It’s the summer of 1983 on Trowbridge Road, and June Bug Jordan is hungry. Months after her father’s death from complications from AIDS, her mother has stopped cooking and refuses to leave the house, instead locking herself away to scour at the germs she believes are everywhere. June Bug threatens this precarious existence by going out into the neighborhood, gradually befriending Ziggy, an imaginative boy who is living with his Nana Jean after experiencing troubles of his own.
But as June Bug’s connection to the world grows stronger, her mother’s grows more distant — even dangerous — pushing June Bug to choose between truth and healing and the only home she has ever known. Set in the Boston suburbs during the first years of the AIDS epidemic, this National Book Award Longlist winner explores, with deep insight and subtle lyricism, the life of a girl and her family touched by mental illness and grief, and our power to rescue one another even when our hearts are broken.
"Though June is at first envious of the way Nana Jean lavishes affection on Ziggy, a bullied boy with an impressive vocabulary, she soon befriends her fellow outcast and the two escape to 'the ninth dimension... a place you can go only if you are magical.' Though both children have been abandoned by parents in different ways, each has a loving adult to turn to at least some of the time, with Nana Jean taking in Ziggy and June’s uncle Toby wanting desperately to help his brother’s family. Heartbreaking and sometimes emotionally difficult, this novel will appeal to young teens looking for something serious to dig into." — Publishers Weekly
Recommended Age | 10 - 13 |
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Author | Marcella Pixley |
ISBN | 1536207500 |
Publication Date | Oct 6, 2020 |
Publisher | Candlewick |
Language | English |