Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

After staying home from church on Sunday and school Monday and yesterday, my youngest headed off today with cough medicine in her system. The crossed fingers, of course, are mine. Is she well enough? Is she going to infect half her class? Or, conversely, has most of her class already had it and she got it from one of them? Who knows. What I do know is that this is my one child who struggled to figure out blowing her nose AND is terrible at drinking anywhere close to enough, and if, after every cold, I waited to send her back to school until the gunk was gone, I’d have the truant officers after me. (Plus, it’s testing, and missing that is never ideal.) I am, therefore, once again alone in the house, which is why I can peacefully compose a book review at lunchtime.

When we were pondering Battle of the Books options (we’ve settled now, but before, when we were pondering) we wanted a local author, but Jennifer Nielsen has apparently been done recently. Tyler Whitesides was suggested as an alternative, but I wondered about other possible options and decided to google Utah authors, which is how Erin Stewart’s The Mysterious Magic of Lighthouse Lane popped onto my radar. It’s new–it came out in February–but it’s also already on Libby as an audiobook, and while Tyler Whitesides got picked for our upcoming BotB list (I was only halfway through Stewart’s book at the meeting), I’m hoping for Erin Stewart for the following year, because I very much enjoyed The Mysterious Magic of Lighthouse Lane. (That may have flirted with being a run-on sentence there, but I’m over it.)

Lighthouse Lane is the story of Lucy, who has always had big feelings, turbo tears, and ‘meltdowns’; after a spectacular one at the aquarium (in front of her entire 6th grade class, no less), her parents arrange for her to spend the summer with her grandfather on P.E.I.. (It’s an interesting choice, given the circumstances, but it makes for a lovely story. Also, sometimes parents are a little baffling.) She decides before getting there that she doesn’t want friends or emotional entanglements–it’ll be easier that way–and at first, her nigh-monosyllabic grandfather and his quiet house seem designed to support that decision. Her grandfather’s dog begins to break down her metaphorical barricade, however, and then a redhead named Poppy shows up with an insistent, non-negotiable friendship proposition. And when Lucy’s grandfather pulls out her grandmother’s old camera for her to use, a series of events is set in motion that suggests a name and a reason for Lucy’s feelings–and the notion that they may not be a liability after all.

Stewart’s book isn’t a perfect one, it’s true; the course of the plot feels a bit (more than a bit?) unlikely if you think about it too deeply. Her characters are strong and sympathetic, however, and settings don’t get much better than Prince Edward Island. Stories about kiddos who struggle with emotional differences are much more common than they used to be, but this is the first one I’ve read that explores the idea of being an empath, and that adds to the appeal. Boys aren’t going to be nearly as excited about this one as girls, it’s true, but still–I completely recommend it.

We’ll see if it shows up on a BotB list in the future.