Dreamer Wisher Liar by Charise Mericle Harper (review)

It was bad enough when Ashley discovered that her best friend, Lucy, is moving away at the end of summer. Now Ashley can’t even spend these last few months with her pal at camp because she’s expected to play babysitter to seven-year-old Claire, the daughter of Ashley’s mother’s childhood best friend. While hiding out from her charge in the basement, Ashley finds an old jar labeled “Wishes” and is transported back in time to witness the formation and ultimate dissolution of a friendship between two girls. Meanwhile, cheerful Claire and her list of things to do force the normally reserved Ashley to interact with people she’d usually shy away from and to discover the connections between the wishing jar and her own life. What at first appear to be very disparate plot elements (the wishing jar, a visit to a nursing home, a chance meeting with an author) coalesce into a pleasing mystery à la Rebecca Stead, and the clues are scaffolded in a way that will allow young readers to triumphantly put the pieces together just before they’re revealed. Ash’s narration is poignantly direct at times (“Nighttime is the worst for sadness”), and her actions can be both well intentioned and ill advised, making her an eminently relatable protagonist, a slightly older version of Julie Sternberg’s Eleanor (Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie, BCCB 3/11, etc.). Middle-grade girls will particularly warm to Ashley’s story and find themselves wishing for a similarly magical summer.