Just under the clouds

Melissa Sarno

Book - 2018

Since her father's death, Cora, twelve, longs for a permanent home for herself, her special-needs sister, and their mother while navigating middle school and studying trees using her father's field notes.

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Review by Booklist Review

When Cora and her younger sister, Adare, find that someone broke in and vandalized their room at a shelter, their mother calls on a childhood friend, Willa, to help them out. Cora likes the stability and security Willa offers; her mother, on the other hand, is determined to stay only as long as necessary. Meanwhile, Cora struggles in school: her move to remedial math has given ammunition to the grade's resident mean girl, and she is sometimes frustrated by having to be responsible for Adare, who has a developmental disability. The bright spots in her life are tree climbing, her late father's tree book (a botanical journal), and new friend Sabina, a quirky collector of old letters, notes, and memos. Gradually, Cora begins to understand that a home is more than four walls and a door. Cora's first-person narrative highlights the instability of her life, and Sarno's descriptions of the world as Cora sees it rich and evocative without being overdone is particularly notable. A moving book about an all-too-common childhood experience, which is fairly uncommon in children's literature.--Scanlon, Donna Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Sarno's debut novel relays the heartbreaking yet hopeful story of a family searching for a place to belong. Alongside their mother, 12-year-old Cora and her younger sister, Adare, have lugged their meager possessions from one Brooklyn address to another since their father's death. Now, living in a shelter, Cora muses, "We're homeless. For real." While her mother works long hours as a store clerk, Cora looks after keenly intuitive Adare, who was "born special" and constantly smiles but rarely speaks. Cora is a zealous tree climber and lover of all growing things; she treasures her Tree Book, in which her gardener father meticulously recorded his field notes, and she now documents the trees surrounding every place she lives. As Cora sees Brooklyn from a variety of perspectives (the trees she climbs, a shelter, a fancy high-rise) and her family looks for a place to stay, she considers the meanings of belonging and home. Sarno easily pulls readers into the tangled lives of her credible characters and their struggles to put down roots in this exploration of family and friendship, loss and resilience. Ages 8-12. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 3-7--Cora, her mother, and her younger developmentally disabled sister Adare have been on their own for awhile now, ever since the death of Cora and Adare's father. They've moved from their apartment to a homeless shelter and then to a dirty and unsafe placement. After seeing the placement, they move in temporarily with Mom's childhood friend Willa, who has an elegant apartment in New York City. Cora can finally focus on friendship, figuring out math, and climbing trees. But this housing situation can't last; Willa wants to determine what is best for the family, particularly for Adare. The narrator, Monika Felice Smith, works hard, but is only partially successful in voicing the book's characters. Cora's persona is well developed, but Adare has an annoyingly childish and sing-song voice that doesn't often match the words she is speaking. VERDICT A story rarely covered for intermediate readers that ultimately offers hope to those in a very difficult situation, as well as ample opportunity for other listeners to consider what life in such dire straits would be like.-Ann Brownson, formerly at Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review

After Coras father died six years ago, her familys financial situation deteriorated dramatically. Cora, her mother, and Coras developmentally disabled younger sister, Adare, cannot live on Moms meager salary; because her mother works fluctuating hours, Cora is responsible for Adares care. After losing their home, they begin living in an unsafe and unsanitary shelter. With no affordable housing available, Coras mother turns to a childhood friend, Willa, a prominent New York lawyer, for temporary refuge. Here they are safe. Can they be happy? Cora loves living in this elegant apartment, but Willas well-meaning attempt to manage their lives creates an unsustainable tension as her ideas clash with Coras mothers vision of what is best for her family. Cora is tired, so tired of trying to figure out where to be. She wants stability--to build a close friendship with a new classmate, to understand algebra--and the chance to pursue her own interests, but adult responsibilities keep intruding on her wishes. The insecurity of homelessness and the limited options of those living in poverty sear the pages of this thought-provoking debut about the meaning of home and the importance of family. betty carter (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Life is not going well for Cora.Ever since her Irish-immigrant father died six years ago, the 12-year-old, her Mexican-American mom, and her younger sister, Adare, who was "born special" and speaks little, have been living in a series of temporary homesand now they're in a grim Brooklyn shelter. Through it all Cora has persevered, getting her sister to and from school and charting (and climbing) the trees around where she's lived, keeping up her father's horticultural work. But she's struggling in math, bullied, friendless, and, after their shelter room is ransacked, homeless. After her mom's friend Willa takes them in, Cora begins to imagine a more stable lifebut living with Willa would take away what little autonomy her mom still has. Cora makes friends with a classmate who lives on a houseboat, rootless but not homeless, and each uses this friendship as a path to a more satisfying life. Cora's first-person narrative voice occasionally strays away from age-appropriate but never enough to diminish her poignanteven desperatesituation, as she strives to provide what Adare needs while chasing her own limited dreams. Even after they move into a "placement," a gritty complex that's too dangerous"somewhere you can't go after school on your own"to be a home, challenges realistically persist.Troubling, affecting, and ultimately uplifting, from a promising debut novelist. (Fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

