So B. It by Sarah Weeks

It's hard not to love a book whose main character keeps a Webster's Dictionary on the coffee table and refers to it as M.B.F. (man's best friend).

This story ought to tug your heartstrings. Heidi is the 12 yr. old child of a brain-damaged mother, both of whom are cared for by their compassionate neighbor, Bernadette. Heidi is homeschooled: a necessity when your caregiver has agoraphobia and can't leave the apartment. Other than playing with a neighbor boy from time to time, this is the extent of Heidi's world and knowledge of her history until she finds clues in a camera she discovers in a cupboard. Her desire to uncover her past cannot be satiated after this. And she begins a journey to solve the mystery of who she is.

This book centers around unconventional characters who have run up against some of the harder parts of life: mental illness, lack of good fathers, a mother with a "bum brain," and death. Yet these harder aspects of their lives are introduced softly and deep lessons are taught about the power of truth and the power of love.

Above all, in the end, it is a pro-life book, and the characters in it who honor life as it is, (not necessarily as we wish it to be) are the ones rewarded with the richness of relationships. Is this not how God often works in real life?

TEACHING MOMENT: There is a reference to the word psychic once in reference to a gift the girl has. Ever after, it is referred to as her extraordinary luck. She can guess with uncanny accuracy things like what card someone is holding, and she plays the slot machines in Reno when money is truly needed. This is not presented in an occultish way, more like a odd quirk. It's also attached to a moral lesson as is her experience with lying. Still, my daughter and I used it to discuss ESP and the contrast with the occult and what it means to call it a "gift." We also discussed our own moral lesson and what the author presented as a moral lesson.

Rating: 2 Vatican Flags