Sapphire the Great and the Meaning of Life

Oh my gosh! Brenna hit a homerun with the book! It grabs you by the throat and pulls you in on the very first page and doesn't let go of your heartstrings until the last page. Better have some tissues handy (good tears...not bad).

The story is told through short alternating chapters between Jeannie and Sapphire the Great (her hamster). 

We join Jeannie, Alistair (her brother), and their mother three weeks after Christmas and two weeks after their father left, Harvey, left the house. Everyone is dealing with the separation in different ways. Jeannie yells everything, Alistair has turned to video games, and their mother is feeling very stressed. 

Sapphire is a white hamster with bright blue eyes that spends their day in the pet shop contemplating the meaning of life. For Jeannie, it was love at first site. On their way home, the family's car is struck by a Ford truck driven by Anna Conda. Alistair knows there is something off about this "woman", but his mother knows her from her job and they strike up a neighborly relationship. 

Everyone is meant to be exactly who they are, but sometimes the journey there takes us to places we never thought of, yet we end up exactly where we need to be. For the characters in this book, it is a skating rink with friends and family who all learned that love and friendship comes in all shapes, sizes, and combinations. For Sapphire, it meant being free, loved, and cared for inside a warm, cozy cage filled with fresh shavings and food. 

This book has left me at a loss for words in a very good way. The characters are so engaging, honest, and real that you forget you are reading a book. There are many excellent points made in the story, but my favorite line comes from Tom, Alistair's new friend who happens to be son of their father's boyfriend, "The word normal doesn't really apply to people. It only applies to the weather and stuff like that." Truer words have never been written. 

The story is complete, satisfying, and just feels right. It will definitely be sitting on my shelf as soon as it is published. I was very lucky to be able to read this ARC through NetGalley. I would give it ten stars if I could.

This is a fun but meaningful book for the 8-10-year-old range, told in alternating points of view between Jeannie, a loud kind-of-clumsy kid, and Sapphire, her hamster. The illustrations at the beginning of each chapter are simply adorable. I also enjoyed the formatting of the book, with various fonts in various sizes which I think young readers will find engaging. Jeannie is a likable yet imperfect character, which I think adds to her relatability.

Jeannie and Alistair’s dad has been gone for a few weeks, and no one knows quite when he will return, and if this separation thing will turn into a full on divorce. Jeannie’s mom is trying her best but has a lot of challenges as a suddenly-single mother. Alistair and Jeannie have a very believable relationship as siblings, sometimes teasing each other and other times supporting each other.

I think this is a great book for introducing diversity within an engaging story. I think Brenna does an outstanding job of showing how it feels to be a kid—unlistened to, awkward, less capable than we’d like to be, frustrated, and confused. Her physical descriptions are kept to a minimum, which allowed me to fill in the blanks with my own imagination, which I vastly prefer to overly described characters.

Beverly Brenna's gift is to authentically let the reader see the world from a unique perspective. This novel does that in spades, revealing a world from two starkly different narratives: that of Jeannie, a girl with behavior challenges; and also from Sapphire, the hamster that Jeannie has just purchased.

Jeannie's parents are going through a divorce. When Jeannie is upset, she shouts. The upheaval in her family causes her to shout a lot, and of course this has a domino effect on every other aspect of her life.

I particularly enjoyed Sapphire's narrative and found myself laughing out loud because it rings so true. Sapphire's world is all about food and fresh wood chips and wanting to find out what being free is. When Sapphire is upset, she can't shout like Jeannie, so instead she bites at the most inopportune moments.

I love how Brenna demonstrates the power of love, respect and acceptance.