TREE TABLE BOOK

TREE TABLE BOOK by Lois Lowry

Sophie Henry Winslow and Sophie Gershowitz are neighbors and best friends. What makes their friendship so unique and different than the typical friendship is that Sophie W. is 11-years old and Sophie G. is 88-years-old. Even though there is a large span of years between them, they both like the same types of things and get along very well together. Life continues on in a typical pattern until..

Sophie G's short term memory starts slipping. Her out of state son is returning soon to take her to be tested for something called dementia. Sophie W is a precocious child, and takes it upon herself to prepare her friend for the testing and in the process prepare herself for what the outcome of this testing may mean. Question number two of the test deals with short term memory. Three words are given to the subject for them to remember. A few minutes are waited and then the subject is to repeat the three words from memory. When Sophie G. fails this part, Sophie W. decides to give her the words and have her associate them with a story from her life to hopefully hold onto them better. The stories that end up coming out are three from Sophie G's childhood in Poland that she has never shared with anyone before. Two that take place during WWII and share persecution her Jewish family endured.

This story is very moving story celebrating the gift of friendship and does have the possibility of being a tear jerker.

HEADS UP- There are a couple of areas to share. The first has to do with a game the Sophies play. It is an ABC type game where you try and use the letter as many times as you can in a sentence such as "Bill the Bartender from Boston is a Bully." They make up these sentences about people and then pair them up with others in their game to make stories out of them.One of these pairs is a same-sex couple that is attempting to have a child through a surrogate mother. This takes up one small paragraph of the story and is never mentioned again.

-11-year-old Sophie uses a profanity one time. It appears as D*** in the text.

-There are a couple of crass stories told.