Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World

I have a niece and nephew who are both three, born just days apart from each other. When they were tiny and wriggling and screaming because that's all they could do, we would tell our siblings (their parents) that being a baby is hard. When they started walking and talking, and started saying no to absolutely everything, we told our siblings that toddlering must be hard. Now, of course, being three is hard - having their worlds turned upside down now that their own siblings are entering the picture.

As I closed Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World, I thought, being a tween is hard. Then I started wondering if there's ever an age or era that's not hard. I think we survive by getting through what seems hard, and imagining that it must all be smooth sailing from here on out, avoiding thinking about hardship unless we're actively dealing with it.

Twelve-year-old Ivy deals with a lot of hardship and identity crises in this middle-grade read — in the early pages, her home is destroyed when a tornado tears through her town, she and her family (including her older sister and twin newborn brothers) are displaced into a single hotel room while they figure out their next move, and Ivy's trying to figure out if she likes girls, navigating a potential first crush and worrying that it would ruin her relationships with her friends and sister if they knew. It's a lot.

It's a gorgeously written book, with Ivy's love of drawing bleeding from every interaction, and lots of wonderful, and wonderfully human, characters. Just lovely.