To Come and Go Like Magic is a middle grade fiction title about wanderlust, about wanting to leave home and see the world and yet wanting to know that there will always be a home to return to.

The story is written in short, vignette-style chapters, each one giving a glimpse into the life of twelve year old Chileda Sue Mahoney of Mercy Hill, Kentucky. Chili Sue is growing up in the heart of Appalachia in the 1970’s, the same decade that I experienced adolescence. My small town childhood in West Texas may have been a bit more filled with opportunity and vision than Chili’s, but I understand the general theme and feeling of the book: how Chili Sue wants to travel, go somewhere, see foreign places, and how she fears that her dreams will never come true.

Lots of good, growing-up, wisdom in this book:

On losing friends:
“One day at the Piggly-Wiggly, Melody Reece was wearing Ginny’s sandals. Last year we traded. . . . I stopped in the aisle that day holding a head of iceberg lettuce and a dozen eggs with my eyes hooked on Melody’s feet. Her toenails were painted neon purple and this completely ruined the natural effect of those sandals. Suddenly I realized–this is how it happens. One day you occupy a spot in a pea pod where you trade shoes and T-shirts and secrets, and the next day your spot goes to somebody else.”

On leaving home:
“I always figured Lenny would leave and not look back, but he says even when your number-one goal in life is to leave a place, you might still want to remember it.”

On respect:
“Pop says this is just like a VISTA. They like to show the dirt roads and the shacks and the barefoot kids on television and leave out everything that’s good and pretty. We’re not down her to promote tourism, they say, when anybody complains. But in these hills even kids with shoes go barefoot. We like to go barefoot. We get stung by honeybees till our feet swell up and turn red and itch like the dickens, but barefoot is who we are.”

On sweetness:
“Well,” she says, “you could be a real sweet girl if you didn’t sass.”
I look at the floor. Sweet. That’s the last thing on earth I want to be. You can find sweet all over the place. Mercy Hill’s cup is running over with sweetness.
“I don’t want to be sweet,” I say. “I want to go places . . . I want to really go places, like travel to the other side of the world.”

To Come and Go Like Magic is a good, gentle, dare I say sweet, story about growing up in the hills of Kentucky and trying to figure out life while living it and listening to all the voices around you giving you all kinds of different advice. Chileda Sue finally charts her own course, concluding, “I can leave Mercy Hill, but Mercy Hill won’t ever leave me.”