PIXIE PUSHES ON

A Midwestern farm girl deals with the upheaval of her mother’s death and her sister’s polio diagnosis.

Prudence, called Pixie by her older sister, Charlotte, and her grandfather, can’t believe she has to start fifth grade with Miss Meany-Beany for a teacher and without her sister’s protection. Last winter, after Mama died, the girls and their father moved to their grandparents’ farm. Then, in late summer, Charlotte contracted polio, just like President Roosevelt. Charlotte stays nearly a year at a hospital in far-off Indianapolis while Pixie learns to get along without her sister, making friends with a boy whose older brother is fighting in the war, coming to appreciate Miss Beany, and raising an orphan lamb. Pixie is a pleasant character, and her affection for her sister seems genuine, but the other emotional arcs in the story—Pixie’s blaming herself for her sister’s illness and most of Pixie’s interactions with her family and friends—feel somewhat forced and predictable. Keeping Charlotte offstage for nearly all the book makes her feel more like a plot device than a character—and why does Charlotte write letters to Pixie only when family members can hand-deliver them instead of putting them in the mail? Wartime details are sometimes missing or inaccurate. There’s no mention of gas rationing, for example, or how the war required farmers to grow more crops with fewer laborers and brought general prosperity to those who farmed.

Sentimental, somewhat soggy, not very real. (Historical fiction. 8-12)