I picked this book up with hopeful anticipation having already read and enjoyed another book by Elana K. Arnold.  I was not disappointed.

Living in an RV is the last thing 12-year-old Odette Zyskowski wants—in fact, it tops her list of “things that aren’t fair.” But her father took a “voluntary layoff” from work, and the family is selling its California house to care for Odette’s ailing grandmother in Washington State. The family sets off on an eventful road trip. Between cramped quarters, car trouble, her parents’ rocky marriage, and endless hours of driving, Odette is miserable, and everyone knows it. Arnold’s The Question of Miracles dealt equally well with topics of leaving home and losing a loved one, and she has a knack for sympathetically expressing Odette’s confusing emotions about those events, as well as feeling disconnected from her best friend and liking a boy she meets. Arnold’s descriptive prose and short, episodic chapters warmly relay the family’s struggles.

There is one reason, and one reason only, why I will not put this book in my school library. Ms. Arnold has written a number of books for young adults and is trying her hand at middle grade fiction.  Because this book asks 4th and 5th graders to wrestle with the question of doctor assisted suicide (of Odette’s grandmother, because it is legal in WA) I cannot in good conscience place it on my shelves. Children ages 10 & 11 should not have to picture their own grandmothers taking the pills that will kill them.