(by Karina Yan Glaser)
I loved The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street when I read it back in 2022, and I’m not sure why it took me so long to get around to the second book in the series, but I’m also glad that I read this summertime story in the midst of summer, rather than in some other season. This book opens at the start of the Vanderbeeker kids’ summer vacation; Oliver, who’s nine, makes the pronouncement that it’s “the most boring summer in this whole history of the world.” (A bunch of his friends are away, and his friend Angie, who isn’t, is taking extra math classes and doesn’t have as much free time as he does.) Oliver doesn’t know what to do with himself other than squabble with his siblings. And none of the kids are into it when their upstairs neighbor Miss Josie suggests (yet again) that they could turn the empty lot next to the church down the block into a garden. But when Miss Josie’s husband, Mr. Jeet, winds up in the hospital, the kids decide that actually, making the lot into the garden would be the perfect thing to do, so that they can surprise Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet with it, once he gets better. (Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet both used to work at New York Botanical Garden, and they both love plants.) The kids ask the pastor for permission but he’s a little distracted; they decide to go ahead with their plan anyway. So they give themselves a deadline and pool their money and make a shopping list of supplies and set about clearing trash and weeds. Some complications ensue, and lessons are learned (about everything from recycling to making friends to generosity). This was a really sweet comfort read for me that kind of makes me want to pick up the next book right away (though in actuality I’ll probably wait until March, because these are so fun to read seasonally). I love all of the Vanderbeekers and their pets and their neighbors and the brownstone they live in and the descriptions of their Harlem block.
One minor quibble about this book: the kids’ mom reacts to Mr. Jeet’s health scare by leaning hard into ideas about healthy eating, and while the book kind of acknowledges that she’s being a bit too intense about it, the part where she has her husband collect and throw out their landlord/friend’s cans of SPAM made me cringe. I mean, as an adult reader I know the character is anxious about things she can’t control and reacting by over-controlling things she can control, but eep.
Things I love: Laney (the youngest kid) has a rabbit and the descriptions of the rabbit are amazing, as they were in the last book. And I like how Hyacinth (the second-youngest kid, who loves all kinds of arts & crafts stuff) is introduced to yarn bombing by a boy in her brother’s class who loves knitting as much as she does. Also, this sentence: “Oliver imagined that his wishes for the garden were being blown across Harlem, spreading out among the brownstones and buildings and resting upon the millions of other stories and wishes that made up the neighborhood.”
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