Great but not as good as One Crazy Summer and sequels. Grades 4+

I enjoyed this story, but I think I like her One Crazy Summer series better. Clayton is missing his grandfather, but his mother doesn't seem to miss him at all. Clayton goes on an adventure to recapture some of the life that his grandfather lived, but he ends up in big trouble.

Young Clayton Byrd suffers an sudden and unimaginable loss, and no one seems to understand his pain - not his mother, not his teacher, not even Clayton Byrd himself - but Clayton has a plan that takes him on a journey with unexpected consequences.

Sweet, emotional story. Family drama. Short, easy read.

A gem of a middle-grade novel about grief and music and family and why sometimes we make really bad decisions. Highly recommended for ages 10-13.

If I could, I'd give this one 3.5 stars. There's no one Clayton Byrd loves more than Cool Papa, his kind, blues-playing grandfather, who gave him his beloved harmonica, takes him on adventures street busking and reads to him from their special book, The Four Corners of the World. His mother,who works in a hospital, still resents her father for his unavailability when she was a child. She is hard and tough and doesn't understand the relationship between her father and her son. Clayton's father tries to enter their life but she won't let him near. When Cool Papa dies, she sells all his stuff in a yard sale for a fraction of what it's worth--even his beloved guitars. Then Clayton starts acting up. She takes away his harmonica. What's a boy to do?

My biggest problem with this book is that the mother is too much of a villain. My favorite thing about Williams-Garcia's other books was how dimensional all the characters were. This was a bit of a disappointment. But I loved Clayton and Cool Papa and I loved the intergenerational relationship at the heart of the story.

Read my review at Bookish Adventures.

I listened to the audiobook version of this story and was incredibly pleased with the narrator's voice and intonation. In the story, Clayton Byrd loses his grandfather who introduced him to the Blues and he and his mother grieve this loss in different ways. As Clayton is trying to hold on to every last piece of his Cool Papa Byrd, his mother wants him to move on - causing arguments with dire consequences.

I loved the topics represented in this book, because it really shows the aftermath of losing a grandparent and, even more trying, losing your best friend. I was 6 years old when my great-Aunt Catherine died and that, to this day, has been the worst loss to get over. Logically, older people die, but emotions don't abide by logic. Clayton deals with his emotions by trying to stay connected to the Blues music his grandfather and he played. There is a great deal of tension between Clayton's mother and Clayton about the death of Cool Papa, because while Clayton had grown to depend on Cool Papa, his mother rarely saw him in her youth. These complex ideas, along with the lovely rhythmic text are wonderfully showcased in the audiobook format- however with all the mention of the Blues, I would have loved to hear some Blues music accompanying the words.