Sweeping Up the Heart by Kevin Henkes (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Sweeping Up the Heart by Kevin Henkes
Library ed. ISBN 978-0-06-285255-7 $17.89
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-285254-0 $16.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-285257-1 $9.99
Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-6
It’s 1999, and twelve-year-old Amelia Albright is sulking about spending spring break at home in Wisconsin, with her father absent as usual, when she’d hoped for a trip to Florida. She’s mollified when she meets an interesting boy, Casey, at the pottery studio where she hangs out, and she’s intrigued by Casey’s belief that Amelia’s mother, who died when Amelia was only two, is sending her signs. When Amelia spots a woman who looks a little like her mother around town and then near her house, she begins to believe the stranger may somehow be her mother, finally there to fill the hole in Amelia’s life. Of course the truth ends up being more complicated (the woman is actually Dad’s new girlfriend, who’s been wanting to meet Amelia), but along the way it elegantly reveals layers of need and yearning in both Amelia and Casey. Henkes writes in still pools with occasional ripples, a clarity of approach that gives his writing immediacy along with precision, as he follows Amelia’s processing of her awakened desire for love and connection. While the book falls into cliché in its use of a female character to explain and excuse Amelia’s father’s distant behavior, it’s really Amelia’s growing into her own feelings that’s important here. Readers will sympathize with her as she negotiates some complicated human dynamics and comes out with more understanding. [End Page 299]
