By Cynthia Rylant
Summer finally had a home with the aunt and uncle who took her in, until May died and left her and her grieving uncle to find a way to go on.
Summer was passed from relative to relative until Aunt May and Uncle Ob took her in and raised her as their own in a small trailer up in the West Virginia hills. Then May died, all at once, out in the garden, and the trailer went still. Uncle Ob can barely get out of his chair. He starts to believe May's spirit is trying to reach him, so he and Summer and an earnest, odd boy named Cletus set off on a small, strange trip to find a way to say goodbye.
It's a quiet, inward book with no mystery to solve and no villain, just two people who've lost the person who held their world together and are learning how to keep going. That's grief with nothing else happening around it, which asks a lot of a reader, so I'd save it for a child who already loves good sentences and won't be scared off by a slow, sad story. Two things keep it from being too heavy. It's short, so the sadness never feels endless. And it's beautifully written, so it never tips into grim.