Wren & the Long Way Up

One complete keepsake story written a reading level up, at real chapter-book density for a kid of nine or ten who reads on her own: Grandpa Sol presses his scratched brass compass into Wren's hands in September with a promise — in June, she's climbing Redtail. All year the mountain practices on her. She crosses the cafeteria to mend the friendship a jealous week nearly cost her, raises her hand again after learning that a wrong answer is a discovery, carries a broken heirloom bowl into the light and mends its cracks with gold, and takes the longest thirty-foot walk of her life to stand with the kid at the edge of the field — so when June finally comes, she already knows how mountains work: the next good step, again and again, all the way to the sky.