Category: Favorites
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What Hearts by Bruce Brooks (1993)
A collection of four short stories about Asa, each detailing a moment in his life between the end of first grade up through seventh grade, dealing with friendship, love, and complicated parents. This was one of my favorites from when I was in middle school, and it holds up even better than I had expected — it manages to be repeatedly heartbreaking without being saccharine or maudlin or cheap.
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Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes (2004)
Martha is a twelve-year-old from Madison, Wisconsin, about to leave for her family’s annual trip to her grandmother’s home on Cape Cod, when she’s given a page from the journal of a classmate named Olive who died in an accident earlier that summer. She barely knew Olive, but the entry says that Olive wanted to visit the ocean, become a writer, and be friends with Martha. Her visit to her grandmother’s is a growing experience, with Martha thinking about death, love, and becoming a writer herself. A beautiful and melancholy book, older in themes than the…