Two Worlds: Where I Belong by Mary Downing Hahn

I'm sitting at my desk, drawing on the back of my math worksheet, not even trying to solve the problems. What's the use? They'd all be wrong, and Mrs. Funkhauser will make some sarcastic remark about my inability to learn long division--as if I cared.

I look at the picture I've drawn of the Green Man. I just learned about him in a book of British legends. My Green Man is treetop tall and his face is framed with oak leaves. His wavy hair falls to his shoulders like mine.

Suddenly Mrs. Funkhausen is beside me. "What's this?" Her eyes are eagle sharp.

"Boys and girls," she says. "Look at this. Brendan Doyle thinks drawing pictures is more important than math."

For Brendan, drawing is more important than math, which he is no good at anyway. Drawing is a way out for him, that and escaping from his foster mother Mrs. Clancy to the woods whenever he can. It is a place where he can leave her "real life" and all her rules behind and be safe and alone in a world where he might see a unicorn or even the Green Man who takes care of the woods and its creatures. Brendan finds the tallest tree in the woods and builds a treehouse high up, sure that it will be a world where real life cannot reach him. He hopes he fails sixth grade. At least that will keep him out of middle school for one more year.

But when Brendan does fail and is forced to go to summer school, real life intrudes. A girl named Shea in the class follows him, finally managing to slip so quietly behind that she discovers his tree house and insists that she should be allowed to climb up to it and watch for unicorns with him.

"You and me, we're right for each other," she says. She turns those eyes on me full force. "See, what I know about friends is, you have to pretend to like what they like. But you, I don't have to pretend to like what you like, because I like what you like."

And then the Green Man comes. At least, Brendan and Shea believe he could be the Green Man. His beard and hair are long, with leaves caught in the mass of it, and he can appear and disappear in the trees soundlessly. He must be magical, although he says he's just a man, just an old man named Ed who lives in a hidden hut in the woods. But Brendan is sure that he's found someone from a world away from the real lifers back in the town.

But still, real life catches up with him. Brendan sees a gang of tough kids rob a store in the mall, and they beat him severely and one hacks off his long hair with a long knife to keep him quiet. Brendan tells the police and Mrs. Clancy that he doesn't know any of the gang who did it, but when they attack Ed and he dies in the hospital the next day, Brendan realizes that it's time to face up to real life, and with his friend Shea, he knows what he has to do.

Mary Downing Hahn's latest, Where I Belong (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2014), takes on an unusual character in Brendan, one whose life has forced him to rely on an imagination that has been both comforting and yet misleading. He sees that he is capable of succeeding in school when he has the right teacher, and he suddenly understands that the critical voice he hears in his head as Mrs. Clancy's is really his own creation, that just as his Green Man was really a kind old drifter, his foster mother is just a tired middle-aged woman who does the best she can and is as lonely as he is.

In this coming-of-age story, the outsider finally comes in out of the cold, into a new real life that offers what he needs most. Here Hahn, that veteran teller of ghost tales and creator of wispy spirits, dips less deeply into the supernatural, walking the fine line between the objective and the subjective mind in a way in which middle readers, standing so briefly on that boundary between childhood and maturity, will understand.

Other classic tales by Mary Downing Hahn include Wait Till Helen Comes: A Ghost Story, The Old Willis Place All the Lovely Bad Ones, and The Doll in the Garden: A Ghost Story.

If Wishes Were Lobsters: Touch Blue by Cynthia Lord

Wishes are slippery things. You have to be very specific or you can get exactly what you wished for and still end up with nothing.

Tess Brooks has a whole collection of lucky pieces she packs in her pocket when she really needs to see her wishes come true, but Tess is a hard-headed island girl, daughter of a lobster fisherman, and she believes in doing whatever it takes to give good luck a nudge.

When the state of Maine threatens to close her island school because of its low student population, Tess, who fears moving from her beloved home and changing to a strange mainland school, is all behind her neighbors' plan to take in foster children to pad their count. When her family is assigned a 13-year-old boy who has been abandoned by his mother, left behind when his grandmother dies, and moved through several temporary placements, Tess knows that she's going to need all the luck she can get, and she believes she's found it in a beautiful piece of blue sea glass she finds as she waits for Aaron's arrival on the ferry.

But Aaron is not all she had wished for. As orphans go, as Tess puts it, she had hoped for a boy Anne of Green Gables and gotten a boy Great Gilly Hopkins. Aaron is depressed, uncommunicative, and makes no secret of the fact that he wishes he were back on the mainland where he could play his trumpet with his local jazz band. But Tess throws all her energy into making Aaron happy with her family, knowing that keeping him home with them is her way to hold on to her own island home.

Despite their initial conflict, Tess hits on a plan to make Aaron's music an entry into island life. Tess skillfully approaches an older neighbor who has been critical of the newcomer:

"Hi, Mrs. Varnay." I brush the paint dust off my clothes as I'm walking. "Isn't it great how Aaron plays the trumpet?"

"Oh, yes!" Mrs. Varnay replies, pulling out her knitting needles. "I feel lucky to hear such fine music from my front porch. The boy plays like an angel!"

"It's a shame the whole island hasn't had a chance to hear Aaron," I say. "And the trumpet is especially good for patriotic songs. Exciting marching music, like we might hear at Memorial Day or the Fourth of July picnic."

"There's nothing like a trumpet for patriotic songs," Mrs. Varnay agrees. "Where's my cell phone?" As she hunts through her basket, I back away, smiling.

My work is done.

With Mrs. Varnay behind the arrangements, Aaron's beautiful performance at the picnic on the Fourth is an island sensation, giving Tess has another brilliant idea. Knowing that Aaron longs to see his mother, forbidden to contact him by Child Welfare, Tess quietly writes to her, suggesting that she come as an incognito tourist to the annual island talent show to hear her son play. If Aaron can have hope of an occasional visit with his mom, Tess reasons, he'll be satisfied to stay with Tess's family until she is able to take him back.

But her scheme doesn't quite go as planned, and Tess learns that there is much more to good outcomes than making lucky wishes. Cynthia Lord's just published Touch Blue (Scholastic Press, 2010) is a wonderfully crafted novel, weaving a strong sense of place into a universal human story in this insightful tale of two young people both looking to hold onto what they love most in their lives. But we can't always control what happens in life despite our best efforts, Tess' father tells her:

"Will she take him away from us?" I asked.

"I don't know. We don't get to decide that," Dad says. "But we'll all go on, whatever comes. Sometimes you have to quit trying to control everything and let life happen the way it's supposed to, Tess. Even if it's not exactly the way you wanted."

"You and Aaron both have to let go of thinking 'I can only be happy if....' and find a way to carry your happiness inside you. We're all more than where we came from, Tess."

Cynthia Lord's previous book, Rules, was a recipient of the Newbery Honor Award and the Michigan Library Association's Mitten Award, an NCTE Notable Book and ALA Notable Book award, and her first novel has been nominated for dozens of state Children's Choice awards since its publication. In her newest, Lord shows that she continues to create honest and sensitive realistic fiction for middle readers.