Some Places More Than Others

Some Places More Than Others by Renee Watson is a family story for 9 year olds about a girl who asks for one thing for her birthday and is told no.

What happens

Amara turns twelve in two weeks. All she wants is to go to Harlem with her dad and finally meet the grandfather, aunt and cousins she's only ever seen in photographs. Her mum says no. New York is no place for her.

Then Amara overhears the real reason from the hallway. Her dad hasn't spoken to Grandpa Earl in twelve years. He's been to New York for work plenty of times and never once gone home.

Twelve years is exactly how old Amara is about to be. Is that a coincidence? She doesn't think so, and there's nobody she can ask.

What she has to work with is a school project. Mr Rosen hands out old suitcases and asks everyone to fill one with where they come from. Interview two adults. Bring keepsakes, photographs, a poem. Amara looks round her own house and realises she doesn't know the story of a single thing in it.

That was my favourite stretch. She lifts the big family Bible nobody ever opens, finds the page where births and deaths are written in, and learns something about the day she was born that her parents have never mentioned.

Amara is very good company. She's a sneakerhead who checks the weather app before picking which Jordans to wear. She and her mum have a long-running argument about church dresses that plenty of us will recognise (nobody wins it). And she's honest in the way children are honest when they think nobody is listening.

Here's the one to know about. Amara's mum is eight months pregnant and has lost three babies before this one. Amara says straight out that she's stopped letting herself hope and that she won't put her hand on her mother's bump.

It's written with real care and it's never laboured. But it's there from chapter one, and for some families it will land hard.

What to read next

If your reader likes a girl with a lot going on in her head and a family she's still working out, Ways to Make Sunshine would suit them next. Ryan Hart lives on the same side of Oregon, her dad's just taken the night shift, and money at her house is tight.