My Brilliant Friend

My Brilliant Friend / Elena Ferrante, read by Hillary Huber, 331 pgs.

Lila and Lenu are best friends as young children and this first in the series takes them through adolescence.  Although they are close, they sometimes veer from each other before going back.  They are both brilliant, the smartest in class but only one goes on past grade school.  As their paths diverge, they still see each other. On the one hand, nothing much happens in this book.  On the other, it seems like EVERYTHING happens.  The girls are learning and growing.  They are having experiences for the first time and they share a lot with each other.  The book is leisurely paced but the audio was hard to turn off.  Looking forward to the next in the series.

The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky

The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky by Holly Schindler, 230 pages

Auggie Jones lives with her Grandpa Gus in Willow Grove, MO.  He’s a junk hauler and Auggie loves spending summertime riding with him to the local junkyard.  But as summer ends, things in Willow Grove change.  Auggie’s neighborhood school has been closed so she must go to a different school – Dickerson Elementary.  But Auggie and her friends are different from the students at Dickerson.  And Victoria, a long-time Dickerson student, makes sure they don’t forget it.

Victoria has it out for Auggie.  First, she steals Auggie’s best friend.  Then she announces her position as a junior member of the House Beautification Committee.  Victoria has her sights set on Auggie’s rundown neighborhood.  If Auggie can’t clean up her neighborhood, it will be torn down.  Auggie gets inventive and begins turning junkyard scraps into decorations to make her house beautiful – but the people on the City Council don’t always see things the way Auggie does.  To find out if Auggie is able to turn trash into treasure and save her neighborhood, read The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky.

Written by a Missouri author, this 16-17 Mark Twain Readers Award nominee shows younger readers the beauty to be found in unlikely objects, and that all communities – classy or shabby – have their own points of pride.