365 Days to Alaska by Cathy Carr (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- 365 Days to Alaska by Cathy Carr
Carr, Cathy 365 Days to Alaska. Amulet/Abrams, 2021 [272p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781419743801 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781683358701 $15.29 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 4-6
Divorce destroys the life Rigel loves, as her mother takes the eleven-year-old and her two sisters away from the Alaskan bush that's been her home and moves them in with Rigel's grandmother in suburban Connecticut. A devastated Rigel counts on her father's promise—that in a year she can return to Alaska and live with him—as she negotiates the shock of Connecticut expectations and, especially, school social politics. Rigel is a sympathetic fish out of water, and the book is perceptively descriptive of her Alaskan life, the new changes that confuse her, and the difficulty of adjusting when it feels like it means losing part of your identity. Carr effectively enmeshes Rigel's feelings about Alaska with her longing for her increasingly unavailable father, and it may be clear to readers before it is to Rigel that her dad isn't the hero she believes him to be. This is a solid middle grades story with an unusual hook, and kids who have made their own adjustments will relate to Rigel.
