What a book! Beautiful, lyrical, lovely. ( )

Multilayered story set in France with flashbacks to World War II. Teen book. LH ( )

This is my pick for YA historical fiction. I was so moved by this book. This girl's love for her adopted grandfather really impacted me as she pressed him to reveal his painful and guilt-filled past. I love when a book has such a strong female character, although I think this book would be enjoyed by both boys and girls. The author was able to reveal Zazoo's incredible spirit. ( )

Zazoo was an interesting book. Zazoo is an orphan girl from Vietnam. She was adopted by a French soldier. Both her and her father love to ride their kayak through the canal. When riding the kayak they both love writing poems. But her father is very sick and slowly dying. Zazoo brings medicine for him from a pharmacist but suddenly a boy not like other boys ask a very strange question about the pharmacist that makes Zazoo suspicious.
I would recommend that teenage girls over 15 years old should read this book.

Although I appreciated the atmosphere of this story, the description of the countryside and the coming-of-age of the sweet young protagonist, one major part was never satisfactorily explained in my opinion. Zazoo was adopted from Vietnam by an elderly French man who was a friend of her family. I understand that quite a few orphans were adopted abroad in the wake of the Vietnam War, but it seems unlikely to me that Zazoo's Grand-Pierre would have been considered a good candidate for an adoptive parent, seeing as how he was single and old. (In fact, by the time the story began, Grand-Pierre was beginning to slide into dementia.) Even if he was a family friend, I still think he would have had difficulties adopting her.

This may be a minor issue with many readers, and indeed it's not really a part of the plot, but it was something that bothered me the entire time while I read the book. ( )