Book cover of Getting Near to Baby

Book description

A Southern charmer for fans of Newbery Honor book Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage


Audrey Couloumbis's masterful debut novel brings to mind Karen Hesse, Katherine Paterson, and Betsy Byars's The Summer of the Swans—it is a story you will never forget. 


Willa Jo and Little Sister are up on…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Getting Near to Baby as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This award-winning, middle grade novel begins with Willa Jo and her little sister refusing to come down off their Aunt Patty’s roof. Drawn to get as close to the sky as possible, they stay up, wrestling with the recent death of their sibling. I read this book shortly after my baby died, and it gets everything right about the confusion, the magical thinking, the incomprehensible behavior of those who don’t know grief, and especially, the inability to understand a world that has, in an instant, been so dramatically altered. 

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