Momo

Every so often a book appears at just the right time; or, perhaps more accurately, I pick it up at just the right time after years on my to-read pile. Momo was enchanting and so perfectly relevant. All about listening, kindness, attention, love, and our brief time on Earth. A little heavyhanded, and admittedly not really a five, but I'm giving it five anyway.

I keep thinking about this book. It should be so much more famous! (In the USA, that is. I know Michael Ende is much better known in some places and obviously in Germany.) Truly, in my humble opinion, this is a masterpiece of children's literature akin to A Little Princess, The Phantom Tollbooth, or A Wrinkle in Time.

This book had been sitting on my shelves and that turned out to be a good thing because I needed another book to read aloud to my daughter. This story about a young homeless girl named Momo who arrives at the edge of the (nameless) city and makes her home in the ruins of an old amphitheatre. She soon becomes very popular with many of the children of the city and some of the adults because in her presence people think clearly and she really listens to people. But then the men in gray arrive. They are insidiously stealing time from people with their nefarious Time-Saving Bank. Momo, however, is impervious to their charms, but as the situation worsens, she has to do something about it. This book is very much about the value of your time and what you do with it. (Hint: don't get carried away by ambition and haste.) This book is also sort of an odd tale that slowly gets under your skin. We enjoyed it.