Possum Summer

Blom, Jen K. (2011). Possum summer. Illus. by Omar Rayyan. New York: Holiday House. Let me just confess right here that I am a sucker for animal stories. Although I am often left unmoved by sad movies, the deaths of animals affect me strongly. Consequently, I've been known to cry over Big Red, Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, Marley, and Dewey, all memorable dogs, cats or books with dogs that moved me to tears and left me sobbing, unable to finish the book until I got myself or my emotions under control. Add to that list this wonderful offering about a girl, a cattle dog, and a possum. Left to her own devices on the family's Oklahoma farm while her mother works and her father serves in Iraq, P stumbles upon a baby possum, orphaned when her father's cattle dog Blackie killed its mother. She decides to raise it with the help of her friend Mart. This necessitates her confiscating one of her sister's bras and rigging it into a pouch where the baby possum can hide under her shirt while she attends school.

Desperate for some sort of connection, P goes against her father's wishes by trying to train Blackie and make him into a pet rather than a working dog. In his eyes, pets are frivolous, and P knows he will never allow her to keep the possum she names Ike after her grandfather. While her father recovers from his war wounds and keeps the family at a distance, writing terse letters rather than making phone calls, P does her best to keep everything on the farm humming. She checks on the cattle, tends the hens, and weeds the garden. As time grows near for her father's homecoming, she knows she must free Ike. But that's easier said than done since the two have bonded, and Ike finds his way back to P every time.
But P's carelessness causes a tragedy that she will never forget, and she can't bear to lose Ike as well.

The author has created a strong, independent character in P, an 11-year-old determined to do things her way but also to earn the respect of her father, goals that sometimes seem in conflict. I would have liked to have known more about her mother and her father who are almost absent in the story. The other characters are all secondary to P and Ike, and I missed them both when the story ended.

Favorite Lines:

"My little possum stirred, raising his nose to sniff in Mart's direction. I was pretty sure the reason Mart's eyes widened was because he was secretly falling in love with my new baby. He took a step back, and I wondered if I was right or not" (p. 15).