When her family moves to a new town, Alice is devastated. However, by walking the town with Miss Millie, Alice gains a powerful new friendship and learns about the town’s history of segregation and the work left to be done.

Synopsis:
Alice's parents have recently separated. Her mother has moved her and her brother to Georgia where she was raised to live with Alice's grandmother who is suffering from Alzheimer's. Alice is struggling with the transition. She wants to go home and she is struggling to make friends in her new home.
One day Alice eavesdrops on a conversation Miss Millie, her neighbor, is having. She is sent to apologize and also to offer to walk Miss Millie's dog to make up for her bad manners. Miss Millie's dog doesn't like to walk without Miss Millie so Alice and Miss Millie start walking together and Miss Millie becomes her first friend in her new home.

My rating:

4/5

This is a really cute read about friendship. It is a diverse read as well. Miss Millie is African American and shares with Alice some of the struggles she has faced as a black woman living in the south. Alice also has a brother who is deaf.

This is a middle grade book and I appreciated the age appropriate discussion about racism and racial prejudice.

On a personal note, I loved that Alice came from Ohio. I am from Ohio but I did live briefly in Georgia so I appreciated the contrast of the areas perhaps more than a reader might who hasn't lived in both places. I felt much of the same culture shock that Alice does with the move.

While I thought this book was fine and did some good things it wasn't anything extraordinary, in my opinion. It did give me the feels in several places but it isn't a book that I expect will stand out in my mind in a year or so.

It was an above average book overall but again not something that made a huge impression on me and that is likely to stay with me.

I liked Alice and I understood her struggles. I also really liked the characterization of her family members and Miss Millie.

I am not sure what more I wanted from this book but I just wish it had stood out more and given me a more memorable experience.

It is probably an amazing middle grade book but it isn't one of those middle grades that I think reads just as well for an adult audience.

It had some good life lessons and those were not presented in a heavy handed way.
I would recommend this book if you are a parent wanting to get a book for your middle grade child that touches on the topics mentioned. I think this is a good book for a child. ( )

I loved the relationships in this story: the intergenerational one between Alice and Miss Millie; the sibling one of Alice and Eddie; the deaf and hearing one of Eddie and Pam. Miss Millie sums up the theme with her wise words: " ... you're doin' the best ya can. We're all in this great big world just bumpin' around each other trying to do the best we can." Indeed. ( )

Alice moves with her mother and brother from Ohio to Georgia in the mid 1960s to care for her ailing grandmother. Without realizing she picks up on a party line conversation, but then listens in. As punishment, her mother makes her go to the elderly neighbor whose privacy she invaded. Alice finds herself with a new friend, as walking with Miss Millie and her dog Clarence every day becomes a high point of her new life and teachers her a lot about segregation and attitudes in the South that have been a part of Millie's life. ( )