NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Kirkus Reviews • CCBC • Reading Middle Grade★ "Delightful ... It's hard to write with such simple authenticity: The world needs more stories like this." —Kirkus Review, starred review
★ "Caroline Hickey portrays the full emotional cycle of deployment with accuracy and compassion. Immersive first-person chapters, which each open with a geography fact, accurately convey the comfort and the isolation that can accompany an intense special interest alongside Ginny’s broadening recognition of the needs of the people around her." —Publishers Weekly, starred reviewA heartfelt coming-of-age novel about trying to find one’s place in the world perfect for fans of Judy Blume, The Fourteenth Goldfish, and The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl. There are two things Ginny Pierce loves most in the world: geography facts and her father. But when her dad is deployed overseas and Ginny’s family must move to yet another town, not even her facts can keep her afloat. The geography camp she’s been anxiously awaiting gets canceled, and her new neighbors prefer her basketball-star sister. Worst of all, her dad is in a war zone and impossible to get ahold of. Ginny decides that running her own camp for the kids on her street will solve all her problems. But can she convince them (and herself) that there's more to her than just facts?
With a fierce heart and steadfast determination, Ginny tackles the challenges and rewards of staying true to herself during a season of growth. This thoughtful novel explores the strength that develops through adversity; Ginny must learn to trust her inner compass as she navigates the world around her.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
On the last day of fifth grade, super-smart eleven-year-old Ginny learns that her father, who is a military ER doctor, is being deployed to Afghanistan--devastating news because they are already moving to another post in Maryland and Ginny depends on her father to help her manage her obsessions, panic attacks, and general meltdowns. One of her obsessions is geographical facts, and somehow Ginny hopes to use her geographical knowledge to overcome her difficulties interacting with other children--including her twelve-and-a-half-year-old brother Patrick--and find what her father calls her "true north."
