New Novel for Younger Readers Explores Interracial Marriage and Anti-Semitism ● In 1967, twelve-year-old Ariel Goldberg’s life is full of turmoil like the world around her. The release of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album may be a highlight but protests, hippies, and war fill the news. Personally, her life is inundated with massive changes she doesn’t know how to fix. In How to Find What You’re Not Looking For, inspired by her own family story, Newbery Honor winner Veera Hiranandani paints a complex picture of a pre-teen girl navigating her life as it falls apart one issue at a time.
Ariel adores her eighteen-year-old sister Leah and leans on her as she grows up in one of the few Jewish families in a town in Connecticut. She also helps after school in the family’s Jewish bakery and is pressed to believe that the bakery will be her future. But the world is changing, and so is Ariel’s life. [Read the full review here]
When Loose Ends Meet 