By Kate Bernheimer
A much-loved library book slowly stops getting picked, ends up in the basement, and is finally found and kept by a girl named Alice.
When the book is new, everyone wants it. It gets checked out again and again, read under blankets and on laps, almost never spending a night on the shelf. Then newer books arrive, and little by little the children stop reaching for it. Its cover goes soft, a page falls out, and one day it's carried down to the library basement, where the old faded books sit in boxes in the dark. A girl named Alice comes looking, opens the worn cover, and loves what she finds — a story about a fairy who lives under a toadstool, missing last page and all. She takes it home. When she leaves it behind by accident and it's nearly sold off, the two find each other one more time, and this time she keeps it.
The whole sad feeling sits inside a book, not a child, and that's what makes it land so gently. A child who has felt overlooked may recognize the ache here without having to feel it as their own, because it's the book that's forgotten, so there's a little distance built in. And nothing is anyone's fault: the book isn't pushed aside out of meanness, it's just passed over as newer things show up, which is often how being left out actually happens. Then the ending gives the book back its reader, worn cover and missing page and all.