Two years ago, Maine children’s book author/illustrator Charlotte Agell published “Maybe Tomorrow?”, a picture book that gently and poignantly addresses the process of grief. A must read for every young child dealing with loss. Anica Mrose Rissi, who grew up in Deer Isle, does something similar for slightly older, more sophisticated readers in “Season of Wishes.” The outcome is equally compelling as we watch a fifth-grade girl navigate the shores of grief and loss, at first hopelessly, then slowly to the point of recovery.

Four months ago, eleven-year-old Lily lost her twin brother Anders to a brief, shocking illness. Now that school is over and summer begins, she and her mother are still reeling from his death. Her mother barely gets out of bed, and Lily sleepwalks, lethargic and angry. The only thing keeping her going – if that’s the right word – are her daily meetings with Anders on the tire swing behind the barn. This point, which they call the overlap, is the small (and increasingly narrow) area where her world and her man meet.

Is Anders really there? Or did Lily make it up as a way to cope with the intense pain of missing him? Rissi never really says, and it doesn’t really matter. The main thing is that Anders’ presence gives Lily the opportunity to say goodbye to him, the time she did not have during his illness, to remember everything that she loved about him, to enjoy the extraordinary tightness of her twins. to connect and process his pain. (In a wonderful, subtle twist, Rissi also uses their time together to show us how the dying process works: As the overlap shrinks, we see Anders gradually become disconnected from the real world.)

No one can do this for Lily except Anders. Her mother (a single mother) is emotionally unavailable, her best friend has proven to be worse than useless, and she feels like a “radioactive freak” at school. One of the things Rissi nails perfectly is this sense of alienation specific to grieving children: Adults can often rely on other adults to empathize; Fifth graders (understandably) have no idea how to treat each other.

It also explains why this loss is so sharp for Lily: the twin bond is stronger than any other, perhaps even stronger than the mother-child bond: “Lily wasn’t Lily without her.” This is more than just sharing wordless “Our Stuff”; loving the smell of books, needing Fluffernutter sandwiches cut into diamonds, giggling over the word plumber. In fact, they are parts of each other: “He missed her like he missed his own arm.”

While all this sounds cruel, it is not, for two reasons. First of all, Rissi balances all the sadness with humor. The characters, especially the children, love puns and have a wicked sense of humor. His jokes are always funny and entertaining for people of all ages to read.

Another source of enjoyment is that the beauty of Maine’s natural world permeates the entire book. Rissi dedicated this book to Deer Island, and his love for it and its people shines through in almost every paragraph. He fills the story with wonderful minor characters and never misses an opportunity to enjoy the scenery, changing seasons and rugged beauty. He conveys all this not in long lyrical passages (which any young reader might skip) but in the daily lives of characters who spend their time picking wild berries, making jokes about the smell of clams under the Deer Island bridge, or bursting into flames. seaweed leaves on the shore. Lily knows that “(T)he salt pine-granite air is as much a part of her as her kidneys.”

Rissi’s only missteps occur in a few passages where he tries to imbue some of the wildlife with human qualities, such as speech, or shifts the perspective to, say, a bird or a fox. Maybe he wanted to add some fantasy to the story, but the effect is jarring.

Lily spends most of the book desperate to stop Anders from leaving her a second time as the Overlap shrinks. But gradually and with her encouragement, he finds new friends, helps their mother emerge from her cocoon of sadness, and finally – in a truly touching scene – manages to make her truly sad. The story moves quickly, with short chapters, lively, colorful prose, and fast-paced, convincing dialogue. Rissi’s book is by turns profound, humorous, heartbreaking and moving. “The Season of Wishes” has a little something for every reader, not just the mourners.

Amy MacDonald is a children’s book author living in Portland and Vinalhaven. He can be reached at [email protected].

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