Title: Here Today

Author: Ann M. Martin

Scholastic Press, October 2004

Category/Age Level: Coming of Age, Ages 9-14

Characters: The story centers on Eleanor Roosevelt Dingman, and her brother Albert Einstein and Marie Curie. The children’s mother, Doris Day Dingman is an eccentric starlet wannabe in the plain middle-class town of Spectacle, NY. Mr. Dingman is a kind and levelheaded carpenter. The family lives on Witch Tree Lane, which also houses an elderly lesbian couple, a Jewish family, a bohemian family from Europe, and a single mother who cleans houses – in other words, the town misfits. 

Plot: Doris Day Dingman is constantly searching for a way to be the center of attention, and it often comes at the expense of her children. Ellie is constantly annoyed with her mother’s behavior, but keeps quiet about it, and increasingly plays the role of caretaker for her two younger siblings. To make things worse, she and her best friend and neighbor Holly are constantly picked on at school by “the sparrows,” a group of cruel girls, and just about every other kid at Washington Irving Elementary. Gradually, Doris’s dreams involve raising a family less and less, and after Kennedy’s assassination, and the awful tragedy “of Jackie’s lost dreams,” she heads to New York City to become a star, without her family. Ellie is left confused, hurt, and angry and eventually sets out to find and confront her mother.

Touchy Areas: Very few. The homosexuality of the elderly couple is very understated.

Related Titles: Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech (although that’s for an audience that’s a bit younger – but some overlap); When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt.

Comments: If the measure of a good story is how much it can make you feel for a character, then Here Today is a terrific book. My feelings for Doris Day Dingman started out as mildly sympathetic and turned into deep loathing by the end of the book. Conversely, my pity for the other four Dingmans, especially Ellie, grew and grew. “The Witch Tree Lane kids” are an endearing gang, and it is especially touching how they stick up for, and take care of, each other. The book’s ending is a little hurried, and a few mysteries are never solved, but it’s a minor thing overall. The story is layered well, and the character development superb. There are a lot of Ellies in this world, and this book should strike a chord with each one of them. I give this book a hearty recommendation.

Reviewed by Bill Varner, Senior Editor, Stenhouse Publishers