Young adult Book ( )

Richie's Picks: SO B. IT: A NOVEL by Sarah Weeks, HarperCollins/Laura Geringer Books, May 2004, ISBN: 0-06-623622-3; ISBN Library: 0-06-623623-1

"I know you're out there somewhere
Somewhere, somewhere
I know I'll find you somehow
And somehow I'll return again to you"
--The Moody Blues

"If truth was a crayon and it was up to me to put a wrapper around it and name its color, I know just what I would call it--dinosaur skin. I used to think, without really thinking about it, that I knew what color that was. But that was a long time ago, before I knew what I know now about both dinosaur skin and the truth."

The truth about her mother's background and past is as totally unknown to Heidi as is the true color of dinosaur skin. That is due to the fact that there are a grand total of twenty-three words, sounds, or short phrases that her mother is capable of articulating.

"One thing I knew for a fact, from the time I knew anything at all, was that I didn't have a father. What I had was Mama and Bernadette, and as far as I was concerned, that was plenty. Bernadette started off being the next-door neighbor, but that didn't last very long. My mother loved me in her own special way, but she couldn't take care of me herself because of her bum brain. Bernie once explained it to me by comparing Mama to a broken machine.
" 'All the basic parts are there, Heidi, and from the outside she looks like she should work just fine, but inside there are lots of mysterious little pieces busted or bent or missing altogether, and without them her machine doesn't run quite right.'
"And it never would."

"Now the time has come to speak
I was not able
And water through a rusted pipe
Could make the sense that I do"
--Suzanne Vega "Rusted Pipe"

When Heidi's mother appeared on Bernadette's doorstep in Reno twelve years earlier with baby Heidi in her arms, Bernie's repeated questioning of who they were elicited the same response again and again from the mother: "So be it" and "Heidi." Thus, they became So B. It and Heidi It. Bernadette, who has since been raising and homeschooling Heidi while caring for Heidi's mother, has her own incapacitating disability--she's plagued by a phobia that prevents her from ever leaving the pair of attached apartments that the trio share. Meanwhile, Heidi has her own unusual quality--a gift that falls into the realm of magic.

But it will take more than just magic to uncover the truth of her mother's origins. While most of those twenty-three words are common ones, there is one--soof--that is uniquely Heidi's mom's.

"[O]nly Mama knew what it meant. And she wasn't telling.
" 'What is soof, Mama?' I'd whisper as I sat on the edge of her bed at night gently scratching her back. I hoped it might slip out of her mouth and onto her pillowcase as she closed her eyes and relaxed into the rhythm of my scratching.
"Sometimes I'd sit down next to her on the couch, open up a magazine, and flip through the pictures, pointing at things--a baby, a dog, a car.
" 'Show me soof, Mama. Is this soof? Is this?'
"Mama would smile her sweet, wide smile and pat my knee the way she always did when I sat close to her.
" 'Tea, Heidi?' she'd say. 'Tea?' "

When vital clues to the mystery of her mother's past appear, Heidi embarks upon a lone cross-country trip to search for that elusive truth.

"I'd be lying if I said that given a choice, I wouldn't rather know than not know. But there are some things you can just know for no good reason other than that you do, and then there are other things that no matter how badly you want to know them, you just can't.
"The truth is, whether you know something or not doesn't change what was. If dinosaurs were blue, they were blue, if they were brown, they were brown whether anybody ever knows it for a fact or not."

In the manner of some great award-winning stories of previous years in which young characters journey to discover who they are, Heidi's solitary quest touched my heart and made me just want to hug this wonderful young woman.

(And that's the truth.)

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com ( )

American Library Association Notable Books for Children (WON) 2005
Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award (WON) 2007
SCASL Book Award (South Carolina) (WON) 2007
William Allen White Children's Book Award (WON) 2007
Young Hoosier Book Award (WON) 2007Louisiana Young Readers' Choice Award (WON) 2007

Booklist, 6/1/2004-6/15/2004, Vol. 100 Issue 19/20, p1731-1731 ( )

I seem to be reading a lot of these "pre-teen girl searches for her roots" books lately... I kind of stumbled on to this one via Book Links, a professional journal. It gave a 10 min. read-aloud selection to booktalk the book to kids, so I tried it, and it hooked ME at least... Heidi lives with her mother, who is severely mentally challenged, and an agoraphobic neighbor helps them out on a regular basis. Heidi finds a photo which sets her on a bus journey back east to New York, hopefully to find out her and her mother's story. As can often happen, Heidi seems a bit wise beyond her years, and the ending ties up a bit too neatly... kids should enjoy it, though, and the writing is pretty good.