Serefina Under the Circumstances

Serefina is a precocious and verbose young girl who has never kept a secret in her entire life. Still, her grandmother trusts Serefina with a big secret: she's throwing Serefina's little brother a surprise birthday party. Serefina's vibrant imagination envisions the secret growing bigger and bigger as she has a harder time keeping the secret. This books uses an immense amount of metaphor that almost places it into magical realism. Marjorie Priceman's illustrations often interpret these metaphors literally, which creates a beautifully expressive backdrop for this story.

I thought this book was a great expression of imagination for younsgters to explore. The author truly was able to relay the message of how a young girls imagination got the best of her as she was honored to keep a secret her grandmother asked her to. Even though this young character in the story was not able to do what was asked of her for very logical reasonings on her part, the story was very well concluded with Serefina's grandmother expressing her never ending love and understanding of her granddaughters actions.