If Only

Geithner, Carole  If Only      

Scholastic/Grolier/Children’s Press/Watts 2012 327p   $16.99      978-0-545-23499-3       ms/jr  VG-BN     Conflict   

In this moving novel, a young girl’s grief for her mother is examined in great detail.  Corinna is starting eighth grade having just lost her mother the previous summer, and she must deal with both her grief and her feeling strange around her friends, her teachers, and the other kids at school.  Because she is still hurting so badly, she feels cut off from the others at school and in the neighborhood, and is not sure how to reach out for the sympathy that she craves but has a hard time accepting.  Every aspect of her new life as a motherless teen is very sensitively portrayed, including her relationship with her father, who is also grief-stricken and often doesn’t know how to relate to her.  One of Corinna’s greatest fears is that she will lose the friendship of her pal Joci, who doesn’t seem to know how to deal with her grief and is always saying the wrong things.  Other feelings are her fear that her dad will die as well, her crush on Alex, a boy at school, her humiliation when mean boys make inappropriate jokes at her expense, and sympathy for another girl at school who is being targeted by bullies.  This character is very sensitively drawn, and by the end of the book readers will feel that they really know her.  This would be a good one to read and discuss in a bereavement group or to offer to students who have suffered a great loss.       

VG-BN Carol Kennedy     Grief, Bullying