cover image The Heights, the Depths, and Everything in Between

The Heights, the Depths, and Everything in Between

Sally Nemeth. Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, $15.95 (263pp) ISBN 978-0-375-83458-5

It's 1977, and 13-year-old narrator Lucy Small and Jake Little are ""ticking down to the dog days of summer"" in a Delaware subdivision called The Heights. Their surnames are apt only in Jake's case: he is a dwarf, and Lucy is very tall for her age, at five foot ten. Despite the Mutt-and-Jeff teasing, they've been best friends forever, and leave elementary school with great trepidation, knowing, ""We were bound to be the junior high freak show."" They share a common hurt: both their fathers are gone. Jake's has remarried, Lucy's is ""finding himself"" out west. When school starts, the two find themselves moving apart, as Lucy parlays her height into a spot on the basketball team (""You can't teach tall!"" the coach enthuses), and Jake hooks up with Gary, a sweet but troubled kid who's been left back twice. The concerns of the novel often seem more like high school issues than seventh-grade problems, and the plot takes a while to get going. Lucy, however, is a companionable narrator, clear-eyed and compassionate, funny and smart. Though she's the teller, the tale is mostly Jake's, as he clashes with his overprotective mother and, plaintively, struggles with his difference. ""Who's gonna ever want to be with me?"" he asks, giving voice to a worry that most adolescents have at some point, no matter what their size: ""Sometimes I feel so all alone I can't even see straight."" Ages 10-up.