Something Like Home

In January 2023, I watched the Youth Media Award with baited breath, and with my library hold list open. As per usual, I was ready to place holds on any of the winners that looked interesting or that I had somehow missed in 2022. As many of you know, my DREAM is to be on the Newbery committee, so that’s an award I always pay attention to, and I do my best to read the winners. This year, Freewater won, but it was one of the honor books that caught my attention—Iveliz Explains It All. I hadn’t heard of that book AT ALL,it seemed, and it was on the shelves in my library. I immediately grabbed it. At first, I was a little “eh” and then, all of a sudden, I was dry-heave sobbing. I was sold on Andrea Beatriz Arango’s work, especially as someone who feels like Starfish was robbed the year prior.

That’s a really long prologue to tell you how exited I was when I was assigned to review her sophomore novel, another novel in verse for middle graders, for Booklist, I was really excited! And I’m here to tell you while the core story isn’t as gut wrenching (at least for me!) as Iveliz, I was still really moved and inspired by this story.

The novel begins with Laura Rodrigues Colon headed to her aunt’s home, as she begins kinship foster care. She is NOT excited about it, because she didn’t even know this aunt existed, and because she knows this is all her fault. She should not have called 911 on her parents that night. She knew they were addicts, but they loved her, and while she doesn’t know what would have happened, she knows this situation is all her fault. Now she’s living with her up-tight, uber-organized aunt while her parents are in rehab somewhere, where she can’t see them.

Things are not going well though. She doesn’t really get along with her aunt, her new school is too big and fancy, she doesn’t want to talk to her old friends about what’s going on…and then she finds Sparrow, a lost pitbull who somehow becomes a part of their family. Laura doesn’t think she’ll be able to keep Sparrow forever, but she knows that if she can get Sparrow to be a therapy dog, she can get them into her parent’s rehab place, and everything will be okay.

Along the way, she’ll need the help of her new friend, Benson, who has sickle cell disease, and is a great dog trainer, and friend. As she and her aunt find a way to communicate with each other, as Sparrow learns new skills, and as Laura learns about her family’s history, the reader is allowed inside their home, inside Laura’s heart, and along for the ride that Arango always takes her reader on: leaving you with at least one final line in a poem that makes you stop and go “no!”

Overall, this book wasn’t as emotionally moving, for me, as Iveliz, and the “shock” twist wasn’t the same punch, but it was like Starfish–it slowly pulled you apart as it puts Laura back together. I know addiction is important to talk about in Kid Lit, and I think this does a good job—she calls them pills, she talks about the perils, but she doesn’t show you them dead on the floor or anything like that. There’s talk of general neglect, but not abuse of Laura. And frankly, as someone who grew up in Appalachia and knew many addicts, that feels much more relatable for the average reader.

For fans of Starfish, ugly crying in bed over a middle grade novel, and healthy representations of therapy in Kid lit!