Adventures with Waffles
by Maria Parr

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s fiction

Trille and Lena are neighbors in a small, close-knit coastal town in Norway. Through summer and into the school year around the time they’re both 9 years old, they have adventures, get in trouble, and deal with tragedy.

For the first several chapters of this book, I wasn’t quite sure what the overarcing plot was, or if there even was one. And really, much of the book is a series of adventures that these two kids get up to in this otherwise-sleepy Norwegian cove. But there is a thread that runs through it, in which Trille, who thinks of Lena as his best friend, isn’t sure whether he is her best friend. And it’s not really surprising, since she is quite an outspoken, antagonistic girl, while Trille is more meek. My own daughter has gone through something similar, more than once, so Trille’s plight hit close to home for me.

As an entire year passes, a few bigger side plots emerge, and more than one of them caused me to tear up a little. Though it’s true that Trille and Lena don’t obey their parents very well and face some consequences for their disobedience (though not always are those consequences very severe), there is quite a bit of heart in this book, and that’s what I was left with at the end. This would be a great book to read together with kids, recommended for 7-10-year-olds.

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