Suitabook13 gifts
Wendy Mass
- Reading
- Try the opening together, then check in after the story introduces the object-collecting deadline; this can help you judge whether the mystery and its pressure suit your reader.
- Themes
- Taking responsibility: Tara breaks into a school to steal a goat, and her parents send her to stay with relatives as punishment. The plot makes the wrongdoing and punishment part of Tara’s situation, but does not establish whether the story endorses or challenges how she responds.
- Belonging and new connections: Tara stays with relatives she hardly knows in Willow Falls, makes friends, and encounters several unusual people. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Mystery and birthday magic: An elderly collectibles dealer asks Tara to find thirteen mysterious objects before her thirteenth birthday; the story also includes birthday magic. The magical and mysterious elements drive the adventure, but their meaning and treatment are not clear from the plot outline.
- Worth knowing
- Tara’s school break-in and goat theft lead to punishment, while the object-collecting task carries a deadline and a warning of very bad consequences; consider how those pressures may land.