By Kimberly Willis Holt
Piper is the middle sister in a Navy family. When her dad gets posted to Pensacola, she packs up again, starts at a new school, and sets about turning a strange place into home.
Piper Reed is the middle of three sisters, and her family moves a lot. Her dad's a Chief in the Navy, so they go where the Navy sends him. This time it's Pensacola, Florida: a new house, a new school, and leaving her best friend behind again. Piper's not happy about it. But she's a doer. She starts a neighborhood club, campaigns hard for the dog she's always wanted, fights and makes up with her know-it-all big sister, and little by little makes the new place feel like home. It's funny and warm. What it's really about is the everyday side of military-family life: the packing, the new school, the slow work of turning somewhere strange into home.
For a child in a military family, this is the rare one that's just fun. No deployment, no goodbye at an airfield, only the ordinary business of being the new one again and making the best of it. A child who moves with the service may see their own life here: the packing, the new school, the missing of old friends, all treated as everyday and even comic instead of sad. And it's a friendly step up into chapter books, with short chapters, big pictures, a heroine easy to root for, and more books waiting if they love her.