Refreshing English writing about a village bookshop-owning family- the Maitlands, their financial troubles, and their artistic eleven-year-old daughter Bridget. In love with her world of small town, happy family and literary people, Bridget suddenly finds it disrupted by her father's need to sell a failing business. Her problems- being temporarily considered ""too young to understand"" by worried parents and her older twin brother and sister, the family's loss of a wonderful opportunity to buy an old house near the Welsh border, having to see her parents go off for a more lucrative year of teaching at a New Zealand University- are worked out during her stay with Aunt Jess in a nearby town and friendships with a very compatible Catherine, whose father has bought the Maitland bookstore, and Uncle Andrew, also an artist, who has come to stay with Aunt Jess while finishing a book on German mountains. A surprise ending gets the Maitlands together again and rewards them their Welsh house. The dialogue's marked English accents will make the appeal of this depend on how British one's tastes are but don't let the anglicisms ward off a good growing-up story.