BELIEVE

In this debut middle-grade novel, a girl whose mother has left her makes a life-changing new friend.

It’s nearly a year since Melanie Harper’s mother disappeared. With her father, Melanie moved from Grayson to Fairview, where, in 1980, she’s now in the fifth grade at Buckminster Experimental School. She doesn’t fit in with most other kids and is a target for mean girls like Karen Wagner, who’s always trying to get a look at Melanie’s secret journal. Melanie’s artist father is preoccupied with his work, and she’s often lonely. Things change when a new girl suddenly appears in Melanie’s life. She asks Melanie to call her Sabrina, after the character Sabrina Duncan on Charlie’s Angels. Sabrina is “just about the ideal friend,” and through her encouragement, Melanie gains more social confidence. She stands up to Karen and begins a tentative friendship with Leanne, a girl in the bully’s circle who admires her: “You are different, but you’re just like yourself, when everyone is trying not to be.” Melanie even wins the role of Peter Pan in the school play, hoping that her mother—to whom she’s been sending coded postcards—will attend. When Karen gets hold of the secret journal, things fall apart, bringing Melanie to important new realizations. In her novel, Mathison provides an appealing hero who’s thoughtful, perceptive, and richly imaginative, able to perceive what others don’t: “There’s a door in the world, right there for anyone to see...standing open the whole time and a lifetime of mystery beyond.” Melanie’s emotions are affecting and compassionately described but not histrionic. The secret of her mother’s disappearance—and Sabrina’s arrival—embodies a creative psychological response to sorrow that provides surprises, though some readers may guess them before the end.

A poignant coming-of-age tale with a compelling mystery at its center.