Grace the Amazing

“A balanced, meaningful account of how to say goodbye to someone you love.” —Maura Pierlot, CBCA Reading Time

“Aleesah Darlison has created a powerful, realistic, and insightful representation of life situations children struggle to understand, at an age when friendships define who they are.” —Kids’ Book Review

“This is a coming-of-age story that will resonate with many who also feel isolated, a misfit and misunderstood, as once again, Darlison has created credible characters who could be the kids we know and so the reader fits right into the story.” —The Bottom Shelf

“A novel that will gently tug at your heart strings…Full of profound emotions and deep relationships…The distressing experience of losing a cherished friend is sensitively shared and the reader can feel the loss Grace suffers but also the deep friendship they shared…Highly recommended.” —Magpies Magazine

“Darlison manages to strike just the right tone for a books that depicts a child’s first experience of death: it is both emotive and genuinely funny.” —Books+Publishing

“Eleven-year-old Grace is a loner, so angry and afraid that her classmates may dislike her that the isolation she dreads becomes her everyday reality. A larger, more immediate problem is that Pamela, Grace’s current “best friend” (actually her supportive art teacher at school), is dying of cancer. No longer teaching, Pamela welcomes home visits from Grace, who struggles to be supportive while quietly seeking some kind of magic that will change Pamela’s fate. Grace feels waves of love for her hardworking mother, but she sees her as an adversary more often than a supporter or a role model. Recognizing that Grace needs help, her mother arranges for her to see a psychologist, a move that Grace fiercely opposes until an attitude shift allows her to make gradual progress. As she prepares for the inevitable loss of her beloved teacher, Grace begins to recognize and foster possible new friendships around her. Written from Grace’s viewpoint, the first-person narrative is honest, unflinching, and completely engaging. Grace is portrayed as bright and courageous but inclined to follow her emotions more than reason and focus on her hopes more than reality. Darlison, an Australian writer, packs a touching story into a relatively brief, yet highly accessible chapter book.” —Booklist