Alabama Moon, written by Watt Key
When all you've known in your ten years of life is living off the land with your dad, almost completely isolated from others, your dad's death is even more life-changing than usual. Determined to follow his dad's instruction to move from Alabama to Alaska, Moon soon discovers how little he knows about the way the world works, how important it is to know trustworthy people, and that things aren't always as entirely bad or as good as we think. I enjoyed this story and didn't realize until after I finished the book that a movie's been made from it.
*****
Echo, written by Pam Munoz Ryan and narrated by Mark Bramhall, David de Vries, Macleod Andrews, and Rebecca Soler, with music by Corky Siegel
I read this book four years ago and loved it, but recently had someone recommend the audiobook because of the harmonica music it includes. I checked it out from the library and listened to it with Naomi and Tyler. They liked it as much as I did. The following is what I said back in 2016.
The mysterious, magical discovery of a harmonica that comes with a prophecy and finds its way into the lives of multiple people across many years and miles. A Jewish boy in Germany as Hitler was coming to power, an orphaned boy in Pennsylvania trying to get himself and his brother out of a cruel orphanage while making his brother's safety his top priority, and a Mexican girl whose family is facing racism in California as they work to make better lives for themselves. I love stories where some seemingly small thing ends up connecting people whose lives would otherwise have no overlap. I also love stories of people who don't give up when the odds are stacked against them. This book met both of those criteria.
The mysterious, magical discovery of a harmonica that comes with a prophecy and finds its way into the lives of multiple people across many years and miles. A Jewish boy in Germany as Hitler was coming to power, an orphaned boy in Pennsylvania trying to get himself and his brother out of a cruel orphanage while making his brother's safety his top priority, and a Mexican girl whose family is facing racism in California as they work to make better lives for themselves. I love stories where some seemingly small thing ends up connecting people whose lives would otherwise have no overlap. I also love stories of people who don't give up when the odds are stacked against them. This book met both of those criteria.
*****
Lost Boy Found, written by Kirsten Alexander
A young boy vanishes from his family's vacation property in the early 1900s, launching a two year search to find him. This is a novel about commitment and betrayal, wealth and poverty, crime and integrity, and what a person will do to get what they want. Although I don't mind reading books that aren't super happy and addresses issues that are complicated, the degree of selfishness in this one left me feeling heavy and disappointed as I finished the last chapter.
*****
Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope, written by Dan & Susie Van Ryn and Newell, Colleen, and Whitney Cerak, with Mark Tabb
This is a fascinating story of two families impacted by a crash in 2006 that involved a Taylor University van. Of the nine students and staff members injured or killed, two were identified incorrectly. The radical error resulted in one family having a funeral for their daughter/sister, a young woman who was actually alive, and another family spending five weeks at the bedside of someone they believed to be their daughter/sister, even though the person they thought they were with was actually dead. The book was written jointly by the two families.
*****
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