M om's calling and I'm counting. My backpack's tight on my back up here in the tree. Knees tucked neat over the branches. Bare feet dangling. One . . . two . . . three . . . I soar. Out and then down and I'm at the dirt, balancing on the tree's roots, while Adare spreads out on a clump of Brooklyn brown grass, like a snow angel without the snow. "Coming!" I shout. I scoop up Adare's hand. "Come on, you." Her breath is caught. She's got a habit of holding it. "Adare." I stomp. But her eyes are wide and they shine like gray glass. The sun's in them, all pretty, sparkling, the way light hits water. "Adare!" I close my eyes and wish her breath free. She lets go of it and squirms her hand out of mine, then takes off running toward Mom, who'll take us from the park back to Ennis House. We've never lived in a shelter before, and even if we've never lived much of anywhere for too long, it feels like, for the first time, we don't have a home. We're homeless. For real. "Cora, I thought I told you to quit climbing. You've got to keep an eye on your sister after school," Mom scolds as I chase behind. Adare is buried in the limp of Mom's shirt. "I did," I argue, but I know it's no use. I take Mom's hand in mine. It always feels like I've got to remind her I'm here, too. Her hands are pink and stained. "Why are they pink?" I ask. She smiles. "You'll see." Then she leans down so her whisper's at my messy hair. "What do we have today?" I open up my own hand. "A butterfly." She squeezes it tight because we might not have a ton of money or clothes, but now we have a monarch butterfly I drew in blue ink. Right there on my palm. We walk the sidewalks to Ennis House. Adare and I march on opposite sides of Mom. I call out trees as we pass. Pin oak. Honey locust. Linden. Maple. The female ginkgo drops berries that smell awful. I gave that one a name a long time ago. It's called the vomit tree. When you pass one, you'd better hold your nose.  "What's that?" Mom asks, pointing at a piney- looking tree.  I reach up and run its prickle over my thumb to count how many needles are bunched together on each branch. "White pine," I say fast.  She shakes her head in surprise. "How can you tell?"  "Five needles per bundle." I grin while she squeezes my hand again. She knows I've studied the photographs Daddy pasted in his field journal, which I call my Tree Book. She knows I've got my eye out for all the plants and trees I can find.  Like always, Adare stops a few thousand times during our ten- minute walk. She looks toward the sky, her chin sailing up like a flyaway balloon. I keep my sighs secret. Loud enough in my head so only I can hear them. We're getting nowhere fast, and even if everything in me is itch-ing to complain, I don't say a word.  Adare was born special, Mom always says. She tells the story like it's legend. She talks about the wind that night, in its quickening swirl. She talks about the labor, long and uneasy, Adare turning circles in her womb. She talks about the moment Adare came into the world without a sound-- Not blue, no, more like lavender, like sunset-- and in that moment all the oxygen gone from the world, the trees for-getting to breathe their gift, Adare forgetting, too.  She lost oxygen to the brain, but Mom doesn't call it a disadvantage, like others do. Adare sees things a different way, she always says. It's like all of us see from here --she places her hand at the level of her heart. And Adare sees from up here --she sends her arm soaring. Up where? That's what I always wonder. We stop at the corner. In the distance the big cranes dangle a bunch of car parts. The scrap metal piles are like rolling hills just past the BQE. We live near the canal now and I like it. The water might smell of dirt and weeds and rot, but when you stare at it real close, there's a looping oil swirl and it looks like a broken rainbow nobody sees. Inside Ennis House, the stairwell lights are burned out and the glass is split. Old Lou hovers, his eyes like two brown beetles, as Mom pushes us past. "Don't linger," she says. We walk the dirty floor, past the smack of cockroach, which has been there three days. I've counted. Mom's hand stiffens, then tightens, like it always does. She squeezes my butterfly palm flat and everything in me knows better than to complain. As we climb up the stairs, Mrs. Johnson shouts from behind the door with a voice that stomps the air and Fred C.'s place smells like sweet onions and old grill. My stomach starts roaring and in my head I tell it to quiet down. But it doesn't listen. When we get to five, my legs are burning and my sunflower backpack feels so heavy, it's like it's full of sinking rocks. Mom holds Adare's backpack for her--the one I picked out for her at Winn Discount. I made sure it was bright blue like the sky. The hall's dark and narrow and we file through, Mom's hand still crushing mine. "It smells like cat pee." "It's a trick," Mom says. "To keep the mice away." Mom says you can buy all you want at places like Miss Li's grocery. She says it's called predator pee. But we've got our own cat, Sookie, even if she's more Adare's than mine, sticking like glue to her and hissing at me. Mom jiggles the keys and opens the lock. Sookie takes one look at me and skitters underneath the quilt, which only draws attention to our messy mattress on the floor. Mom shakes her head, guides us in, and deadbolts the door. "I thought I told you to make the bed." "What's the sense in making a bed when you're just going to get right back in?" Mom gives a Don't get smart with me kind of look and I run around the mattress, pulling the sheets real fast, so they flutter-puff up and settle down. That always cracks Adare up, so I fluff them high again, and she's got this sniffy laugh that always makes Mom smile. Adare throws herself on the settling sheets. Her laughs are trampled and caught. I pull up the candy-colored quilt over her, quick. I love how soft it is from years of washing. Then I sit gently on her bony legs, pretending she's not even there.  I announce it real loud: "Bed's made!" Adare laughs and squirms, and Mom plays along, too. She says, "Cora, I can't find Adare. Do you know where she is?" until Adare is wriggling and laughing and poking her head out, her hair falling over her eyes in a tangle. It makes me smile when she smiles, sweet and pink. Her voice is soft, like always, even if she sounds less like she's ten and more like a baby. "I'm right here." "You're right here," I say. "Yeah."     Excerpted from Just under the Clouds by Melissa Sarno All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.