The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose and Me by Sara Nickerson (review)

When her older brother lands a summer job picking blueberries at a nearby farm, twelve-year old Missy joins him, promising that they’ll stick together. She can’t understand his desire for trendier clothes or fixation on fitting in, though, and when he becomes sidetracked by the hijinks of the other teen pickers bent on uncovering a rumored hidden field (the source of a blood feud between neighboring farmers), the siblings’ relationship begins to crack. Simultaneously, her two best friends take a turn toward adolescence, leaving Missy afloat in uncertainty and digging in her heels against life’s transitions. As tensions between Missy and her brother, Missy and her friends, and Missy and her parents all come to a head, Nickerson’s prose offers real emotional insight. An admirable nonconformist struggling to navigate the limbo between childhood and adolescence—to accept change, to communicate, to see situations and people in shades of gray—Missy narrates in a voice both as authentic and insightful. Similarly, her sophisticated epiphanies regarding the work of blueberry picking and how it connects her to the larger world remain noble and thought-provoking: “Food was growing on a bush. I could reach out and touch it. I could touch it before anyone else and put it in my bucket. And what I put in my bucket would end up in a store for someone to buy and take home and cover with cream.” This accessible, enjoyable novel is well suited for those tweens who, like Missy, are balking at life’s crossroads.