The Missing Pieces of Me by Jean Van Leeuwen

Feel free to message me if you need more details or additional pictures. I do my best to capture condition issues in the photos and description of the item. All books have been displayed in a smoke-free, pet-friendly environment since coming into my possession. If present, dust jackets may be torn or have missing pieces. You may find pencil or pen marks, previous owner names/nameplates, bumping to corners, shelf wear, spotting and at times a faint musty odor. Vintage books, even if well-loved or hidden away in someone’s attic, will have imperfections. Otherwise in very good, like-new condition.

One has some ink marking to fabric in endpapers and excess glue from the manufacturing process on top/bottom of spine. Both written by Jean Van Leeuwen and illustrated by Ann Schweninger. The fact that Weezie ends up feeling okay about herself without her and her mother coming to terms is refreshingly honest as well as heartening for readers whose adults aren’t as emotionally available as they’d like them to be.Oliver, Amanda, And Grandmother Pig (1987) and Amanda Pig and Her Best Friend Lollipop (1998). The memories she shares of her jolly grandmother make Weezie’s empathy and good nature believable even amid her grim confession circumstances readers will relate to her tenacity and resilience despite the ’80s setting that has her looking through newspapers and using payphones to track down her dad. Though Weezie’s story is heartbreakingly sad, she herself remains low-key and pragmatic about the whole thing, doing what it takes to survive life with a difficult woman with exceptionally poor parenting skills. With the help of an old friend and a new one, Weezie locates her father’s mother, but it’s only through bonding with the father of her youngest sibling, who has his own problems with her mean-spirited mother, that she finally learns to stand up for herself and insist that she be allowed to meet her only remaining grandmother. Momma also won’t tell Weezie who her father is, so Weezie does some sleuthing to try to find him on her own. Her kind neighbor tries to assure her that she is a good girl, and that her mother is so hard on her because she’s lost so much and because raising three kids on her own, each with a different dad, is hard. Ten-year-old Weezie tries everything she knows to make her mother happy, but she fears her mother doesn’t really love her.

The Missing Pieces of Me by Jean Van Leeuwen