Words Apart

Aimee Lucido''s hybrid middle grade novel explores the fraught relationship between sisters as they navigate their differences and their parents’ divorce—beautifully told in words and comic panels.

Olive collects words. Rare words, common words, fancy words, funny words. She expresses herself through definitions, poetry, and crossword puzzles that she creates.

Her sister, Mattie, could not be more opposite. Mattie struggles with words and prefers pictures instead, expressing herself through cartoons and sketches.

Despite their differences, the two girls are inseparable. Or at least they were. After their dad moves to Durham, North Carolina, where he works as a professor during the week, and Olive develops a crush on Max Tucker and begins making friends other than Mattie, the sisters'' dynamic changes. With their dad gone and acting suspiciously when he''s home, their mom hovering over them about grades, and their own relationship fracturing, Olive and Mattie, through crossword puzzles and sketches, definitions and doodles, come to realize that love doesn''t always look how we envision and it and that sometimes letting someone go is the best way to show you love them.

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