Rare Birds

Eleven-year-old Graham and his mother are constantly moving from one city to the next, seeking cutting-edge treatments for his mother’s life-threatening heart condition: dilated cardiomyopathy. He tries to stay positive, especially because she’s the only family he has left. When she’s informed that her last option is a heart transplant, the duo travel to her hometown of Sugarland, Fla., where they stay with her old friend Dom and his churlish son, Nick, also 11, and hope that the local hospital will move her to the top of the list. At the hospital, Graham meets fellow tween Lou, who tells him her father is also waiting for a heart transplant. She’s the first person who understands what he’s going through, and they become fast friends. After finding his mother’s childhood bird-watching journal and discovering that she’s never seen a snail kite, the rarest bird in Florida, Graham and Lou become determined to locate it, convinced that its appearance will be a good omen for their parents. Using compassionate prose, Miller (the Nerdy Dozen series) tenderly captures Graham’s fear and courage in the face of uncertainty, sensitively rendering his processing of a difficult situation. Main characters default to white. Ages 8–12. (Jan.)

Correction: A previous version of this review misstated a prior work by the author.