ladygrey
Written on Jan 1, 1986
and wonderfully poignant. It helps that the characters are established so well in earlier books, but I think they are strong enough to stand alone in this book if you hadn't read anything earlier.
And one of the things I love is that this is a middle grade book. It's completely appropriate and understandable to a 12 year old. But it isn't simple, like a lot of middle grade books. It's the sort of thing you can read and understand and enjoy as a child perfectly well. But it's also complex enough to be intriguing to an adult, with depths of meaning and significance I encounter only as I read it again and again. And it's so worth it.