Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

It’s the first week of summer, folks! Today my lovely mother-in-law came down to take my tween to the orthodontist while I took my son to a different appointment, and she stayed to play games and take us to lunch! At the Pizza Pie Cafe, no less, which meant I didn’t bother making dinner–I didn’t know how many people would even want to eat. We had apples and whole wheat bread and then went to get shaved ice from my middles’ former fourth grade teacher’s stand; there was a park behind the stands and food trucks, so the kids played afterward and I chilled on a bench for a while. Now people are taking turns in the shower and getting off to bed, which means I get to sit down and review Lisa Graff’s The Great Treehouse War, which we listened to on Memorial Day while driving home from Idaho.

I have to say, it made pretty great road trip material.

The basic premise is fairly simple–Winnie’s (divorced) parents’ obsessive competition with each other makes Winnie’s life so unbearable that she finally takes to her treehouse and refuses to come down until they talk with her together. Her friends–each with his or her own parental demands, none nearly as reasonable as Winnie’s–come up to join her, and voila! An epic standoff. My tween and I were captivated by the story, and the other three kids paid a good amount of attention to it as well. As a reader, I was completely entertained, even if it wasn’t exactly realistic; as a parent, I quite enjoyed the ego boost that came from comparing Winnie’s parents to myself. (They made me look amazing.) I honestly had issues with the ending–the parents weren’t properly repentant–but given the whole concept of the book, it worked. (If everything is over the top, complaining about nuances of realism isn’t really productive, right?) Upper elementary and middle schoolers–and their parents!–should enjoy this one.