A beautiful story of friendship that transcends age. The Sophie's are a beautiful found family that understand each other and their struggles more than their blood relations do. This is a book that emphasizes the importance of strong connection for both young and old alike, an dyow even with family around you can feel socially isolated if not understood and valued as a person.

First sentence: I am going to tell you three words. I'm choosing them at random. Listen carefully. This will be important. House. Umbrella. Apple. Remember those. I'll explain later.

My thoughts (preview): I kept this one waiting. I have absolutely loved Lois Lowry's work in the past. I have. Yet the title was odd--for me (though trust me, it works). The cover was not one that made me want to drop everything and read it. I wasn't quite sure what this one was about. I thought it would likely be worth reading...at some point. Lowry's books rarely disappoint me.

In a way, I'm glad I waited to read it. Now I can tell EVERYONE go read this book and it will actually be available at libraries and bookstores.

Premise/plot: What is this one about? Friendship. Friendship. Friendship. Friendship can be complex, nuanced, wonderful, perplexing. Young Sophie (our heroine) is VERY dear friends with a much older Sophie. The two have a wonderful, sparkling friendship--vibrant and delightful. Yet the older Sophie is beginning to 'show' her age, if you will. No matter how much young Sophie does NOT want to admit it, acknowledge it, accept it, things can't stay the same forever. This Sophie is not Sophie's only friend. There are others in her life that are DIFFERENT yet special. There is only ONE Sophie--irreplaceable.

My thoughts: I purposefully kept the premise/plot on the VAGUE side. Because the JOY of this one is in the unfolding. The less you know about the specifics of the plot, the more you will enjoy the journey. You should know it is character-driven. This isn't an action-packed novel with twists and turns. Nor is it a thriller. But for readers who LOVE character-driven novels that are ALL heart, ALL soul, written with care and beauty, this one is a must. It breaks you, in a way, but it also mends.

I received this book in exchange for a honest review from NetGalley

Lois Lowry has done it again, She made me cry. I have been reading Lois Lowry's books since I was a child and never has one of her books failed to speak to me. This book is a beautiful example of a relationship between a young girl and her older friend and how aging effects us all. It is also a beautiful example of how sometime there is a special person that we can share a part of ourselves with that we have never shared before. I loved this book!

This was a sweet story but the main character was not believable as a child. The references used were very outdated and this would've been more apt if it had been published maybe in 2005 but it wasn't quite relevant to today.

The sweetest story of the friendship between an eleven-year-old, named Sophie, and her 88-year-old neighbor, also named Sophie. While trying to prove that 88-year-old Sophie is cognitive enough to stay in her home, eleven-year-old Sophie learns stories of the elders childhood. Reading this made me wish I could sit down with my grandparents and hear more of their stories. I highly recommend and will be sending this to my nieces and nephews to read.

Loved this book. A unique friendship between Sophies of two generations. The young Sophie is trying to help older Sophie study for tests. The characters are great in the book and the history and struggles are real. All middle graders should read this short, quick book.

Tree Table Book is a new middle grade release from author Lois Lowry and it packs a punch like only her books can do. It tells the story of eleven year old Sophie Henry Winslow and her best friend and neighbor eighty-eight Sophia Gershowitz. These two characters have a close friendship even with their obvious age difference. It is such a well crafted friendship that is filled with heart.

Younger Sophie learns that older Sophie's son is coming into town and having her evaluated for possible dementia. If it turns out that she does have dementia, she will be moved into an assisted living center closer to where her son lives. Sophia Henry Winslow cannot lose her best friend and quickly gets to work trying to find another solution. She begins testing Sophie using part of a mental ability to test where she gives her three words and has to try to recall them later in their conversation. At first, Sophie struggles remembering all the words so the words are chosen are words that she should be able to relate to in some way. This reveals a whole new side to her that she has never spoken about.

Younger Sophie is the narrator of our story and it broke my heart as she is forced to face some hard realities in life. These realities include what happened to her best friend when she was younger; and what is happening to her now that she is older. As she is young, she still has the innocent logic that she can fix whatever problem is put in front of her, and through this experience with her older best friend, she realizes that is not always the case. Lois Lowry has this way of creating her younger characters to be believable and to be able to take you on a journey.

