LOVE ME TENDER

Matriarchal relationships form the focus of this predictable but big-hearted story by the author of the Newbery Honor award-winning Getting Near to Baby (1999). Thirteen-year-old Elvira’s family is all shook up when her father, a former Elvis impersonator, lights out for Las Vegas after a fight with her pregnant mother, Mel. Then a cryptic phone message leads Mel to take Elvira and her little sister on their own road trip, to check up on Mel’s estranged mother and sister. When the three generations of Steel Magnolias come together for the first time, much scrapping and secret-telling precede a hopeful truce. Meanwhile, Daddy proves he ain’t a hound dog by returning home and promising to retire his jeweled jumpsuit for good. The happy ending is never in doubt, but this is part of the novel’s charm. Couloumbis’s rich, realistic dialogue between mothers, daughters and sisters will induce both laughter and sniffles in middle-grade fans of Kimberly Willis Holt and Catherine Murdock. As sweetly sappy and touching as the song it’s named for. (Fiction. 10-14)