Here’s a “children’s” book with a light, bouncy tone stirred with flavors of friendship, insight, and growth. (You know by now that I believe good children’s books are written for all ages.)
The Sugar Mountain Snow Ball, by Elizabeth Atkinson, brings a small dose of the mystical (or magic) into the quotidian lives of 13-year-old Ruby LaRue and her best friend Eleanor Bandaranaike—taking the rough threads of everyday life and spinning them into a silken yarn of self-discovery and wish fulfillment. Here’s a summary:
When Ruby and Eleanor come across a mysterious fortune teller who tells them how to make their big dreams come true, they take inspired, bold action. But things take an unexpected turn, and the girls learn that people—and dreams—aren’t always who, or what, they seem to be.
I had a great time with this book. Set in Paris, New Hampshire, a tourist trap town adjacent to Sugar Mountain ski resort, it took me back to the year I lived in North Conway, New Hampshire—also in the White Mountains—a tourist haven bursting with name brand outlet stores. There’s nothing like reading a book set somewhere you can recognize and love.
Pudge, discovering one of the shells in the Dream Keeper’s Cavern
Ruby reminds me of my character Pudge, from Piper Pan and Her Merry Band, whose natural inclination (when not under duress) is bold optimism. Ruby has no idea that every snack being a Monster Chocolate Chip cookie and living in barely reigned-in chaos is not “normal.”
Ruby’s great desire is to be an “Outer.”
“In case you don’t know, Outers are very rich, very happy, very beautiful people from some faraway place, who fill Paris in the winter months like the delicious cream in the middle of an éclair. Always perfectly dressed and perfectly smiling, Outers are the happiest, coolest people in Earth. And these perfect people choose to ski and snowboard at Sugar Mountain.”
We’ve all experienced some version of this dream, wanting to belong to a cooler, more elite, more prestigious or “lucky” set. The stark division between locals and “Outers” in this book echoed another personal experience: the division in college towns between students and “townies.” I grew up as a “townie,” and later attended a faraway private college where I found myself among the “elite (tolerated but also resented) outsiders.”
Creating this kind of resonance for a reader is, of course, a writer’s dream. Atkinson has woven varied and lovable characters into a plot with surprising twists and satisfying resolutions.
As ever, wishing you Happy Reading!
Leave a comment about a book you’ve read that had resonance for you. What made it memorable?