Big & Little Questions (According to Wren Jo Byrd)

Starred review from January 16, 2017
Just after her parents reveal that they are getting divorced, nine-year-old Wren Jo Byrd is sent to spend the summer with her grandparents, avoiding messages from her best friend, Amber, and the painful changes back home. Returning for the new school year, Wren finds that Amber has an outspoken and confident new best friend, Marianna. With her friendship in shambles, Wren continues to keep her parents’ divorce to herself, but she soon discovers that secrets have a way of turning into lies. Bowe (the Friends for Keeps series) effectively conveys Wren’s fears and frustrations: “I’m don’t know why I’m the one who has to go away when none of this was my idea,” she confides to her cat, Shakespeare. Wren’s decision to hide her difficulties at home, even as it affects her life on many fronts, powerfully illustrates how deeply upsetting family changes can be. Bowe’s genuine portraits of the key relationships in Wren’s life—with her friends, parents, and even the often-difficult Marianna—make for a warm and rewarding story about dealing with change. Ages 7–9. Agent: Steven Chudney, Chudney Agency.

December 1, 2016
Wren's school year is off to a rocky start after a summer turned upside down by her parents' divorce. Nine-year-old Wren, who is white, as are her parents and most of her friends, doesn't know quite how to explain her summerlong silence to her best friend, Amber. The gap between them seems to widen when it appears that newcomer Marianna has supplanted Wren for Amber. A transplant to this small Wisconsin town from Seattle, Marianna has an enviable self-assurance and panache, along with an off-putting swagger. Meanwhile Wren is busy trying to hide her situation and make sense of her new schedule, with weekdays at Mom's and weekends at Dad's small cabin across the lake. She uses her phone's dictionary both to define and frame her questions about divorce and family changes. Bowe's first-person voice for Wren is quietly contemplative, frustrated, and confused by the disruption in her family but also determined to sort out how things will work. It's a realistic young voice nicely free from snarky irony, and it's focused on the arts of questioning and paying attention to the answers. Marianna has secrets of her own, and the growing bond between the girls is restorative for each of them as well as for Wren's friendship with Amber. Appealing as a story of school and friendship as well as family. (Fiction. 8-11)

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January 1, 2017

Gr 3-5-Wren Jo Byrd navigates the beginning of her fourth grade year and her parents' separation with mixed success. Bowe creates realistic tension with Wren's secretiveness and dishonesty toward her best friend, Amber; a new girl in town named Marianna; and shifting family dynamics. Wren learns that Marianna has secrets of her own, and as both characters' secrets are exposed, the girls and their relationship mature. The final resolution provides Wren (and readers) with the assurance that her parents love her and that life will go on. Bowe integrates the themes of divorce and friendship well and with an awareness of her audience. She gently conveys the intricacies and hardships of balancing time with both parents, routines and family mementos changing, and the experience of being rejected by a friend. The characters, while relatable, are relatively flat, making it hard to fully engage with them. VERDICT Bowe writes Wren's story with sensitivity, yet with the wealth of literature on divorce and friendship (Kevin Henkes's Bird Lake Moon, Kate DiCamillo's Flora and Ulysses, Nikki Grimes's Words with Wings), this is an additional purchase.-Hilary Writt, Sullivan University, Lexington, KY

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2017
Wren's reluctance to tell her classmates about her parents' divorce leads to lie after lie, and her deception complicates new and old friendships. Nine-year-old Wren's juvenile understanding and frequent questions, along with her parents' realistic and palatably mild imperfections, make this quiet, often funny story an accessible look at divorce for early-middle-grade readers. Simple black-and-white spot art introduces each chapter.

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)