Tree Table Book does such a good job at creating a tense environment in regards to the testing of someone's memory. It was heart wrenching but realistic. Ultimately, the reality of our future is that there are going to be more and more people with memory issues. This story is a wonderful introduction to the topic of memory loss and the strengths and difficulties that come along with it.

This was a beautiful story of friendship and loss in a different sort of way. I think dementia is a difficult topic for kids to understand and I think this was a great way of explaining it. This was a quick read with a big impact.

“Tree. Table. Book” by Lois Lowery - 5 (Pub Date: Out Now!) is a must read for every middle grade student (and all adults). Lowery is an absolute master of children’s literature and she delivers again with this sweet, sad, direct story about a girl, her elderly best friend, and how lived experiences become memories and those memories become stories we share with our children. The two Sophies are a reminder to pay attention to our kids perceptions of their world, as well as to stop and listen to the stories of our old folks. For the child in your life, this story is a expertly paced narrative about a little girl who tells us in her own words, the experiences she has as a friend, daughter, and individual as she navigates her imperfect but valuable peer friendships, her interactions with her parents, and the sweet and wonderful friendship with her octogenarian neighbor who shares her name and who has snippets of wispy and diminishing memory to share of her childhood in Poland at the end of her world as she knew it.

Good Things: Everything. This is an excellent read (where I did actually ugly cry at the end) for adults. It was like cracking the door on a child’s daily life, or like having an earnest conversation with a girl who feels safe to tell you how and what she really thinks. For children, the best part of this book is that it doesn’t condescend to the age group. This is the perfect example of how children’s literature can tackle real life, historical perspectives, and complex emotions in an age appropriate way, but with grade-appropriate style and syntax. It’s what children’s literature should strive for. The former reading teacher/librarian dream comes out of my archives when I read this book. I’ve already messaged all my librarian friends to command the addition to their catalogs. The key thing for parents to know is that the difficult pieces of history are not glossed over, but are alluded to, leaving the additional exploration and the more difficult details of the holocaust to be discovered and discussed at whatever level is age appropriate. This is an accessible read to all ages 8 to adult.

Opportunities: I’m usually pretty good about finding SOMETHING to pick at with a book, but I'm struggling here to find anything that I don’t already consider peak. The only piece that I could pick at is that there are lots of other threads of stories in this book. The parents and their small business is a story. The neighbor boy and his large Catholic family and doctor dad is a story. The empty house across the road is a story. And finally the friend who’s single mom works diligently to provide for him, as she navigates his apparent spectrum / neurodivergence alongside his peers, who are friends who are also caregivers. These subplots are so seamlessly included that there’s no gap or loss to the primary story, and it never feels like ‘too much’ … these details and narratives feel naturally integrated as part of Sophie’s full life and fit right in to her observant character. But I would like for Ms. Lowery to spin off a new series of similar books with Sophie and her friends, teasing out more stories from this ‘universe’ So no improvement opportunities, just more great books, please!

Final Thoughts: It’s on order for my collection, it’s on my short list of go-to-gifts for my 8-14yo list of friends, my recommendations have been sent to 3 librarians, and finally I will be notifying the dozens of elementary and middle school teacher friends that there’s a brand new book to include in their curriculum because this one hits a lot of marks for personal relationships, historical context, WWII, antisemitism, holocaust, dementia/alzheimer, and autism. My former education / curriculum brain is just a-bubbling.

I appreciate the opportunity afforded me to have an early read of this story by netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books | Clarion Books. The opinions in this review are expressly those of ButIDigressBookClub and are intended for use by my followers and friends when choosing their next book. #butidigress #butidigressbookclub #treetablebook #loislowery #holocaust #WWII #dementia #childrenslit #antisemitism #neurodivergence #autism #netgalleyreviewer #arc #arcs

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Review Shared on Goodreads - www.goodreads.com/leah_cyphert_butidigressbookclub
Publishing Review 6/7/2024

Friendship can be between you and anyone else. In this novel Friendship happens between a young Sophie and an older woman also named Sophie. It is told from the young Sophie’s point of view. She loves her best friend and will do what she can to help her friend stay. The problem is that old Sophie is forgetting things and little Sophie is convinced she can help her remember. This novel shows the importance of being there for a friend. The importance of listening to stories that sometimes are kept in the quiet but that once they are out in the light, they can help someone heal.

