MOCKINGBIRD (MOK'ING-BURD)

An unforgettable story of closure, and one unique girl's search for it.

In Caitlin's world, everything is black and white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That's the stuff Caitlin's brother, Devon, has to explain. But now Devon's dead and Dad is no help at all. Her new friend, Michael, who lost his mother in the same shooting, is just as confused as Caitlin. Caitlin wants to help but as an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger's, she doesn't know how.
Empathy, like all social skills, is hard to understand. But Devon always said that just means you have to Work at it. Caitlin finds solace in her precise black and white sketches that anchor her world, but that doesn't help Dad or Michael. When she reads the definition of closure in her dictionary, she's determined to find it.

In her search for closure, Caitlin discovers that not everything is black and white - the world is full of colors, messy and beautiful. And perhaps, if Caitlin Works At It, she can learn some empathy after all.

Kathryn Erskine spent many years as a lawyer before realizing that she’d rather write things that people might actually enjoy reading. She grew up mostly overseas and attended eight different schools, her favorite being the Hogwarts-type castle in Scotland. The faculty, of course, did not consist of wizards, although . . . how did the headmistress know that it was “the wee redhead” who led the campaign to free the mice from the biology lab? Erskine draws on her childhood—and her second childhood through her children—for her stories. She still loves to travel but nowadays most trips tend to be local, such as basketball and tennis courts, occasional emergency room visits, and the natural food store for very healthy organic chocolate with “life saving” flavonoids.