Rosetown, by Cynthia Rylant

Once you've entered Cynthia Rylant's sweetly remembered childhood world, you won't want to leave.

It’s the early 1970s. Ten-year-old Flora lives in the idyllic Rosetown, Indiana. Her mother works at a quaint vintage bookstore three days a week and her father is a photographer for the local newspaper. Flora is a bit daunted by entering her fourth year at school – the classes are notably more demanding – but she has her good friend Yury to help smooth the way. Many nice things happen to Flora. She finds a wonderful cat, who magically appears on a seat at the vintage bookstore and relaxes there. Flora adopts the cat and calls it Serenity. Her school teacher thinks she has talent as a writer and encourages her.

While Flora’s life, and the little town she lives in, seems perfect in every way, there are dark shadows at the edges. Her parents have separated, the Vietnam War is slowly winding to an end and Yury’s family has fled the Ukraine due to war. Her best friend, Nessy, lives in a gated community, a fact that hints at a world that is not entirely safe. 

These dark shadows, however, are only peripheral. They are grey clouds that soon pass over, leaving Rosetown forever bathed in sunlight and happiness.

Some readers may find Rosetown too idyllic, even saccharine. It’s true, Cynthia Rylant does describe a near perfect world. Some of it self-consciously so: the local bakery is called the Peaceable Buns Bakery and piano lessons are taken at Three Part Harmony. This reviewer, however,  was totally won over, accepting that Rosetown is almost a work of fantasy, a re-creation of the best parts of the author’s childhood. Rylant’s style has a lovely naturalism, like that of Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery. Or to use a musical analogy, this short novel has aspects of Dolly Parton’s songs of sweetly remembered childhood, such as "Coat of Many Colours" and "God’s Colouring Book".

A perfectly constructed children’s novel that strives only to be itself. 

Rosetown, by Cynthia Rylant. Published by Beach Lane. RRP: $24.99