Silver Meadows Summer by Emma Otheguy

Abstract

Reviewed by: Silver Meadows Summer by Emma Otheguy Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Otheguy, Emma Silver Meadows Summer. Knopf, 2019 [240p] Library ed. ISBN 978-1-5247-7324-3 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-5247-7323-6 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-5247-7326-7 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-6 After her father loses his job, Carolina and her family leave their home in Puerto Rico to live with her aunt and uncle in upstate New York. Carolina’s finding the adjustment difficult, and her mother isn’t making things any better, insisting that Carolina quit drawing and painting and act more like her thirteen-year-old cousin Gabriela. Gabriela and her friends are the cool girls at the camp she and Carolina attend, but Carolina gravitates toward Jennifer, the eccentric but far more interesting girl who shares Carolina’s love of art. When Carolina and Jennifer find an abandoned cottage in the forest, they make it their own with decorations and knick-knacks, but their quiet refuge is threatened when a development company seeks to buy up the camp and its surrounding land. There is boundless kid appeal in finding and creating a place that is wholly adult free, and Otheguy’s descriptions of the hidden one-room cottage give the place a peaceful, almost otherworldly feel. The inevitable tension that comes with both a geographical and cultural move plays out not only Carolina’s experiences but in the adults’ as well, as Carolina’s mom eschews traditions from their old home to make way for new ones. While Gabriela’s friends are mostly one note, Gabriela herself is not, and the book thoughtfully addresses her need to fit in with her white friends and her nostalgia for her childhood visits to Puerto Rico. With comforting warmth and gentle realism, this is a hopeful exploration of what home means and what it is to make a new one. [End Page 306] Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois