Bob (Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead)

Bob
Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead
Square Fish
Fiction, CH Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: When Olivia, her mother, and her baby sister come to her grandmother's house in rural Australia, she doesn't remember a thing about the place. After all, she was only five the last time she visited, and now she's practically eleven (well, nearly ten and a half.) How can she be expected to remember the old green stuffed elephant, or the big rock out back... or the little green creature in the chicken suit waiting in her closet?
Bob has waited very patiently for his friend Livy to return. He read his dictionary and played with his Legos and listened to Granny shouting on the telephone. Before she left all those years ago, the girl promised to help him remember who he was and where he came from so he can go home, but now she says she doesn't even remember meeting him. Still, a promise is a promise, and surely Old Livy still lurks inside this new, taller Livy - and now that she's bigger and older, surely she's smarter, too, which can only help.
As the two dust off old memories and try to follow a dusty trail to the past, they rediscover what friendship means - and find out how real magic can be, even to a sophisticated girl of nearly-eleven.

REVIEW: Bob is a fun, fast, light read, with colorful characters (literally, in the case of green-skinned Bob) and humor and just enough adventure. Livy feels torn over having forgotten something so important, even as her mother and grandmother don't seem to realize that, to a girl her age, five years ago might as well have been a lifetime; they keep insisting she should remember things and know people and seem subtly hurt when she doesn't. She's also balanced on the blurry border between young childhood and older childhood, where magical thinking starts to fade and a colder, more adult thought process tries to take hold... but she needs both if she's going to solve Bob's problem. For his part, Bob retains a childlike optimism that Livy will figure everything out, but is more than a simple caricature; he's a fun and dynamic character on his own. He was even able to look on the bright side of five years spent in a closet; he got most of the way through the dictionary, and got in touch with his "inner Bobness." There's a side story about the drought that's devastated the local farms and the neighbors, whose girl used to be Livy's best friend when she was five and feels just as awkward as Livy now that their parents insist they're still pals, for all that neither can really remember the other. The conclusion feels a little rushed, but it's sweet and leads to a nice little epilogue. The whole is a very enjoyable tale of a special friendship and the magic of childhood.

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