Nine-year-old Birdie loves Audrey Hepburn and favors extravagant, eye-catching outfits. Named after first ladies Jackie Onassis and Lady Bird Johnson (women their mother admired), they’re a tight twosome.

The novel tells the story of Birdie and Jack, a brother-and-sister pair who-after the death of their mother-move from Portland, Oregon, to the small town of Moser, California, where their uncles live. Nuanez explores themes similar to Connor’s in her self-assured debut, Birdie and Me. Her hope-filled narrative demonstrates the flexible nature of families and the restorative power of love. “Finding friends had been one of the surprises,” Lydia says of her new life. When Lydia shows the creations to her new friends, things take a turn for the better.Ĭonnor instills her novel with a rich sense of place, from the “candy-shop wonderful” feed store where Eileen works, to the small school Lydia attends. Through it all, Lydia takes comfort in the collages of resilient women she and her mother made together as a way of maintaining hope while she was dying. Following her mother’s death from heart disease, Lydia moves to a farm in small-town Connecticut with her aunt, Brat.īrat’s good-natured wife, Eileen, and their aging landlord, Elloroy, also live on the farm, and Lydia does her best to adapt to her surroundings, but matters become complicated when her new guardians take in a rescue mutt.

Thirteen-year-old Lydia rethinks her notions of family in Leslie Connor’s warm and winning A Home for Goddesses and Dogs. Families come in all shapes and sizes! Three beautifully executed middle grade novels explore all the ways families can be created through the stories of young people searching for a place in the world.

Birdie and Me by J.M.M. Nuanez