Tree. Table. Book. by Lois Lowry
ISBN: 006329950X
Genres: Realistic Fiction
Format: Chapter Book Fiction
Source: MSL Book Review
Goodreads

What a lovely story! Eleven-year-old Sophia Henry Winslow is good at telling stories but learns that you have to put in feelings to make a really good story. This story is about friendship. It’s about sadness. It’s about dementia. It’s about the heartbreaking memories of a young Jewish girl in Poland during WW II. It’s about fixing those people in this world who don’t understand and accept people who are different. All this packed in a less than a 200-page book told in a child’s voice and perspective. Lowry is masterful in the telling. She is able to put herself beautifully into the characters of both 11-year old Sophie and her 88-year old neighbor Sophie Gershowitz and their very special friendship. There were many quotes that spoke to me, but this one was my favorite:

“I had told Sophie Gershowitz that I always got the dates right, on history tests, always got As. That was true. But I had never really got it, never understood history, how things fit together, because I needed someone to tell me the stories not of politics and dictators, but of berries and bunnies and books. Of how things are lost, and what that means and how it hurts.”

Cream of the Crop nominee

Barb Rehmeyer, Liberty Library