Skip to main content

Like Magic

Image
By


Like Magic
Elaine Vickers
HarperCollins, 2016. 261 p.

Three girls feel unsure and lonely in Salt Lake City. Each girl ends up going to the Salt Lake City Library and meets a librarian who suggests that they each borrow a very special book on friendship. Thus begins a sweet story about how these three girls find out that they are not alone in their feelings or insecurities. Grace has lived in Salt Lake for a long while. Her best friend moved away and now her anxiety won’t allow her to speak to anyone—even though she often wants to. Jada is new to Utah. She and her father moved from New Jersey so that he could start a teaching career at a new school focused on the arts. Jada loves art—but she hates living so far away from her mother, grandmother and everything else she knows. Malia is worried about the upcoming birth of a baby sister. Her mother is on bedrest in the hospital and her father is running around trying to take care of the family business as well as his family. Malia doesn’t know if she can be a good big sister or if her parents will even care about her after this long-awaited baby will arrive.

Vickers weaves the three stories together—readers will know that eventually all three girls will become friends. It just is the only satisfactory ending we would accept. This is a good book for reading and then starting conversations about anxiety, frustrations, or other feelings that often come when life-changing events happen to young girls. Plus it shows that friendships (and libraries and librarians!) are a good way to navigate the crazy experience called life.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Blood in the Water

By
Blood in the Water By Tiffany D. Jackson New York: Scholastic, 2025. Fiction. 255 pages. 12-year-old Kaylani McKinnon can't help but feel like a fish out of water. She's a Brooklyn girl spending her summer on Martha's Vineyard surrounded by wealthy family friends in their mansion. All she really wants is to stay home all summer where she her incarcerated father can easily reach her, and she can keep working to find ways to prove him innocent of fraud and embezzlement. Despite her protests, she finds herself on the island with the snooty granddaughters of her host. Soon after Kaylani's arrival, a popular teen boy is found murdered and she decides to conduct her own investigation. As she tries to discover what happened to Chadwick Cooper, Kaylani finds that not everything on Martha's Vineyard is as perfect as it appears. Thrillers for middle grade readers can be hard to find, but Tiffany D. Jackson succeeds in her first middle grade novel. A quick moving plot, tight d...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Fowl Play

By
  Fowl Play By Kristin O'Donnell Tubb New York: Katherine Tegen Books, 2024. Fiction 277 pages. Still reeling from her beloved uncle's death, Chloe Alvarez is comforted and confused when at his last will and testament reading, Uncle Will gifts her his African Grey parrot, Charlie. Charlie has a robust vocabulary and loves to make Alexa requests for her favorite songs, but when she starts saying things like, "homicide," and "cyanide," Chloe becomes convinced that Uncle Will may have met his demise by murder instead of a genetic disease, as was previously thought. Ultimately, bringing in her brother, Grammy, and Uncle Frank (and of course Charlie,) Chloe's ragtag and adoring family support her search for answers ---going on stakeouts, engaging in fast pursuits, and searching for clues. But as the suspects stack up and the mystery grows, Chole will learn that the process of death and grieving is complicated, and in the end her Uncle Will's words that, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Alice with a Why

By
Alice with a Why By Anna James New York: Penguin, 2026. Fiction. 240 pgs. In 1919, in the aftermath of the first World War, Alyce is living with her grandmother in the English countryside. Her grandmother, also named Alice, tells Alyce (with a y) stories from her childhood adventures in a wonderful land filled with white rabbits and mad hatters. Alyce doesn't really believe the silly stories, she just misses her father who was killed in the war. One day, Alyce receives a mysterious invitation to tea, and subsequently falls into a pond where she is transported to Wonderland. Her grandmother, of course, is that Alice. Alyce is prompted by the Mad Hatter, Dormouse, and March Hare to seek out the Time Being and put an end to the war between the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon. Thus begins Alyce's adventure through Wonderland. I have a certain soft spot for the original story of Alice in Wonderland. It is one of my particular favorites and I often have a hard time reading new int...
Post a Comment
Read more