The Summer I Saved the World … in 65 Days by Michele Weber Hurwitz (review)

“Two things I am not: a genius, and the kind of person who goes out of her way to help other people.” So confesses fourteen-year-old Nina, who decides to change her usual pattern and perform secret acts of kindness, one for each remaining day of the summer, for the residents of her cul-de-sac. Nina’s kindnesses alarm a few people initially, but her small gestures (leaving baked goods, getting kids’ lost balls out of the scary backyard, planting flowers) charm most of her neighbors and provide them with a point of connection. As the summer progresses, it becomes clear that it’s Nina who really longs for connection: her attorney parents are buried in a big legal case; she desperately misses her grandmother, who died the previous year; her best friend, Jorie, is determinedly leaping towards boys (especially Eli, the boy that Nina likes) and leaving Nina behind. The transition of adolescence is a common theme in realistic fiction, but Hurwitz is, like Frances O’Roarke Dowell, an author who can explore a familiar experience in ways that give it fresh energy and unusual nuance; her writing is impressively perceptive even as it’s engaging and accessible. The notion that somebody like Nina—and by extension, readers—has the power to become an agent of change, despite her limited authority and without ever leaving her home, is a striking and empowering one, and the book tackles its implications thoughtfully and unsentimentally. Readers, themselves often noticers, will appreciate the celebration of a girl whose skill lies in seeing what others don’t.