Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry

Starred review from October 17, 2016
Buried truths about Mississippi’s segregated past bubble to the surface in this evocative novel featuring a tenacious biracial 12-year-old who wants to know more about her African-American grandmother’s history. Times have been difficult for Dani’s family since her Grandma Beans, a renowned historian, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. To make matters worse, Grandma’s feud with an award-winning author, Avadelle Richardson, has received new publicity. Nobody knows what started the rift, but it’s hurting Dani’s friendship with Richardson’s grandson, Mac, who has been told he can no longer speak to Dani. Determined to get to the bottom of things, Dani dives into researching the two women, following a string of clues from their writings and uncovering much more than she bargained for. Interspersing segments of a fictitious novel about the 1962 riot at Ole Miss into the story, Vaught (Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy) brings history to life as she connects the past with the present, showing how acts of violence, betrayal, and courage both color and blend the histories of two families. Ages 10–14. Agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary.

Starred review from June 15, 2016
The rift between black scholar Ruth Beans and renowned white novelist Avadelle Richardson is ancient history in Oxford, Mississippi, but its cause is unknown until Ruth--now frail, living with her son, his white wife, and their child, Dani--asks her granddaughter to retrieve an envelope and key.With the key, Dani finds Ruth's partial civil rights timeline and an unfinished letter. But Alzheimer's disease claimed Ruth's memory before she could reveal her secrets, ones she's authorized Dani to share, leaving a tantalizing mystery. Dani's parents are already stressed out, her dad an Army veteran of three wars with high blood pressure and her mom working two jobs to support the family, so Dani confides in her best friend, Indri, also biracial. Classmate Mac's family (he's Avadelle's grandson) insisted he end his friendship with Dani, but he, too, is drawn into the search. Answers are rooted in the Civil War, Jim Crow, and the long, incomplete struggle for civil rights--especially the 1961 desegregation of the University of Mississippi, when thousands of U.S. Army troops defended the right of a black man to enroll, later depicted through the eyes of an African-American woman in Avadelle's acclaimed first novel. The novel barely addresses Dani's biracial experience, but that omission excepted, it ventures successfully into territory seldom explored by white authors, pondering who is entitled to tell a story and exposing slavery's toxic legacy: racism, its persistent half-life our cultural nuclear waste. A provocative, sensitive, and oh-so-timely read. (author's note) (Fiction. 10-14)

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2016

Gr 5-8-Dani Bean is a middle school girl with typical middle school interests. Her focus is on friends, the impending summer break, and the boy who may like her. But lately the most important thing on her mind has been her grandmother, who has Alzheimer's disease and seems to be disappearing before Dani's eyes. It is difficult to watch her vibrant, intelligent grandmother fade, and her family is under immense stress caring for her. However, they are bonded together to make sure her grandmother's last moments are loving and peaceful. It is the need for her grandmother to be at peace that begins Dani's quest to solve a historical mystery that took place during the integration of Mississippi University. As Dani slowly links together clues, she uncovers the fear, violence, and anger that her grandmother knew as a black woman during the racial unrest at the beginning of the civil rights movement. Dani's story is interspersed with excerpts from a book written by her grandmother's former best friend. The novel based on her grandmother's life and struggle is the reason the women have not spoken in years. As Dani learns about her family history and the truth is uncovered, she begins to understand that Mississippi is still grappling with racial discrimination, memories of brutality, violence, and echoes of battles fought. Readers will be drawn to the parallel stories and will relate to Dani and her search for answers. Some background knowledge about the civil rights movement will help young readers understand the full historical context. VERDICT A strong addition to school collections and curricula, especially when paired with nonfiction titles about the civil rights era.-Patricia Feriano, Montgomery County Public Schools, MD

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2016
Grades 5-8 *Starred Review* Dani's grandmother is slowly dying while losing her memories to Alzheimer's, but in a moment of distress and near clarity, she tells her granddaughter to find an envelope she has left for her. After reading the cryptic letter, Dani sets out to solve a mystery. Answers lie in the past, when Grandma and her now-estranged friend Avadelle were young women active in the civil rights struggle in Mississippi. Each became a writer, but a disagreement became a feud that neither would discuss. Complex, layered in time, and occasionally confusing, the narrative includes Grandma's letters as well as excerpts from Avadelle's Pulitzer-winning novel, with a climactic scene set during the 1962 segregationist riot on the Ole Miss campus. The eye-opening 1960s segments offer a new perspective to kids today, whose knowledge of the Jim Crow era and civil rights movement is often sanitized and perfunctory. Light dawns for Dani when she begins to see the history of her Oxford, Mississippi, community more vividly and understand her parents' concerns for her as a biracial girl in the South today. Combining middle-school mystery and civil rights history with reflections on dying, friendship, and the ethics of writing another's story from a racially different perspective, this novel is ambitious, thought provoking, and very readable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)