Starred review from January 9, 2023
A white 11-year-old in mourning navigates foster care and seeks connection by collecting families’ recipes and stories in this tenderly rendered, character-driven novel by O’Shaughnessy (The Lonely Heart of Maybelle Lane). When the grandmother who raised her dies, and her sole uncle says he can’t take care of her, Mo Gallagher finds herself waiting for a foster placement in New York City. Journal entries framed as letters to her grandmother seek to reforge a connection amid rapid change (“If anyone can find a way to communicate from the afterlife, it’s you”). The letters also relay Mo’s worry about sharing recent events with best friend Crystal Wang, who is Chinese American; her promising interest in cooking after she finds a book of family recipes; and her growing friendship with the doorman at the building where she now lives. She begins to find her feet after starting a food website but falters when the placement she’s been getting used to hits a snag. Mo’s pitch-perfect voice vividly portrays her metropolitan past life with her quirky, vibrant grandmother; her own messy and layered feelings; and her established and growing relationships with others. Watching Mo develop new bonds and begin to feel like she has a place in the world is extremely satisfying. Ages 8–12. Agent: Peter Knapp, Park & Fine Literary and Media.
March 1, 2023
Gr 5-7-O'Shaughnessy's second middle grade novel will pull at the heart strings of all readers. Mo's grandmother has died and her only known living relative, Uncle Bill, does not want to leave his life in the army to raise his 11-year-old niece. Mo goes into the foster care system where she finds nothing but disappointment. After a little while, a young couple decides they would like to adopt a child, and Mo fits the bill. To develop a new hobby, a suggestion her grandmother made before she died, Mo starts to explore cooking and seeking out family recipes-anyone's family recipes in hopes she might discover someone from her own family. She gets help from the adults around her and develops a website where anyone can share their beloved family recipes along with pictures and stories. The story is told through Mo's journal where she is writing to her deceased grandmother about the highs and lows of her new life. Recipes are included as the story progresses. The ending is predictable and comforting. Readers who enjoyed Lynda Mullaly Hunt's One for the Murphys and Frances O'Roark Dowell's Where I'd Like to Be will enjoy this middle grade epistolary novel. VERDICT A fine addition to most middle school collections.-Kim Gardner
Copyright 2023 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 1, 2023
After the death of Nan, the grandmother who had been her guardian, eleven-year-old Mo begins a series of letters to Nan in a notebook. She relates the difficulties of her next steps: an uncle is unwilling to care for her; a foster parent gives her up, overwhelmed in part by challenges including her stress-induced bed-wetting; another placement that looks like it might work out has its own obstacles. A family cookbook (stolen but later returned) makes Mo wish she had meaningful recipes of her own, and the cooking project the book inspires grows into a food website. She uses that platform to solicit other people's recipes -- and to put the word out that she's in search of blood relatives. Mo, imperfections and all, is a winning heroine surrounded by flawed though mostly well-meaning adults, and her hopes, even those that are long shots, come from an understandable desperation for family and stability, which makes it easy to root for her. Secondary characters are fully realized, with personalities coming through in the interspersed recipes' directions and commentary. To be read with snacks at hand, and perhaps also some tissues. Shoshana Flax
(Copyright 2023 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
Starred review from December 15, 2022
Mo Gallagher's life is upended when her beloved grandmother dies and she is thrust into foster care. Nan had been her loving guardian, raising her in a New York City apartment that she must now leave. Her uncle is unwilling to assume her care, but he gives her a notebook with a letter to her from Nan on the first page. Hoping to remain connected in some mystical way, 11-year-old White girl Mo fills the notebook with frank letters to her grandmother, hoping for signs that she is being heard. But in the rest of her life, she withholds critical feelings and information, even avoiding telling Crystal Wang, her Chinese American best friend, the truth. The chance discovery of a homemade cookbook leads to a brilliant recipe project with her own website (recipes are also shared throughout the book). Her caring caseworker and her therapist help Mo deal with changes, especially as her uneasy relationship with her foster parents leads to a devastating surprise. Fortunately, Crystal remains a stalwart, loving ally, and Mo develops special relationships with a variety of supportive new friends. Mo is confused, feisty, frightened, sometimes self-destructive, intensely needy, and loving--and she has a bigger heart and is stronger than she thinks. Readers will laugh, cry, and embrace Mo completely as they rejoice at the wonderful twist that leads to a happy new beginning for her. The New York City setting is well integrated into the story. Deeply moving and tender. (Fiction. 9-12)
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January 1, 2023
After the death of Nan, the grandmother who had been her guardian, eleven-year-old Mo begins a series of letters to Nan in a notebook. She relates the difficulties of her next steps: an uncle is unwilling to care for her; a foster parent gives her up, overwhelmed in part by challenges including her stress-induced bed-wetting; another placement that looks like it might work out has its own obstacles. A family cookbook (stolen but later returned) makes Mo wish she had meaningful recipes of her own, and the cooking project the book inspires grows into a food website. She uses that platform to solicit other people's recipes -- and to put the word out that she's in search of blood relatives. Mo, imperfections and all, is a winning heroine surrounded by flawed though mostly well-meaning adults, and her hopes, even those that are long shots, come from an understandable desperation for family and stability, which makes it easy to root for her. Secondary characters are fully realized, with personalities coming through in the interspersed recipes' directions and commentary. To be read with snacks at hand, and perhaps also some tissues.
(Copyright 2023 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)