Richie’s Picks: TREE. TABLE. BOOK. by Lois Lowry, HarperCollins/Clarion, April 2024, 208p., ISBN: 978-0-06-329950-4

“According to recent data, in the United States, the percentage of adults diagnosed with dementia significantly rises with age, ranging from 1.7% for individuals between 65 and 74 years old to 13.1% for those aged 85 and older.”

– Center for Disease Control, National Health Statistics Reports

“Oh well, she used to have a carefree mind of her own

And a delicate look in her eye

These days I'm afraid she's not even sure

If her name is Veronica”

– Elvis Costello (1989)

Back when young New Hampshire resident Sophie Henry Winslow was nine, she was struggling with the recent additions of braces on her teeth and plaid plastic framed glasses on her face. This, in addition to being mocked by her peers for having recently advocated publicly for more nutritious cafeteria meals. 

One Saturday morning, having just had a dust-up with her close friend Ralphie over a board game they were struggling to invent, and thanks to a communications mix-up with her parents, things hit rock bottom: 

“And by the time I got home, both of my parents–each of them thinking I was with the other–were gone and the front door was locked, and I went around and tried the back door and it was locked too. I could have gone back to Ralphie’s house, of course. But we had not parted amicably. Actually, to be honest, I had said as I left, ‘Why don’t you just throw the whole game away, Ralphie, because nobody’s going to want to play it if it’s just a copy of every game they’ve already played a thousand times!’ And he sort of slammed the door behind me.

And on top of that my teeth ached because the orthodontist had tightened my braces the day before and my glasses still had hideous plaid frames, and clearly no one liked me, not Ralphie and not even my parents, and so I did what any mature and intelligent person would do: I sat down on the back steps of my house and burst into tears.

Next thing I knew, the old lady next door–who had lived there all my life but although I knew her name I had never paid her the slightest bit of attention–noticed me from her porch, and came scurrying across her backyard, opened the gate in the fence, and stood looking briefly at me, then sat down beside me on the step, opened up her arms, and said, ‘My darling girl, my darling girl.’ And I sank right in against her (rather large) chest, knocking my ugly glasses sideways, and I sobbed that I had no home anymore because my parents had abandoned me, and she didn’t laugh. She took a crumpled tissue out of the pocket of her apron and wiped the snot off my upper lip, and she just listened, rocking me back and forth, saying, ‘I know, I know just how it feels.’ She took me to her house, to her kitchen, and gave us each a glass of kiwi strawberry water. Then she told me a really dumb joke about a horse who goes into a bar and the bartender says Why the long face? and my own long face gradually disappeared into a giggling face and before the day was over she was my very best friend and has remained so ever since.”

Sophie’s new best friend, who is seventy-seven years older than she, is also named Sophie–Sophie Gershowitz.

Two years after that initial connection, having grown their friendship and developed fun rituals together, Sophie overhears a terribly upsetting adult conversation. Sophie Gershowitz’s accountant son is traveling from his home in Akron, Ohio to see his mom, have her undergo a test because of her increasing short-term memory issues, and anticipates taking her back to Ohio to be institutionalized.

Ralphie’s dad is a physician, and Sophie is a bright kid who is familiar with Ralphie’s dad’s Merck medical reference manual. She borrows it in hopes of preparing Sophie (the Elder) for the cognitive test in order to derail the loss of her best friend.

In the process of young Sophie telling the story–which includes jaw-dropping tidbits of Sophie-the-Elder’s life story–two-time Newbery medalist Lois Lowry has her young narrator adding insightful asides about the components of successful storytelling. (“I just put together all the ingredients as if I were making spaghetti sauce.”)

This is one time that less is more. Trust me. You need this one. Written by one of our children’s literature greats, perfect for third-through eighth-graders, and timely, with the onslaught of Boomers hitting our seventies and eighties, it's a read-it-in-one-sitting kind of tale, and one of the most notable and memorable children’s books of 2024. 

Richie Partington, MLIS

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