Like Magic

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.