Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

This book is a Newbery winner from 2013, and is about a young girl in 1930s Kansas who is sent by her dad to live in his old hometown, and she spends the summer on a mission to learn as much as she can about her father and what he was like in the year or two that he lived there. The storyline of the book is split between 1936, when Abilene is hunting for information about her dad, and 1918, when her dad was a young kid living there. The 1918 storyline covers a lot of important historical events, like WWI and the Spanish influenza epidemic, plus tells the story of an interesting town filled with immigrants from all over Europe.

I read this for my book club, and I'm happy that it was also a Newbery winner so that it helped to count for that goal of mine as well, but I did not love it. For some reason I just couldn't get into it. I think it's one I might have liked more when I was a kid, but I never really got into the story or invested in the characters, and it felt like a chore to read. Some of the conflicts seemed totally contrived and not believable, and I don't think that should be allowed even in a middle-grade novel that's meant to be read by tweens and young teens. Definitely not my favorite book but not terrible... I wonder if my kids will like it when they get a little older.