Deb Aronson

When I realized “Hummingbird Season,” a debut novel by Stephanie Lucianovic, is a story set in the time of COVID-19, I set the book aside for minute. I was not excited to relive those memories. But it turns out “Hummingbird Season” is more broadly about loneliness and feeling muted, left out or not heard. This is a theme I think every young reader (and older reader!) can relate to.

Gary Schmidt is one of my all-time favorite kid-lit authors. If you’ve read “Wednesday Wars” or “Okay for Now,” those are Schmidt’s work. So when I came across a book of his I didn’t know about at a library book sale, I snatched it up. What a find “Orbiting Jupiter” was! It’s not a new book, only new to me. Maybe some of you haven’t read it either. Maybe some of you don’t know Schmidt.

This is a charming book that I treasured when I was a young reader. The narrator/author is telling a true story from his childhood about adopting a wild raccoon he named Rascal. It harkens back to a simpler time [also a little warning, he and a friend take the baby raccoons from their nest, which is not cool these days!]. The reader gets to see how smart and mischievous Rascal is and all the adventures the two have together. Why should I read it?