I recommend Ida B, Katherine Hannigan’s debut novel. It has a spunky, imaginative nine-year-old narrator who wants more than nothing else not to have to go to school–she wants to continue being homeschooled by her parents and having the run of the family’s orchard. But when her mother becomes ill, the care of the orchard falls entirely on the father, the family must sell part of the orchard, and Ida B must go to school. Ida B closes her heart and resists all the changes she’s faced with, and for a time she’s an absolute pill–the pleasure in this story is witnessing how Ida B finds herself again and atones for the wrongs she’d committed.
A good read!
