Everything on a Waffle

Susannah D. Ketchum, a former teacher-librarian at the Bishop Strachan
School in Toronto, serves on the Southern Ontario Library Services
Board.

Primrose Squarp’s parents have been lost at sea during a terrible
storm. Everyone in Coal Harbour, B.C., is convinced that Primrose is an
orphan, but the young girl knows, “deep in … [her] heart, for no
reason,” that her parents are alive. Feeling lonely, Primrose goes to
a local restaurant to eat, where everything is served on a
waffle—except the kindly owner’s advice.

Polly Horvath, whose other books include The Trolls and When the Circus
Came to Town, has a knack for creating characters who are outrageous,
but familiar. For example, we all know people like Miss Perfidy who
“[isn’t] one to waste time in idle chitchat” and often disappears
just as Polly is in the middle of a sentence, or like Miss Honey-cut,
the school guidance counselor who doesn’t “tell anecdotes because
she [is] interesting; she [tells] them because she [isn’t].”
Primrose, herself, is a quietly strong protagonist who displays
perseverance, loyalty, tolerance, and compassion; we cheer as she
manages to remain true to herself.

Horvath embroils her characters in a web of possible, but improbable,
events and, proving Aristotle wrong, creates an entirely believable
world, which the reader is loath to abandon at the end of the book.
Highly recommended.