The Bookshop on the Shore

The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Single mother Zoe can barely make ends meet. She works hard at a daycare taking care of wealthy people's children but can't afford to send her own 4-year-old there. Her ex, Jaz, rarely helps out and is gone most of the time, trying to make it as a DJ. Her son, Hari, is mute, and no one can figure out why. The last straw comes when her landlord hikes the rent on her lousy, run-down apartment higher than she can afford. Relief comes in the form of a job offer from Scotland. Well, two, actually. Jaz has finally told his sister he has a son, and when Surinder discovers that Zoe loves to read, she connects Zoe with Nina, from The Bookshop on the Corner. Nina needs someone to run her book van while she's on maternity leave. That's job #1.

Job #2 is as a nanny on evenings and weekends for the 3 children of the local Laird, Ramsay. This job comes with room and board in the form of a tiny attic bedroom in a Scottish castle and toast. A lot of toast. The three children have gone through six nannies in the past few years, and they are not excited about a seventh. If Zoe weren't so broke and desperate, she'd be happy to leave, too, but Hari loves Scotland and latches immediately onto the youngest of the three kids, Patrick. Eventually, with no good options remaining, Zoe straightens her metaphorical spine and begins to make changes, discovering that the siblings and their neglectful father aren't so much feral as traumatized, and though the locals don't want to buy books until Nina returns and tells them what to choose, the tourists are delighted with all the Scottish and Loch Ness-related volumes Zoe can lay her hands on.

The second book in this series conveys a tone of palpable grief, struggle, and emotional heaviness that slowly begins to lift as the characters grow and learn from each other. There is a slow-burn romance between Zoe and Ramsay, but it's not the focus of the story. Much of the book deals with mental illnesses and the effects those illnesses have on the family members who love them. Though the story begins with a weighted-down feeling, it ends with hope and strong family bonds.

For readers' advisors: character and setting doorways. No violence or sexual content, though sex is implied or mentioned as having occurred in a couple of places. Some swearing is sprinkled throughout, plus a great deal in one scene with Ramsay's drunk and angry girlfriend. "Found family" is a strong theme.

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The Rabbit Listened

The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When birds knock Taylor’s magnificent building block creation down, Taylor’s animal friends come by one at a time to offer comfort, but it isn’t until Rabbit snuggles up and sits quietly that Taylor feels ready to process the grief, going through all the stages and techniques suggested by the previous animals. “Through it all, the rabbit never left. And when the time was right, the rabbit listened to Taylor’s plan to build again.”

I hope I can be someone’s rabbit. 

This is one of the loveliest books about coping with grief that I've ever seen. 

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I'm Sad

I'm Sad by Michael Ian Black
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a FANTASTIC book about sadness/grief. It's OK to feel sad, it won't last forever, and different things make different people/animals/potatoes feel better. There is some humor, too, although I don't quite want to "shelve" it as humor. But it did make my coworker laugh out loud, which is what brought the book to my attention in the first place!

The illustrations are outstanding--similar to Mo Willems in the way that a few lines and relatively simple drawings perfectly capture the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of these three friends.

My only quibble is that the wrong verb tense is used on one page, which is a pet peeve of mine. It should say, "If I WERE an astronaut, I would never be sad." Not "was." Copy editors should have caught this mistake. It's an "unreal conditional." Yes, I know I'm a big grammar nerd, but clarity and accuracy matters in language/communication!

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