Reviews for A Piece of the World

The average rating for A Piece of the World based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-09-23 00:00:00 Michael Hall This is actually three and a half stars rounded up. I have been meaning to try out Mildred Walker for some time, and it was a choice between Winter Wheat and this one. I wish now that I had chosen Winter Wheat. "A Piece of the World" is not bad, but it has a definite YA feel to it. After her parents' divorce, Calder Bailey is sent to live with her maternal grandmother in Vermont. Her father is busy with the new woman in his life, and her mother "has to find herself." One problem I have with the novel is that Calder takes all of this very well. The divorce doesn't seem to bother her. While Calder doesn't like that her father has left, she likes her future stepmother and wants to live with the two of them. However, she is told that her mother needs her. You get the impression that Calder is supposed to take care of her supposedly adult mother. Living in small town Vermont is a big change for Calder, who is a California girl, but she makes friends, most notably with a boy named Walt, whose family owns land on which a beautiful, green, serpentine rock rests. Calder and Walt become caught up in an attempt to protect the rock and the surrounding area from developers who want to change the area forever. While I enjoyed the book, like I said, it is definitely written for younger readers. I didn't think Calder was fleshed out well enough. I never really got a feel for her. Walt was a much better developed character. However, this is a good introduction to Mildred Walker's writing and I will try another of her books, probably Winter Wheat, in the future.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-12-11 00:00:00 Scott Clark This one isn't as good as most of Walker's other books. There are a few period details that make it feel fairly dated now. And it isn't quite a children's book, but they seem to sorta call it that. (I cannot imagine a child reading this, or getting anything out of it.)