The Blueberry Balladeer

‘The Blueberry Balladeer’ by Andrew Frodahl is a tale of truth and discovering one’s self-worth. When Darcy Pickens plays a nasty trick on a friend to damage her reputation, she finds herself in hot water. With eighth grade finally over and ninth grade looming, her parents send her away for the summer, in an attempt to make her realize that kindness is more important than envy.

Darcy goes into the experience fully expecting to hate it. When she meets Uncle Petah and Aunt Freydah, she thinks her parents are playing a cruel joke on her, sending her to live in the middle of a blueberry farm with an eccentric aunt and uncle who live their lives with no electricity or even a working bathroom. She also finds herself stuck sharing a room with an orphan girl named Itsie whom her aunt and uncle have taken in for the summer along with two other boys who are living in the house.

Before she knows what hit her, she becomes invested in the state of the blueberry farm. When she unwittingly exacerbates a lifelong feud between her Aunt Freydah and Melly Nellywort, who owns the neighboring blueberry farm, she realizes that her life is not so different from her aunt’s, and maybe she truly does have something to learn while staying in Maine for the summer.

Darcy is inspired throughout the story to be better than who she’s been, and while she strives to hold others accountable for their actions, she comes to understand that she, too, must be held accountable for hers. She discovers magic and mysterious beings that upend her sense of normal and sometimes make her question her sanity, but she learns that encouraging the magic and taking her own hard look in the mirror at who she is and who she hopes to be help unleash the best version of herself.