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Sweeping Up the Heart

One of my favorite writers--Kevin Henkes--has a new children's book available. This is not a picture book, but a brief "chapter book," and, like several of Henkes's other chapter books, it appears to be about a quietly weird kid who meets another quietly weird kid. Misunderstandings ensue.

I admire Henkes because he is so dedicated to his work. And I like that he stretches himself to write not just for tiny PK kids, but also for more-advanced kid-readers.

I also like that Henkes bravely addresses death--the deceased kid in "Olive's Ocean," the motherless Blaze in "Words of Stone." And here's how "Sun and Spoon" begins:

Spoon Gilmore's grandmother had been dead for two months when he realized that he wanted something special of hers to keep. This thought came to him in the middle of a hot, sticky July night and nagged at him off and on until morning.

 It was all he could think about at breakfast. He was sitting alone at the kitchen table having the same breakfast he had almost every morning--Cap'n Crunch and...grape juice. His hand wobbled and his juice glass grazed his cheek, nearly missing his mouth, he was so preoccupied. Juice dribbled down his chin....

 Either this is your sort of thing, or it isn't. I, for one, encounter the small child so obsessed with a dead relative that the quest for a memento keeps him up late at night....I encounter that child and I have to know more!

This is what you can expect from Henkes country. "Sweeping Up the Heart"--which borrows its title from Emily Dickinson--promises to be more Henkesian daydreaming about oddness and "the hidden profundity in apparently trivial things." I'm excited!
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