Missing May by Cynthia Rylant

I had never read this (very short) Newbery award winner, and I thought it was very well done. The story is about a girl, Summer, who has been living with her great-aunt and uncle May and Ob in West Virginia, and her life is turned upside down when May dies. She and Ob don't know how to go on without her, and she worries that Ob's going to give up and die too and leave her alone. I loved the depiction of how kind and loving May and Ob were, and how they took in this poor girl and loved her to pieces. I loved how the story was very calm and slow, and kind of anticlimactic, about how she and Ob began to grieve and mourn for May but to also figure out how to live again. But I kind of wanted it to be more like Walk Two Moons with more of an adventure in the journey that Summer, Ob, and Cletus went on. It felt like their trip should have been bigger and more extended, and they could have learned more from it. But I enjoyed what there was, and how real it all felt. I don't know that this was my favorite middle-grade novel out there, but it was still good.