Sunnyside Plaza

NPR broadcaster and author Simon makes his children’s book debut with this novel inspired by his experience, as a young man, working at a group home for adults with developmental disabilities. Ingenuous narrator Sally Miyake (“Sal Pal”), a resident of the Sunnyside Plaza community center, easily draws readers into her story, confiding, “I can’t read, but I see, I hear, and I notice things.” Fixated on numbers, she communicates her age as “8 times 2 plus 3,” and believes that her long-absent mother “will be back when she can take care of me.” The teen and her fellow residents instinctively support one another and provide mutual solace when two tenants die suddenly and another suffers a mysterious fall. Two detectives investigating the deaths bring untold joy into Sal Pal’s life when they take her under their wing, inviting her to her first-ever baseball game and a family seder, and soliciting her help solving the deaths, given her keen perspicacity. In heartbreaking moments, Simon also lays bare the profound humiliation that Sal Pal and her friends feel when marginalized, as when a woman at the park deems “those people... crazy.” A resoundingly poignant novel with an acutely intuitive and empathic protagonist. Ages 8–up. [em](Jan.) [/em]