“I’d be lying if I said that given a choice, I wouldn’t rather know than not know. But there are some things you can just know for no good reason other than that you do, and then there are other things that no matter how badly you want to know them, you just can’t. The truth is, whether you know something or not doesn’t change what was.” (p. 4)
Weeks, Sarah. So B. It. New York: Scholastic. 2004.
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Review:
Heidi describes her Mama as having a bum brain but that she knows her Mama loves her even if she doesn’t have the words to say so. In fact, she only knows twenty-three words. All of them are pretty easy to understand, except for one--soof. No matter how hard she tried, Heidi could never understand the meaning of that word. Their neighbor, Bernadette (who suffers from agoraphobia) takes care of them both and met them when Heidi was only about a week old. She said that some things you just can’t know. Heidi’s mother’s name is So B. It…at least that’s what she told Bernadette, but that’s about all that Heidi knows about her past. With the word soof, running through her mind, Heidi decides take a trip to uncover her mother’s past and the meaning behind that word: soof.
This was a very touching story and though Heidi’s lucky streak demands a bit of a suspension of disbelief, it nonetheless had a dialogue that came off as realistic and sincere. The book carries a universal message about love and family and the different ways that they are shaped. A nice and satisfying read.