WELCOME HOME OR SOMEPLACE LIKE IT

Salt spray gently infuses this tale of one girl’s discovery of home. “Me, I don’t plan much,” says 13-year-old Aggie, aspiring artist. “I’m just along for the ride.” But the ride stops in Ludwig, Maine (pop. 159), when her romance-writer mother leaves Aggie and her older brother Thorne with the 91-year-old grandfather they’ve never met and hares off to Niagara Falls to research a book. While Thorne copes by locking himself in his room, Aggie finds herself tentatively embracing her new setting, as she makes friends with budding botanist Mad, learns to row, tends a flock of chickens, and develops a taste for Moxie. Agell peoples her story with quietly quirky characters allowed the freedom to develop, but who never get out of control, from Grandpa, who takes telephone calls on his foot, to the Harley-riding Reverend Evelyn. She creates in Aggie a wry observer whose narration is punctuated by the Zen sayings of her totem, a clay Chinese fisherman named Old Henry, and augmented by her sketches to make an altogether fresh and pleasing package. (Fiction. 10-13)