What’s behind the “ nunya bidness door”? And is that a gun sticking out from Grandpop’s waistband? Reynolds’ middle-grade debut meanders like the best kind of summer vacation but never loses sense of its throughline. And he and Ernie will have to do chores, like picking peas and scooping dog poop.
Then, he breaks the model truck that’s one of the only things Grandma still has of his deceased uncle. Next, there’s no Internet, so the questions he keeps track of in his notebook (over 400 so far) will have to go un-Googled. Readers who worry about fitting in-wherever that may be-will relate to Alice's journey toward compromise and independence.Įleven-year-old Brooklynite Genie has “worry issues,” so when he and his older brother, Ernie, are sent to Virginia to spend a month with their estranged grandparents while their parents “try to figure it all out,” he goes into overdrive.įirst, he discovers that Grandpop is blind. Alice's insistence that she's "not that blind" rings true with both stubbornness and confusion as she avails herself of some tools while not needing others, in contrast to typically unambiguous portrayals. Disorientation encompasses not only place and attitude, but also the rarely explored ambivalence of being disabled on a spectrum. Most commendable is Vrabel's focus on compromise and culture shock.
Some subplots feel contrived, and some characters are stock-the kindly waitress who knows everyone's orders, the whittling old man, the bully who hides her own vulnerability-but their effect is cozy. Her research leads her, white cane and (decidedly nonservice) dog in tow, to make friends with the townsfolk and peace with her visual impairment and family upheaval. With trepidation and humor, Alice decides to "advocate for " and enter the Sinkville Success Stories essay contest. As if that weren't enough, her parents want her to attend the Addison School for the Blind. In Stinkville, she doesn't know anyone, her brother won't guide her, and her mother's depression worsens. Her best friend guided her through school, and her mother told her stories. In Seattle, everyone accepted 12-year-old Alice's albinism and blindness. When Alice and her family move to Sinkville, South Carolina, the town's nickname of Stinkville feels particularly apt.
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