Jubilee by Patricia Reilly Giff

When she was very young Jubilee's mother abandoned her baby and from that time onward Jubilee herself stopped speaking.

"I drew a kid with red hair and green eyes, brows a little thick. I used quick lines for a pointy nose, and a squirrely nest of corkscrews for the hair. It was turning out to be a girl like me, Judith Ann Magenis. I tapped the pencil. what was missing? Of course, the mouth. My pencil hovered over the blank space. I tore the paper out of the pad, scrunched it up, and tossed it into the water. Maybe like a mother who'd toss a kid away."

Jubilee sees a man dump a dog off the coast of the island in Maine where she lives. Luckily she is able to rescue the dog and he becomes her confidant. She cannot talk at school so she has spent the last five years in a special class. She cannot speak at home but Aunt Cora (her mother's sister) can understand her drawings and hand signs. The pair have developed a beautiful relationship and Cora is certain one day Jubilee will find her voice.

In this new school year Jubilee will join a main stream Grade 5 class. This will be hard for Jubilee and she is especially worried when the teacher assigns partners for a nature assignment. There is a boy in her class called Mason. He is also an outsider. His long hours spent alone mean, like Jubilee, he has a special affinity with their natural environment. Jubilee has a fascination with turtles and so the pair settle on this as the topic for their project. Even without words their friendship slowly blossoms.

Jubilee longs to find her mother. She sees a card with a mainland address. Filled with hope and anxiety Jubilee sneaks away and catches the ferry hoping to reunite with her mother and find answers to the most burning question - why did her mother abandon her?

Read this review for more plot details. This is a gentle book which will be perfect for sensitive readers. I highly recommend the writing of Patricia Reilly Giff. Pictures of Hollis Woods is one of my top choices for Middle Grade readers. It received a Newbery Honor in 2003.

I would follow Jubilee with Sweeping up the Heart by Kevin Henkes and an older, out of print title -  Rain May and Captain Daniel by Catherine Bateson.

One more thing.  About half way through the story the teacher tells a student about a shell she always looks for:

"It's called a junonia. It loops around itself with brown square markings. Maybe someday I'll find one."  I feel that way too.  Check out my review of Junonia by Kevin Henkes.