Someone Else's Shoes by Ellen Wittlinger (review)

"Izzy knew that life could be hard, and sometimes you were going to get hurt. A person needed to toughen up to be able to stand it." That's the lesson twelve-year-old Izzy learned when her parents divorced, and now she's trying to teach it to her younger cousin Oliver, who along with his father is staying at Izzy's house since his mother's suicide. Things become a little much even for Izzy when she finds out her father's new wife is having a baby, and her mother's boyfriend's son, sixteen-year-old Ben Gustino (famed in school legend for his dangerous ways) will be staying with them as well. It's to Ben that Oliver increasingly turns, however, and when Oliver's father takes off, it's Ben who captains the journey of the three kids to find him. Wittlinger captures with uncanny perception the stratifications of family existence, with the important rules of kid society absent from adult understanding, so that the near-peer influence of Izzy and Ben looms larger to Oliver than adult reassurance. The portrait of Izzy is accessible yet magnificent—she's a headstrong toe-stepper who isn't quite mature enough to put her money where her mouth is, and her work toward her dream of being a comedian gives her a thoughtful dimension. (Her response to her distant father about the pregnancy—"Congratulations. I hope you like the new kid better"—is a solid, gratifying, characteristic burn.) Her gradual rapprochement with Ben, who is very similar to her, is credible and at times genuinely heartwarming, resulting in a hard-won de facto family that readers will appreciate.