A Hole in My Heart

Gr 6 Up—Twelve-year-old Nora is growing up in 1959 Canada. After the death of her mother and a move to a new city, she is grieving and lonely. It doesn't help matters that her cousin Lizzie is in need of a risky operation to fix a hole in her heart, and the outcome is uncertain. In spite of her sullenness, however, Nora eventually finds a baby-sitting job, gets involved in the school play, and helps out a classmate whose father does "dirty" or "bad" things to her, and uses her mother as a "punching bag." When Lizzie and her family come to stay so that Lizzie can have her surgery at the local hospital, the crisis helps to draw them all together and heal wounds physical and metaphorical. Nora eventually tells an adult about her friend's abusive father and the girl is taken out of the harmful environment. The interesting setting might help readers look past Nora's initial prickliness and root for her as she finds her place in a new home, though some of the darker subplots may prove troubling for some.—Laurie Slagenwhite Walters, Brighton District Library, Brighton, MI