rescue her.  The book chronicles that first summer and school year after the accident as Aubrey makes new friends, learns to deal with her grief, and to forgive her mother for the things that are out of her control. 

I found the book to be incredibly realistic and heartfelt, much as it was described to me, however, I also found the book comforting.  Unlike in some books about children dealing with grief or about families dealing with a stressful situation, all adults did not abandon Aubrey.  Although I loved reading it, the book Captain Nobody's main character Newt is basically ignored by every adult in his life.  A fact that I found almost disturbing.  In this book, I found the fact that Aubrey's grandmother, aunts, uncles, and counselor were all supporting her recovery much more attuned to what might actually happen.  I also thought that the portrayal of Aubrey's mother as she dealt with an all-consuming grief and could not help Aubrey recover very realistic.

As Aubrey learns, it isn't just accidents that take your family members away, grief can do it as well.  It is hard to deal with situations that don't turn out the way you expect them, and it is even harder when they are completely out of your control.  This book offers a little bit of hope that although we all deal with grief in our own way, even the worst grief can be overcome and we all can be happy again.   The end of the book doesn't come all 'tied up in a big red bow', but it is as happy as a sad situation can possibly get.

I'll Be Seeing You....

As I have been recently avoiding books that make me cry, I was surprised when the book, See You at Harry's was recommended to me and I jumped at the chance to read it.  I was even warned.... this will be sad.  

I felt confident.  It has been a long time since I really had a breakdown.  I have been dealing with my life pretty well, and I even read a book about a widowed woman and laughed through the 300-some pages of her experience.  They say that humor is a more intelligent way to deal with grief.  If that is true, I am the smartest person alive.  As Chandler on Friends would say, "I'm not so good with the advice, can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?"

When this particular book was recommended as a 'most wonderful story', I took it home and spent the following nights engrossed in its pages.  It truly is a great story, and one that I didn't want to put down, but I spent the entire book much like I did while reading The Help.... with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.  As I was warned that it was a sad story, I knew that something bad would happen... I just didn't know what.   That might have made it worse.  It sounds bad to say, but I was expecting an awful outcome... and what happened was just short of that.

At one point, I returned to the person who recommended the book in the first place to check with her as to what was about to happen.  As someone who often turns to the end of novels to read the last chapter to keep anxiety at bay, I was very nervous.  She wouldn't tell me what happened (very nice of her), but she did assure me that everything would turn out 'ok-ish'.

When bad things happen, it is sometimes children who get left behind and neglected. This isn't the first book I have read where something bad happens and a child is basically ignored while their parents get a grip on things.  While I would like to say that these types of books aren't accurate and don't portray what actually happens when tragedy strikes, I unfortunately know that they are.

As with Captain Nobody by Dean Pitchford, another of this type of realistic fiction books that deal with family tragedy and children's coping skills, See You at Harry's gives an accurate portrayal of a family in grief.  When tragedy struck my own family, I watched as my aunt and uncle went through the heartbreak of losing their child and were so caught up in their own grief they left my cousins to fend for themselves.  I guess the other children are a casualty of the tragedy as well.  

Hopefully, this type of books provide comfort to grieving families and to the children left in them.  Perhaps if they read these novels, they feel as if what their family is going through is normal, which is half the battle in grief.... knowing that they aren't alone.  How unfortunate.