Newbery winner, Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool, a historical fiction middle grade novel, the story is told by twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker. It starts in May 1936 in Southeast Kansas, but Vanderpool masterfully flips the story back to 1918.
It’s the heart of the Depression, and for many years Abilene and her Dad have been traveling the rails, looking for work and living in shantytowns. But after an accident, Abilene is left in the only town in which her Dad has long ago connections, Manifest, Kansas.
Abilene stays with her Dad's old friend Shady, who runs a bar that is also a church. She arrives the last day of school and finds that the nun has given her an assignment for the summer. She doesn’t care so much, because she is convinced her daddy will come back for her before the fall. Or is she? A small part of her knows he is gone for good.
During a late night cemetery outing with her new two girlfriends, Abilene looses her most prized possession, a compass from her father. Later she spots the compass hanging on the porch of Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor. She breaks a valuable pot trying to retrieve the compass and is forced to work it off at Miss Sadie’s.
Abilene is street smart and not put off by the odd Miss Sadie. In fact, she finds herself longing for the stories of the past that Miss Sadie seems to know exactly when to tell. Between old newspaper articles and Miss Sadie’s stories about 1918, Abilene and her girlfriends learn about the town her father spoke so fondly of. But why can't she find any mention of her dad?
At Shady’s, Abilene discovers an old cigar box with strange objects that one by one come into the stories she hears at Sadie’s. The chapters swing back and forth between 1918 and 1936. I found myself waiting to hear the stories of 1918 just like Abilene did. I came to love this character and both the old and the new town, and was saddened by the eventual demise of the former. But I was also cheering in the end when the town of Manifest in1936 devised a plan to make Abilene’s wish come true.
This is a worthy Newbery. Clare Vanderpool has written an enjoyable, surprising and satisfying novel. A must read!
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