This was darling. The first half of the book was typical middle-grade, quirky characters, a bit of humor, some great inner monalogue moments. The second half had my heart. Just like the characters understood, some things can’t be taught in the history books. 5⭐️

Lois Lowry is a wonderful writer. She is a great storyteller and I find her books pull you right in from the opening pages. But, equally true, she often pushes the envelope (IMO). As a middle school language arts teacher, I absolutely loved Number the Stars and taught that for many years. However,I steered away from teaching The Giver because it was so controversial, although I enjoyed reading the book myself. I feel Tree Table Book falls into the same category. The story is beautiful and shows a deep connection between the two Sophies. I felt that young Sophie was a conundrum in that she seemed to be older in some ways than her years. Thank you for the opportunity to read another Lois Lowry book, always a thought provoking writer.

Lois Lowry’s latest novel “Tree.Table.Book” is an exploration of story and memory. The Sophies are best of friends. One is eleven and the other is in her 80s. The elder Sophie sometimes struggles with day to day tasks of late, but has vivid memories of her childhood in Poland. The younger Sophie, armed with a Merck manual, checks the elder’s memory with a series of tests and learns about the past in a way she never thought possible.

“Tree.Table.Book.” is told through the younger Sophie’s point of view. She is spunky, sassy, and fiercely protective of her best friend. She learns important lessons about growing up and the importance of story in learning about history.

This book is great for Lois Lowry fans and those who enjoy exploring the deeper issues of life. “Tree.Table.Book” may be a good choice for adolescents who are learning to cope with a family member who has dementia.

This story is both uplifting and heartbreaking, but well worth the read.

I received an advance review copy for free from NetGalley and HarperCollins Children’s Books, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Beautifully written book. It touches on alzeimers and kindness that are both needed information in today's world.

Ever since I was a child and read Gathering Blue, I have been a huge fan of Lois Lowry. She has been for many years my favorite author. Leading me to have high hope for this book, as well as a new excitement to see that Lois Lowry was still writing.

However, wven though I still have very high thoughts about Lois Lowry as a writer, this was not what I was expecting from her. Honestly, the book did not seem as if she was the one who wrote it. The writing style was so different from her other books, and was very much unexpected to me. And I believe this book would be better categorized as a short story, rather than a book, as there is no true depth to the story.

Even though it is not what I expected, and I was disappointed that it did not meet my expectations, I felt that the story itself was good and interesting. It just was not what I had been excited for. As mentioned above, this would be a great shorty story, but I would not categorize it as anything else. It was a quick read, and overall a good story.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book provided by the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

For more reviews and discussions, listen to my podcast The Honest Book Reviewers with Nate and Emma.

https://open.spotify.com/show/3H3ugH4xlzvjMXuUo1Lyvh?si=ewdzfkUnSVKyDmAvHMHIPQ

Tree. Table. Book. by Lois Lowry (Clarion, 2024) features the friendship between two Sophies: one who is eleven and the other is 88. With a unique and memorable narrator, Lowry’s deceptively short newest offering touches on deep issues such as aging, childhood experience, and the formation of memories. In fact, there was so much in it that I really wished Sophie-the-younger’s journey was stretched out a bit longer to let me see more of the friendship and Sophie’s understanding of memories that matter.

Our narrator, the younger Sophie, is a spunky girl with confidence, sure that she not only can tell this story but also that she can solve the issue. She’s smart. How can you not love a girl who begins like this?

“You know what? It’s not that hard to write a story. You need all the obvious stuff: characters, setting, plot details (what happened, why it happened, what’s going to happen next) and, of course, an ending. That’s it, pretty much. . . . “

In the subsequent story, she tells of her desperation to prove her older friend’s competence by helping her with a memory test. The result is not quite what she expected. I thought, as reader, that I knew what the result would be, that the old woman’s dementia will be made plain. I felt sad, even from the beginning, that Sophie will eventually realize her friend’s issue too. But the book instead plays with the entire concept of memory.

The title refers to the three items that Sophie is trying to help the elderly woman remember. In a dementia test, the subject is given three random items and must recall them five minutes later. To help her, Sophie asks her friend to think of a story to go around each item, so she can remember it later. The girl must only have been surprised to hear the old woman’s responses, which are fully fleshed out stories from her childhood in Poland. Each of the three stories the old woman shares (tree, table, and book) is remembered with setting, people, and emotion. Poland remains within the old woman’s mind as if it were just the other day.

