This fun­ny, mov­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion nov­el set in Ten­nessee in the sum­mer of 1974 is per­fect for fans of such mod­ern clas­sics as Kate Dicamillo’s Because of Winn-Dix­ie and Sheila Turnage’s Three Times Lucky. Ten-year-old Josephine is hav­ing a tough sum­mer. After a fire rips through her mom’s busi­ness, they are forced to sell many of their pos­ses­sions and leave their com­fort­able apart­ment down­town to move to “Hap­py World Trail­er Park.” Run­down and filled with a bevy of unique 1970s char­ac­ters, includ­ing a motor­cy­cle cou­ple, a hip­pie cou­ple, and a cranky, “hate­ful” land­la­dy, the cheer­ful­ly named trail­er park seems to mock Josephine who strug­gles to accept her new reality—and isn’t afraid to say so! She is ¬par­tic­u­lar­ly focused on two of her new neigh­bors: Lisa Marie, a girl her own age who lives with her “grand­dad­dy” and her Uncle Buster Lee, and Helen-Dove, a moth­er whose 10-year-old daugh­ter Mol­ly was recent­ly kid­napped by rel­a­tives. Josephine fix­ates on Molly’s dis­ap­pear­ance and is deter­mined to help find her, eaves­drop­ping and look­ing for clues to her where­abouts around the trail­er park. Read­ers will eas­i­ly warm to Josephine, a mem­o­rable hero­ine who is charm­ing­ly imper­fect and full of vim and vig­or. She strug­gles to keep her always hon­est but some­times unkind thoughts to her­self and fre­quent­ly lets her imag­i­na­tion run wild. Sup­plee has imbued the text with a south­ern ver­nac­u­lar and sense of place, along with a cast of lov­able, real­is­tic char­ac­ters who are allowed to grow and change with the cir­cum­stances of their lives in a sat­is­fy­ing way. VERDICT An excel­lent, emo­tion­al nov­el sure to make an impact on read­ers young and old. (Kristy Pasquar­iel­lo, School Library Jour­nal, starred review)