Shadow Baby

This was a very enjoyable, engaging read. The protagonist is an eleven-year-old girl named Clara winter (she prefers to give her last name a small w, and she has her reasons), who is extremely clever, and a bit of a word freak. You will like her, I promise. She does not have many people in her life, a fact she endeavors to understand, but she has many imaginative theories. In fact, Clara's creative mind gives birth to a multitude of stories about everyone and everything around her. Her persistence and enthusiasm is adorable, charming, and, it turns out, precipitates what she needs to move on and grow up to be the amazing person she will be.