In a jungle village, a Boston girl finds her heart — and touches ours

This is the ninth in a series of posts about novels for young readers that transport American characters into other cultures and countries. For suggesting Laugh with the Moon, thanks to Katy Manck, MLS, a “librarian-at-large” in Gilmer, Texas who is president of the International Association of School Librarianship. Katy writes about YA books, “beyond the bestsellers,” at BooksYALove.com.

Some novels are just winning. They first win your attention, then your interest and connection — and finally, if they’re really good, they win your love. That’s how it was, for me, to read Laugh with the Moon.
           Author Shana Burg draws on years-ago experience with rural education in Malawi, a tiny landlocked nation in southeast Africa, to take us there — very grudgingly, at first — with 13-year-old Clare. She’s a doctor’s daughter whose mom passed away about a year ago. Her dad brings her with him for two months in a jungly rural district deep in Malawi, where he’ll work for an international medical charity and she will attend a local school.
          From the first moments after the Air Malawai plane lands and its door opens, as “tiny beads of sweat bubble up all over my skin” and all Clare sees through her window is “forest-green, olive-green, green-gold. And rain, rain, rain,” we are immersed with her in this world that’s so different from her home life in Boston. Deep in a grief she doesn’t know what to do with, Clare is giving her dad the silent treatment. “I doubt I’ll ever smile again,” she thinks.
          She’s wrong, of course; but it takes the whole story for her to find the laughter the book’s title promises. In Mzanga Village Primary, where she’s the only white student in school and is welcomed with this culture’s generous warmth, Clare knows right away she’ll be friends with Memory, a girl her age who has lost both parents. She gets to know other classmates, too — the troublesome Agnes, the handsome Saidi and Handlebar, a boy whose mother rode on a bicycle’s handlebars to reach a hospital and have her baby. When a weekend day trip lurches suddenly toward tragedy, Clare has to confront heartbreak all over again ... and, with the deep connections she has found here, at last she is able to open. To her grief, to sadness ... to everything.
          This is an engaging read and a beautiful story. It’s funny and inspiring to witness, with Clare, the ways the village kids and those who try their best to teach them cope with privations and challenges far beyond those that face even the most resource-poor American school. Burg’s characters rise easily from her pages to life. And in the end, her novel pries open our hearts, even just a little, right along with Clare's.