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Junonia

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Junonia
by Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow, 2011. 176 pgs. Fiction

Nine-year-old Alice is looking forward to her family's annual trip to the beach and looking forward to seeing her old friends, but things have changed. Helen Blair, her artist friend, is stuck in New York in a blizzard. Alice's "Aunt" Kate, her mother's best friend, was still coming but with a new boyfriend with a six-year-old daughter, Mallory. The Wishheimers were there, as was old Mr. Barden, but he had become crankier and more forgetful since she last saw him, and more likely to hurt her feelings. How Alice responds to and learns from these changes is the burden of this gentle tale which is characterized by Henkes' usual lovely prose and evocative pictures, but which is so nuanced and slow-moving only grown-ups or mature older children will probably enjoy it.
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