Most famous for her Baby-sitters Club series, Ann M. Martin also wrote standalone books for middle-grade readers. One of these is the 1986 novel With You and Without You, in which a preteen girl must face the fact that her father is dying. The narrative takes place over a year and half of her life, giving us a sense of the family after the father’s diagnosis, the immediate aftermath of his death, and what the grieving process looks like for everyone in the family a year after his passing. Described as a tear-jerker by readers, the novel stresses that there is no one correct way to mourn the death of a loved one and that many different kinds of emotions are equally okay during that process. Twelve-year-old Liza O’Hara lives in Connecticut with her family of six: her dad, a successful advertising executive, her mom, the head of the English department in their public school district, her sixteen-year-old brother Brent, and her two younger sisters, ten-year-old Carrie and four-year-old Hope. Recently, Liza’s dad has been feeling unwell. At around Thanksgiving, his doctor diagnoses him with cardiomyopathy (a heart condition); it turns out he has between six months and a year to live. The family is flattened by the news. Close-knit and loving, it’s clear that Dad is a warm and wonderful figure in the children’s lives. When she hears the news, Liza runs to her best friend Denise’s house where both girls collapse into tears. At school, Liza has to play the Ghost of Christmas Future in her seventh-grade production of A Christmas Carol. She has extreme stage fright and the assignment is causing her to panic. In response, she demands that her family not come to the Christmas pageant so they won’t see her make a fool of herself on stage. However, when she overhears her dad telling her mom how much he regrets not being a part of the last pageant he is likely to see, Liza realizes where her priorities should lie. She asks Dad to come to provide moral support and then ends up performing her role in the play with aplomb. Because Dad has always loved Christmas, the family decides to go all out on Christmas this year, making a memorable holiday for him and creating good lasting memories of him for themselves. The O’Haras have a lovely Christmas; everything turns out exactly as they would want during the holiday. The novel then skips to the next summer, as Dad dies in June. During his funeral, each of his children gives a heartfelt and emotional eulogy—even four-year-old Hope says a few moving things about how much she loves him. Liza gets over her stage fright to speak as well. A year after Dad’s diagnosis, and six months after his death, the family is trying to adjust as best as they can to their new reality. Because they couldn’t afford the giant house that had been in the O’Hara family for generations on just Mom’s salary, the family had to sell it and decamp to a small three-bedroom house where all the children, except Brent, have to share rooms. Mom goes back to school to get another degree at night, and the children now have more responsibilities since they are on their own a lot more often. Grief hits everyone differently. Everyone except Liza goes often to visit Dad’s grave, but she can’t bring herself to go because it would mean acknowledging that he is really gone. Hope has become scared and clingy instead of her former rambunctious self, so much so, that she is scared to sleep in her own bed and starts sleeping in Mom’s room. When the next Christmas season starts, the family realizes that Dad was by far the most Christmassy of all of them. For Liza’s mom and siblings, this means trying to really get into the Christmas spirit as a way of connecting with Dad, but Liza can’t bear to think about celebrating anything. She feels that allowing herself to feel any happiness is a betrayal of Dad. After a particularly heated exchange with her family, Liza decides to boycott Christmas altogether this year. Liza’s crush, thirteen-year-old Marc Radley, asks her to a Christmas party and to a movie, but even though she has really wanted him to ask her out, both times Liza lies that she can’t go. She ends up going to Christmas party after all, but everyone’s joy and good cheer unnerve her so much that she leaves. When Marc follows her, she finally explains that every time she gets close to having fun, she feels guilty. Marc talks sweetly and understandingly with Liza about her emotions. She realizes that celebrating Christmas could actually be a way of celebrating Dad. When Christmas comes around, Liza takes back her decision to boycott, and the family ends up having a nice—if somewhat bittersweet—time. The novel ends on a hopeful note, as Brent gets into his first choice of college (Princeton), Hope gets some of her self-confidence back, and Liza finally starts visiting her dad’s grave.

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Ann M. Martin

Middle grade

Novel

Fiction

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With You and Without You

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