Your students will enjoy this wonderful story of loss and longing, of loneliness and friendships and a story of finding contentment and a place for oneself. This is a story in which a ten-year-old girl must face the abandonment of her mother, and find the answer to the question “Will she ever come back?” The answer, surprisingly, is “No!”, but India Opal Buloni, over the course of the novel, learns to deal with this answer through her experiences and support of a growing circle of friends, all of whom have also suffered some kind of loss themselves. And finally, it is the story of the love between a girl and her dog, a pet that has an uncanny ability to bring kindred spirits together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"