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Never Grow Up by Karen Kingsbury and Tyler Russell is a warm family story for 8 year olds about wanting everything to stay exactly as it is.
Kari Baxter's teacher announces two things in one morning. A meteor shower is coming to their town in forty one days. There is also an essay to write called When I Grow Up.
Kari is thrilled about one and completely thrown by the other. She is not always sure what she wants for lunch, never mind what to do with the rest of her life.
She is a worrier as well. She wants to know whether flaming rocks coming into the atmosphere might destroy the whole town, and whether everyone should take cover. (Her teacher is very patient about this.)
The chapters swap between Kari and her younger sister Ashley, so you get both of them. Ashley's idea of a normal Tuesday is spinning round the playground until she falls over, because she is being a leaf dancing up to the clouds.
Her friend Natalie warns her she is going to be sick. Natalie is right. Ashley sits on the ground with green cheeks and laughs about it.
If you have got a child who narrates their own life like that, Ashley will feel very familiar.
The nice thing is that nothing awful is going on. There are five Baxter children, a new house, a flat rock by the stream where they all sit and talk, and one big thing to count down to.
The worries are small and very real. Kari has not told her swimming friends that she might rather dance, in case it changes how they feel about her. She puts that in her journal instead, which is where the things she cannot say out loud end up.
It is American through and through, with sixth grade, kickball and Field Day. Faith is part of this family's life too. Kari writes in her journal that God will have the best seat in the house on meteor night.
If your reader wants the Baxters from the beginning, Best Family Ever is where they started. It goes back to the year they left Ann Arbor for Bloomington, when Ashley was in fourth grade and none of the children wanted to move.
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