Once for Yes

December 16, 2024
A nondescript, nearly 50-year-old apartment building named the Odenburgh helps narrate this gentle novel about grief by Millington (Olivetti). The Odenburgh knows better than to become attached to its tenants. Yet it can’t help but listen when 11-year-old Prue Laroe performs what she calls the Tub-Night Show into her apartment’s landline. Prue used to host the imaginary comedy routine with her older sisters Fifi and Lina—and then Lina was killed in a traffic accident in front of the building. Now Prue uses the disconnected telephone to chat with her deceased sister and avoid her family’s mourning. When Prue learns that the apartment building has been sold and is set for demolition, she’s heartbroken and furious. Her anguish prompts the Odenburgh to flick its lights on and off in solidarity, a phenomenon that Prue believes is Lina communicating with her through the structure. She joins forces with Lewis, an anxious boy from across the street, and resolves to unite the other tenants to save their home. Chapters swiftly alternate between the perspectives of the Odenburgh, Prue, Lewis, and other apartment dwellers, imparting a bustling tone. Flowery language occasionally detracts from the story’s emotional core. Main characters read as white. Ages 8–12. Agent: Kristen Terrette, Martin Literary.

January 1, 2025
Grades 3-6 Millington's wholesome sophomore tearjerker (following Olivetti, 2024) has readers again rooting for a lovingly dysfunctional family as an inanimate narrator intervenes to help a struggling tween set them straight. Gentrification has come for the Odenburgh, a hardened red-brick building with as many rats as quirky residents. As demolition nears, Prue, from 4C, crosses paths with Lewis, who lives across the street. Both Prue and Lewis cling to place-anchored memories of Prue's late sister, Lina, and decide to partner to disrupt the Odenburgh's demise. Loneliness is a pervasive theme, and the building's jaded but pitiable voice employs playful phrasing amid many metaphor-laden, folksy descriptors. While every character carries some sadness, 11-year-old Prue's private continuation of a pretend late-night show she and her sisters used to put on strikes a particularly melancholic chord. Prue and Lewis' efforts to save the Odenburgh spur an artful act of tenant resistance that builds community. But will it be enough to save their home? A poignant pick with a delightfully old-fashioned sensibility for fans of Chrystal D. Giles' Take Back the Block (2021).

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January 15, 2025
This contemporary novel is narrated by an unexpected storyteller: an old apartment building in a gentrifying neighborhood. The run-down, red-brick Odenburgh building chronicles the intertwined stories of its residents as they work to try to save it from demolition. Among the building's diverse group of tenants is 11-year-old Prue Laroe, a freckle-faced girl with "poufy" and "frizzy" black hair. Prue is mourning the death of Lina, one of her sisters, and carrying unanswered questions about the traumatic accident that took her life. She clings to the building, using one of its landline telephones as a confessional. When the Odenburgh flicks its lights on and off, Prue interprets it as communication from Lina: She believes that her sister wants her to try to save the building. Prue meets and works with Lewis, a lanky boy from across the street who has binoculars, too-short pants, and his own secret grief. The building continues to interact with Prue and Lewis, turning off the air conditioning and water and stopping elevators to manipulate people's movements and bring the quirky (though sometimes caricatured) characters together so the kids can get to know them and persuade them to lend their support. This contemplative story explores themes of community, resilience, and healing through poetic prose that's infused with heartache and wonder. Neither Prue's nor Lewis' racial identities are explicitly stated. A heartfelt story about loss and connection.(Fiction. 8-12)

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