DEAR PAPA
by Anne Ylvisaker

Candlewick Press
ISBN: 0763616184
Ages 9-12
192 pages

It's 1943 and nine-year-old Isabelle Anderson lives with her mother, her two older sisters, Irma and Inez, her younger brother Ian, and her younger sister Ida in St. Paul, Minnesota. It has been one year since her father died and, ever since then, her life has been very different. Irma and Inez have boyfriends and her mother sold her father's filling station and got a job! But now her mother is always tired and not acting like herself anymore. She eventually becomes so tired that she sends Isabelle to live with Uncle Bernard and Aunt Jaye in Zumbrota, Minnesota. She also sends Irma and Inez to live with Uncle Edgar on a farm. That's when their new lives begin.

While living with her uncle and aunt, Isabelle slowly adjusts to life in a small town. Even though she has new friends and her aunt and uncle are nice to her, she wishes she could be home to help her mother do everything around the house. She wants to be part of a happy family again. Then she starts thinking of a way to get back home with her sisters and to the rest of her family. One day, she steals some money from her aunt and uncle's house and goes to the bus station. Guess what? Inez is there too! They both get on the train to go back home.

When they get back home, they discover that their mother is living in a new house with Mr. Colletti, the owner, and that she has sold their old house. Eventually she gets married to him and Isabelle slowly adjusts to him being her stepfather. Then one day, her mother finds out that she is going to have a baby by Christmas! Will Isabelle adjust to another change to her family? Will Irma come back home to her family?

This heartfelt book of a girl who must experience many changes to her family touched me, because I felt the same way when I had to move to a new house and when my little sister was born. If I would have been Isabelle, I would have come home to my mother too because I would have missed her very much. If you like heartfelt and touching books, read this one to find out if her wish to have one happy family again comes true.

Answered by Suparna , an ibibo Master, at 11:58 PM on February 09, 2009