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A review by becca_g_powell
Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
4.0
I thought this was a lovely children's book, and really good historical fiction. The characters were well developed and interesting.
Spoilers Below:
However, I had just read "Turtle in Paradise," and was a little surprised to see how similar the plots of the books are. This one is longer and more complicated, but seriously. In both books, young preteen girls live with a single parent during the Depression. Their parent works low paying and dead end jobs that require them to move around a lot together. Their parent takes a job that doesn't allow children, and the girls are sent to their parent's childhood home (here it's Kansas, in Turtle it was Key West.) The girls don't know anything about their parent's childhood, because they have been reticent to speak about it for some reason. They show up knowing nobody, and have an adventure of a summer making friends and discovering the towns and piecing together their parent's childhood. Both discover who their father is. Once all the pieces have been put together (why their parent left and doesn't want to talk about it, why the town is really so great, etc.) their parent returns, and has discovered that the town really is home and lives there happily ever after with the little girl.
Spoilers Below:
However, I had just read "Turtle in Paradise," and was a little surprised to see how similar the plots of the books are. This one is longer and more complicated, but seriously. In both books, young preteen girls live with a single parent during the Depression. Their parent works low paying and dead end jobs that require them to move around a lot together. Their parent takes a job that doesn't allow children, and the girls are sent to their parent's childhood home (here it's Kansas, in Turtle it was Key West.) The girls don't know anything about their parent's childhood, because they have been reticent to speak about it for some reason. They show up knowing nobody, and have an adventure of a summer making friends and discovering the towns and piecing together their parent's childhood. Both discover who their father is. Once all the pieces have been put together (why their parent left and doesn't want to talk about it, why the town is really so great, etc.) their parent returns, and has discovered that the town really is home and lives there happily ever after with the little girl.