Jeremy Fink is a peanut-butter-aholic, a collector of weird shaped, mutant candy, and he’s afraid to ride public transportation. His best friend in a kind of boss-her-around way is Lizzie, knows all about him, and she won’t stand for him staying the same forever. They’ve been each other’s best buddies since they were a year old, so when a month before his 13th birthday, Jeremy gets a gift from his father — who died five years before — that says it holds the meaning of life, who else but Lizzie would be a person to share the quest to find all the keys?
Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life is an unusual book in many ways, but it’s a good one, and provides middle grade readers with an optimistic view of a world in which losses can be restored, old mistakes can be fixed, and there’s a happily ever after out there at the end of the road. Both poignant and touching and sometimes hilarious (I mean, Jeremy is a bit… weird. His sweat smells like peanut butter…!), this is a good quiet read for a rainy day.
