MMGM: Navigating Early, by Clare Vanderpool

"There are no coincidences. Just miracles by the boatload."

That's what Jack Baker's mom used to say, but in the months since her death, it's been hard for Jack to find anything but troubles. His distant and stern father takes him away from his home in Kansas and enrolls him in a military boarding school in New England...where the only person who seems more out of place than he is Early Auden, the strange orphaned boy who is part genius, but mostly--in the eyes of his classmates--just strange. Early can calculate Pi to hundreds of digits...but he also thinks Pi is a person, a real person, and that every digit tells a story, and that somehow that story will help him find his own missing brother. So when Early ropes Jack into his fall break quest to find the missing Pi, Jack is prepared for a good dose of craziness--but not for the boatload of miracles they will find.

Somewhere in the strange filing-system of lists that is my brain, I have a list of "themes worth writing about and living by" and "There are no coincidences" is at the top of them. So it's no surprise that I absolutely loved Navigating Early. It has the tight plotting and fully-fleshed characters that you'd expect from Clare Vanderpool if you've read Moon over Manifest (though the pacing was slower--more what I'd expect from an adult book than a middle grade novel), and an ending that is absolutely breathtaking.

And I'm left, as I was after reading her first book, in awe of Clare Vanderpool's ability to write entertainingly about things that are important, without ever hitting you over the head with her ideas. Because she doesn't write about ideas--she writes about people. (And suddenly the appropriateness of telling the story of Pi, the person, not the mathematical idea, just struck me...!)

For more Marvelous Middle Grade Monday recommendations, see the list of participating bloggers at the site of Shannon Messenger (who just had her second book release last week, by the way!)