The Vanderbeekers 5 – Make a Wish

Karina Yan Glaser's The Vanderbeekers 5 - Make a Wish is a big warm family story for 10 year olds about a summer that falls apart on the first Monday of August.

What happens

Oliver has been waiting three years for this. When his twin sisters finished sixth grade, Papa took them away for three days wherever they chose. Now it's Oliver's turn, and he and Papa have had a campsite by a lake in the Adirondacks booked for six months.

He has checked his backpack roughly fifty times.

Then Papa's oldest friend rings. His mother has died, and he needs Papa in Indiana for the funeral. Papa goes, obviously. The campsite is booked out until Thanksgiving.

So that's the trip gone. And the party the five Vanderbeeker children have spent two months secretly planning for Papa's fortieth, with over a hundred guests coming, still has no present to go with it.

Then the doorbell goes, in the rain, and it's Grandma and Grandpa, who nobody knew were coming.

Grandma is a piece of work. Within thirty seconds of the door opening she has criticised Isa's hair, Jessie's jacket and the fact that anyone is still in pyjamas. She once watched a video of Isa playing at Carnegie Hall and said the dress didn't suit her.

What makes the book so readable is how ordinary all the chaos is. Somebody slips on a bit of lettuce a dog has been carrying around the house. There's a trip to A and E where the doctor makes lettuce puns for an entire chapter and the patient in the next bed will not stop talking about her bunions.

Meanwhile Jessie has found her dead grandfather's old blazer in the back of a wardrobe and wears it everywhere, because it makes her feel like she knew him.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There's a lot of death in here for a comedy. A friend's mother dies in the first chapter, the children learn how their grandfather died the day before their father's graduation, and there's a hospital the whole family avoid walking past because of something that happened to somebody they loved. None of it is graphic and all of it is handled gently, but a child who is already anxious about losing people will feel it.

This is the fifth book, and the household is large and long established. It'll work on its own, but a reader who starts earlier will get far more out of it.

What to read next

For the Vanderbeekers a year before all this, Lost and Found is in the library too. It's autumn on the same street, and somebody is sleeping in the community garden.