cover image Julia's Mending

Julia's Mending

Kathy Lynn Emerson. Orchard Books (NY), $11.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-531-05719-3

That her parents go to China to be missionaries is bad enough for Julia, 12, who stays behind, but leaving the city she has always known to live on her relatives' farm is even worse and one day after she arrives there, she breaks her leg. Julia's recovery from this accident parallels a deeper changeadaptation to a new kind of family life and eventual friendship with Grace, her ""beastly'' cousin. Julia's realization that she has behaved in a snobbish, self-centered, unlikable fashionand her subsequent maturityis fully delineated, and the 19th century setting is effectively evoked. This first novel is well sustained and has a light, seamless style. Ages 10-up. (September)