By Ashley Herring Blake
After a tornado wrecks her home, a girl whose secret notebook of drawings, girls holding hands, has gone missing starts getting the pages back one at a time, with notes urging her to be brave about who she is.
A tornado tears through town and destroys twelve-year-old Ivy Aberdeen's house. Her family gets out safe but ends up crammed into a shelter, and Ivy, the quiet middle child, feels more invisible than ever. Worse, her private notebook has gone missing, the one full of drawings of two girls holding hands. Then the drawings start showing up in her locker, with anonymous notes telling her it's okay to be who she is. As Ivy tries to figure out who's sending them, she's also sorting out a brand-new crush on a girl named June, and what on earth to do about it.
Ashley Herring Blake takes a big feeling, being sure no one really sees you, and gives it a shape a child understands, then wraps a gentle mystery around it. Ivy's crush on June and her fear about her drawings are handled so warmly that a child questioning their own feelings will feel accompanied instead of lectured. The tornado gives it momentum, and the heart of it stays quiet and sure.