Where the Watermelons Grow (review)

Where the Watermelons Grow
Author: Cindy Baldwin
HarperCollins (To be released July 3, 2018)
e-ARC courtesy of NetGalley.

Twelve-year-old Della Kelly of Maryville, North Carolina, tries to come to terms with her mother's mental illness while her father struggles to save the farm from a record-breaking drought.

A lot of things are wonderful in 12-year-old Della's life, from her best friend, Arden, to the Bee stories she tells her little sister, Mylie, to the delicious sweet taste of cold watermelon on a hot summer day. But when she discovers that her mother's sickness might be coming back, a sickness that confuses her mother about what is real and what is not, Della decides she has to do something about it.

But decisions are easier decided on than acted on, and when all her efforts fail, Della has to face the fact that she may not be able to heal her mother, and will have to work awfully hard to even heal herself. Fortunately, she is not as alone as she sometimes feels.

As a reviewer, I must acknowledge that no book is read in isolation. In the past week, Time magazine posted two articles, one by Matt de la Peña, and then a response by Kate DiCamillo. Each talked about sadness and fear in children's stories, and addressed how honestly and directly authors should talk about difficult topics. Kate DiCamillo talked about asking a friend why she kept reading Charlotte's Web, and whether she thought maybe if she read it again, Charlotte wouldn't die. Her friend's response:

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t that. I kept reading it not because I wanted it to turn out differently or thought that it would turn out differently, but because I knew for a fact that it wasn’t going to turn out differently. I knew that a terrible thing was going to happen, and I also knew that it was going to be okay somehow. I thought that I couldn’t bear it, but then when I read it again, it was all so beautiful. And I found out that I could bear it. That was what the story told me. That was what I needed to hear. That I could bear it somehow.”

WHERE THE WATERMELONS GROW is a wonderful, heart-wrenching story filled with love and hardship and hope and harsh realities. It shows that life can be terrible and scary and out of your control, and yet it can still be beautiful, and you can bear it all somehow.

I heartily recommend this to children and teens (and even adults) everywhere. Life is hard and filled with struggles, but you can bear it somehow.

Five stars!

To be released in July 2018, but available for pre-order now on Amazon.