Just Under the Clouds

March 15, 2018
Life is not going well for Cora.Ever since her Irish-immigrant father died six years ago, the 12-year-old, her Mexican-American mom, and her younger sister, Adare, who was "born special" and speaks little, have been living in a series of temporary homes--and now they're in a grim Brooklyn shelter. Through it all Cora has persevered, getting her sister to and from school and charting (and climbing) the trees around where she's lived, keeping up her father's horticultural work. But she's struggling in math, bullied, friendless, and, after their shelter room is ransacked, homeless. After her mom's friend Willa takes them in, Cora begins to imagine a more stable life--but living with Willa would take away what little autonomy her mom still has. Cora makes friends with a classmate who lives on a houseboat, rootless but not homeless, and each uses this friendship as a path to a more satisfying life. Cora's first-person narrative voice occasionally strays away from age-appropriate but never enough to diminish her poignant--even desperate--situation, as she strives to provide what Adare needs while chasing her own limited dreams. Even after they move into a "placement," a gritty complex that's too dangerous--"somewhere you can't go after school on your own"--to be a home, challenges realistically persist.Troubling, affecting, and ultimately uplifting, from a promising debut novelist. (Fiction. 10-14)

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June 25, 2018
Sarno’s debut novel relays the heartbreaking yet hopeful story of a family searching for a place to belong. Alongside their mother, 12-year-old Cora and her younger sister, Adare, have lugged their meager possessions from one Brooklyn address to another since their father’s death. Now, living in a shelter, Cora muses, “We’re homeless. For real.” While her mother works long hours as a store clerk, Cora looks after keenly intuitive Adare, who was “born special” and constantly smiles but rarely speaks. Cora is a zealous tree climber and lover of all growing things; she treasures her Tree Book, in which her gardener father meticulously recorded his field notes, and she now documents the trees surrounding every place she lives. As Cora sees Brooklyn from a variety of perspectives (the trees she climbs, a shelter, a fancy high-rise) and her family looks for a place to stay, she considers the meanings of belonging and home. Sarno easily pulls readers into the tangled lives of her credible characters and their struggles to put down roots in this exploration of family and friendship, loss and resilience. Ages 8–12.

May 15, 2018
Grades 3-6 When Cora and her younger sister, Adare, find that someone broke in and vandalized their room at a shelter, their mother calls on a childhood friend, Willa, to help them out. Cora likes the stability and security Willa offers; her mother, on the other hand, is determined to stay only as long as necessary. Meanwhile, Cora struggles in school: her move to remedial math has given ammunition to the grade's resident mean girl, and she is sometimes frustrated by having to be responsible for Adare, who has a developmental disability. The bright spots in her life are tree climbing, her late father's tree book (a botanical journal), and new friend Sabina, a quirky collector of old letters, notes, and memos. Gradually, Cora begins to understand that a home is more than four walls and a door. Cora's first-person narrative highlights the instability of her life, and Sarno's descriptions of the world as Cora sees it?rich and evocative without being overdone?is particularly notable. A moving book about an all-too-common childhood experience, which is fairly uncommon in children's literature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)