Hester Velmans

In a striking coming-of-age novel, a young Dutch woman living in suburban Amsterdam re-examines her past to understand why the heartbreak of her twelfth birthday still haunts her. Reprint.

Eleven-year-old Isabel is a “plain old” girl living in Provincetown, Massachusetts, who believes that she is destined to accomplish something special. When her fifth-grade class goes on a whale-watch field trip, something amazing happens: Dozens of different species of whales surround the boat, bumping the deck and …