A BEAUTIFUL PLACE ON YONGE STREET

Third in a series of books (The Tuesday Cafe, 1998, not reviewed, etc.) set in Canada, featuring 16-year-old Harper Winslow from a suburb of Edmonton. Harper is pleasantly surprised when his conventional mother says she’s sending him to a camp for young writers. The first person he meets at camp is Mickey Taylor, enthusiastic but goofy, whose twin sister, Sunny, and father are vacationing in a nearby cabin. From the first, Harper loves everything about Sunny, and their relationship continues after camp is over. The Taylors are everything Harper’s family is not: Mickey and Sunny are schooled at home, their mother is a freelance writer, and the atmosphere in their house is relaxed. The comedy in this tale comes from Harper’s attempts to conceal his lack of romantic experience from Sunny, culminating in a very funny scene in which she repeats his fabrications about mythical former girlfriends to the Winslows. Trembath’s refreshing tale wrings from a boy’s dating foibles some genuinely tender scenes; when it looks as if Sunny might go away for a year to attend art school, Harper lands with a bump and struggles with his feelings. His first-person narrative is natural-sounding and engaging, and readers will relish this story of first love from, for a change, a boy’s perspective. (Fiction. 12-16)