This is a powerful and exquisitely gentle story about coming to terms with moving away from a beloved place and finding a way to hold onto the memory of it. Set at the building site of a dam in a remote part of Saskatchewan, the little girl in the story finds out that the dam will soon be finished, prompting her family to move away from their tiny trailer village to Toronto.
She expresses her concern- "This is where I live. I don't know Toronto. I know here." She describes her surroundings: the school she attends with eight other kids from the site, the road lined with trailers and the trailer she shares with her parents and four siblings, the wildlife, the solemn and majestic forest and swooping over her hamlet in a small plane. She then asks, "Have people in Toronto seen what I've seen?"
An inspired centerfold depicts the girl gazing up at the sky, facing the profound unknown. She says simply "I know what to do". She will draw pictures of her home so she can remember it and pay respect to the life she has known. Leaving is hard. Adult readers may be moved to tears by the universality of her ordeal and the courage with which she faces it. Read this book.
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