Publisher/Publication Date: Tricycle Press, August 2006
ISBN: 1582461805
Price: $14.95, hardcover
Core audience: ages 10-14
Strengths: solid emotions, imagery, difficult subject matter, verse form
Review: There is not a single word in this little book that doesn't need to be here. Rachel writes poems to cope with the departure of her mother and the process of getting to know her seemingly cold father ["the Rock"], who's all she has left.
Her notions about both her parents evolve through verse, and she comes to appreciate her father for his positive aspects of firmness and "always-there-ness", versus the stony inhospitable ones which were perceived by her mentally ill mother.
Simply beautiful.