Letters in the Attic

A young girl's growing pains include falling for another girl in Bonnie Shimko's Letters in the Attic. In the early 1960s, Lizzy McMann moves from Arizona to upstate New York with her unstable mother after her father runs off with a hatcheck girl. There she meets her grandparents for the first time and strikes up a friendship with Eva, an eighth grader ""who looks like Natalie Wood and smokes."" Her one-sided attraction to Eva is instant and so are the attendant feelings of shame, confusion and jealousy. Meanwhile, she begins to learn things about her family history that help shed some light on her current circumstances. Lizzie is a charming narrator, a seventh grader hovering between na vet and experience. She notices everything, and while sometimes the details tend to pile up and interfere with the flow of the narrative, there are enough surprises in this appealing story to keep things interesting.