Rabbit Cake [Paperback]

Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months. But there are things Elvis doesnt yet knowlike how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning herself while sleep-eating or why her father has started wearing her mother's silk bathrobe around the house. Elvis investigates the strange circumstances of her mother's death and finds comfort, if not answers, in the people (and animals) of Freedom, Alabama. As hilarious a storyteller as she is heartbreakingly honest, Elvis is a truly original voice in this exploration of grief, family, and the endurance of humor after loss.?[A] treasure. Books about grief are rarely funny and adorablethis one is.In Hartnetts winning debut, a memorable young narrators desire for rationality wrestles with her grief. . . . Affecting.For your canon-coming-of-age-novel consideration: Meet Elvis Babbitt. A preteen whose mother recently drowned, Elvis is trying to understand the world around her.This isHartnett tells the story with immeasurable heart,wit, and charm. The books got perfect pitch from open to close.Hartnett tells the story with immeasurable heart, wit, and charm. The books got perfect pitch from open to close.Heartbreak and dark comedy fuse together in this endearing story of family dysfunction and loss.In my mind, it's damn near impossible to overstate the joys, the subtlety, and the brilliance of?Hartnett has writtenThis is the kind of book I try to resist as a noted curmudgeon, but with not a smidge more sentiment than needed,?Annie Hartnett's?What makes this book shine is that [Elvis] is both completely believable as a child [and] a compelling narrator. The reader feels her grief, her curious hunger for the world, lC4