Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I had a quietly productive morning, folks, and then worked on PTA stuff right after school; my littles, however, took turn having freakouts this afternoon/evening, so I’m feeling a little wrung out. On the other hand, I also got to finish reading Sara Shepard’s Penny Draws a Best Friend aloud to my youngest after dinner and scriptures, and that was lovely.

The premise for Penny Draws is a classic–Penny starts 5th grade only to find that her best friend, who’s been away at a special gymnastics camp all summer, is acting strangely. She’s suddenly all buddy-buddy with one of their class’s mean-ish girls, and many of the things she and Penny used to do together are now “babyish.” It’s a classic storyline for a reason, of course–friends do grow, change, or choose to swap friend groups–but Sara Shepard avoids dwelling on the miserable emotions involved and instead focuses on Penny herself. She finds a perfect balance between highlighting the inner life of a child with anxiety and finding the humor in that child’s day-to-day experiences; none of the awful bits (the ones that I, as a parent and an avid reader of middle grade fiction, could clearly see coming) were drawn out for too long, and the positives in Penny’s life were a relief. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this aloud with my own fifth grader, and we’re looking forward to the rest of the series!

In the meantime, I’m taking my hubby out ON A DATE tomorrow night, which is incredibly exciting, as we (quite literally) don’t get out much. Cross your fingers that the kiddos will be chill with each other while we’re gone!