Review by Booklist Review
This poignant look at grief and loss is a perfect opening for conversations about death, depression, and therapy for middle-grade readers. Seventh-grader Millie's first night of babysitting her next-door neighbor, Lolo, seemed to go OK, but sometime during the night, baby Lolo passed away of unknown causes. What follows is a black hole of despair that Millie falls into--losing her sparkle and becoming robotic, as her sister notes. The only saving grace is what she calls Lolo's Light, a light in her bedroom window that Millie fixates on, hoping that means the baby isn't really gone. The annual science class experiment to hatch chicks, however, sends overly cautious Millie teetering toward the brink. Scanlon's stark prose depicts Millie's mental state well, and the school story aspect will appeal to most middle-grade readers, while also serving up a healthy dose of mental health education and insight into loss and grief. This is a great pick for tween book groups, sure to leave readers' eyes wet with tears by the end.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Garton (The Great Good Summer) treats the topic of grief with wisdom and tenderness in this slice-of-life novel set on the North Shore of Chicago. Everything seems to go fine on the evening that 12-year-old Millie Donally babysits for the very first time, but she learns the next morning that sometime during the night, her four-month-old charge, Lolo Acosta, died from sudden infant death syndrome. No one blames Millie for the baby's death, but the rising seventh grader, who attends comedy camp and practices improv, nevertheless feels guilty and soon experiences depression. Her only comfort is a warm, yellow light burning continuously in Lolo's window. When Millie reads about bioluminescence, "light that is both produced and emitted by a living organism," she starts to wonder if the glow means that Lolo is partially "still here, on Earth." The memory of the light's warmth helps Millie get through a school chicken-hatching project that requires her to carefully tend fertilized eggs. Divided into tonally discrete "before" and "everything after" sections that convey the tween's transformation, the narrative economically and movingly renders Millie's inner turmoil--and work with a therapist--in the wake of a sorrowful event. Characters default to white. Ages 10--up. Agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary. (Oct.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Millie is a genuinely happy person; she's a comedian who loves making other people laugh--until the day she cannot laugh anymore. Twelve-year-old Millie Donally feels so mature when their neighbors the Acostas ask her to watch their baby daughter, Lolo, when they go out to dinner. Millie's older sister is their usual sitter, but she can't make it. Everything goes well, and Millie goes home happy and proud of herself only to wake in the morning to find out that Lolo passed away during the night. Even though the sudden infant death syndrome is not her fault, Millie is transformed overnight from carefree to guilt-ridden and depressed. The only bright spot (figuratively and literally) is the warm yellow light shining from Lolo's room. Millie swears she feels a warm electrical hum as well, although no one else seems to notice it. Millie attempts to move forward, but how do you go on after something like this? How can she be with her friends, who can't truly understand what she's feeling? Even the class project she had looked forward to, incubating chicken eggs, is now in Millie's eyes rife with potential for disastrous failure. Millie's slow process through grief and guilt--with help from a family therapist--is extraordinarily well written, taking readers on the heartbreaking, difficult, and necessary journey that follows unthinkable loss. Characters are minimally described and read White. A poignant coming-of-age story that explores the ripple effects of death, loss, and forgiveness. (Fiction. 10-14) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
