Sophie's Squash

Sophie loves her friend Bernice. They meet in the fall, play together, visit the library. But Bernice is aging. She becomes frail. It is clear that Bernice’s life is nearing its end. Sophie is sad. But time plays its healing role, and by spring Sophie is receptive to the comforting notion that nature is cyclical. What saves this from being saccharine is a single, brilliant narrative stroke: Bernice is a squash. Sophie, wielding a marker, gives her squash features and treats Bernice with fierce protectiveness. Bernice’s squashy nature gives Miller the opportunity for great, kid-accessible one-liners like “‘Well, we did hope she’d love vegetables,’ Sophie’s mother told her father.” It’s a good joke, fully supported by Wilsdorf’s disheveled, lumpy, personality-rich characters and rooted in kids’ loyalties to their stuffed animals and other endowed objects. The denouement, where the buried Bernice produces galloping foliage and, then, two tiny squash (“‘Wow!’ Sophie told them. ‘You look just like your mom!’”) is oddly moving. This is a fresh and buoyant take on the two picture book standards of grief narrative and doll story. sarah ellis