These stories were the most touching part of the book, as I, along with young Sophie, learned about the old woman’s childhood as Shlomit. The action in the modern day (Sophie talking with her friend Ralphie, the phone calls she overhears, etc.) are just side notes to these three memories. As the adult reader surely realizes, these memories are related to events happening before World War II, and Shlomit was a Jewish girl in Poland, one who survived to be 88 in the modern day.

I wanted so much more from this book. I wanted to know more about their friendship. But I also wanted to know more about the elderly sophie’s life, and how she had survived to be where she was. That said, I was pleased to see that our young Sophie didn’t get everything she wanted. She was a quite outspoken person. Her character gave the book the sincerity that it so needed for such a story. Maybe the fact that she did not get what she wanted should be an example to me in my wanting of more from the book. The book makes the reader consider what memory is. What are the things to remember, and are the little things really worth remembering?

As a teacher (a writing teacher!) I was fascinated with the writer’s cues throughout the book. Ideas on finding ideas (think about the day that was different), ideas on what a story needs (see the quote above), and examples of an amazing narrator. Lowry’s newest novel is a fantastic sample of writing, in addition to being an emotional treat.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance review copy of this book provided by the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

No matter how long I go without reading a LL book, picking one up and reading feels like coming home. Whatever topic she takes on, she is unflinching and honest, yet no matter the topic she always ends with hope. What's not to love about this book? Old MC (a personal favorite), young MC (always fun), friendships, family, heartache - and as I said, hope. I love that when LL writes for middle graders, she doesn't "write down" to them. Both her writing and her middle grade characters are sharp, inquisitive and funny. This book seems it could be an excellent tool to introduce children to dementia - something you'd hope to never have to do, but oh so many will experience it in family members or friends.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Harper Collins and Clarion Books for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review, and thanks always to Lois Lowry for presenting serious subject matter in a way that children can understand with honesty and empathy.

I read this book cover to cover in one sitting. Sophie’s voice drew me in immediately. She’s chatty and clever, and I loved the connection she shared with the other Sophie. Her neighborhood was also really neat, with families that had close connections and looked out for one another.

Sophie’s desire to prove that her friend is not unwell drives the story forward. She looks up information about cognitive testing and then proceeds to try to walk her friend through the questions in the test. As she does this, she begins to see her friend in a new way, and her friend shares stories with her about her childhood in Poland.

I was a little older than Sophie when my grandmother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of dementia. It happened so quickly that I missed those beginning days, and by the time I understood what was happening, it was too late for her to tell me the stories she still needed to share.

Reading about Sophie having those moments and sharing those memories brought me back to those early days of my grandmother’s illness and made me wonder what stories she would have told me about her childhood.

Sophie learns a lot about how to support a friend gracefully and what it means to work to stay connected. Her family also supports her connection with her friend, and I loved that, too.

This is a bittersweet story about the power of intergenerational friendships and the importance of passing stories from one generation to the next. I loved it.

Lois Lowry has done it again! The author of The Giver and Number the Stars has gifted us with another beautiful novel for the middle grades audience.

In Tree. Table. Book., we get to know the story about a unique friendship between a young girl and her elderly neighbor, the two Sophies. This is an emotional story told through the eyes of young Sophie who has just learned that her best friend may be placed in a specialized care facility soon.

While this book is written for younger readers, I truly enjoyed reading it as an adult.
4.5 stars, rounded up.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books for allowing me early access to the ARC ebook edition of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

4.5 stars

This was a heartwarming book, and it's one that will stick with me. It's a story of an unlikely friendship, which isn't something I often see in books. The relationship shows that friendship goes beyond one's age. One of the Sophie's is an elderly lady who is showing signs of dementia, and the other is eleven. The characters are so well drawn and realistic that you can't help but root for things to work out for the best. I loved how Lowry took the opportunity to introduce children to characters with neurodiversities, the realities associated with dementia, and the truth about what Jewish people in Europe experienced during WWII. This book can definitely be used in a classroom or for further discussion with children. I hope this book find its place into public libraries and school libraries around the world.