This Isn't About The Money
In one terrible night, Janey's world goes from the comfort of her parents' car to the bright lights of the hospital. Her face wrapped tightly in bandages, Janey learns that a drunk driver caused the death of her parents, and her grandfather and great-aunt are to become her new family. She and her little sister are orphans.
But almost worse is the fact that five-year-old YoYo seems happy to be an orphan and her great aunt appears more concerned with suing the drunk driver than with her parents' deaths. Janey decides that it's up to her to keep her parents' spirit alive and not let YoYo forget their real family.
With tenderness as well as humor, Sally Warner shows that while families can come apart, they can also come together in surprising ways.
From the first chapter:
"My head hurts," she tried to say aloud, almost as an experiment, but the words could not make their way past her lips. And there was something even more important than the hurting, Janey thought suddenly, something she had to remember. She shook the last grains of sand from her hand and—as if it might help her memory—she touched her face.
Sticky.
Why, she wondered, was she sitting cross-legged on the cold sand in the desert in the middle of the night?
Viking Books for Young Readers — Intended for ages 9 and up.
Junior Library Guild selection
A Bank Street Best Books of 2003
A 2004--2005 Sunshine State Young Readers Award nominee
"Emotional and realistic, Warner's sensibility and voice of young teens in distress is always genuine, touching a painful subject with a compassionate hand."
KIRKUS
"Warner spectacularly achieves the task of leading the reader through the various stages of Janey's grief and anger...without being morbid of saccharine."
Voya
"With her trademark combination of humor and compassion...as always, Warner's dialog and characterizations are rich and real."
Booklist