SKETCHES FROM A SPY TREE

Readers are never told why Dad—cut from a photo “with five quick snips / crumple his face / like an empty gum wrapper, / which is just what he deserves”—left his family two years before, but his departure seems to spur 11-year-old Anne Marie’s sometimes-angry musings. These are balanced by twists on being a twin, devotions to her much-loved mother, and descriptions of the everyday: laundry lines, quirky neighbors, a majestic maple tree. This is a scrapbook/sketchbook of the world according to Anne Marie, and of her struggle to make some sense of changes in her family and in herself, concluding with a hard-won acceptance of a new dad and a new baby sister. Glass’s multimedia illustrations, which are executed in paint, photo- and cut-paper collage and pencil, are as varied as Anne Marie’s subjects and her very natural emotions. Of special interest to readers who may themselves be facing a shift in family structure. (Poetry. 8-11)