Treasure’s Dad left two months ago to find “the perfect place” for their family to move. Treasure’s mom, unable to pay the rent, drops off Treasure and her younger sister, Tiffany, with stern Great Aunt Grace, whom they’ve never met, and leaves to track their dad down. Treasure is used to moving — her dad is never happy in one place long — but that doesn’t mean she likes it. And Great Aunt Grace, or GAG, as Treasure starts calling her, is far from warm and loving. She has a sharp tongue. She can’t cook. She smokes, and Treasure has asthma. And she expects the girls to do chores and help out at her store. Treasure also finds an enemy in the minister’s stuck-up daughter, and has no interest in making a friend of Terrance, another new kid in Aunt Grace’s small town whom Aunt Graces pushes on her. Gradually, however, Treasure realizes that Grace may be as prickly as a pin cushion, but she loves them. And Aunt Grace is reliable, something Treasure’s dad, no matter how much he also loves them, has never been able to be. It turns out Treasure is in the perfect place. The storytelling is fresh and lively — there are great descriptions and turns of phrase, and wonderful characterizations — in this fine debut novel about a contemporary African American girl and community. (Ages 9–12)

Treasure's dad has disappeared and her mom sets out to track him down, leaving twelve-year-old Treasure and her little sister, Tiffany, in small-town Virginia with their eccentric, dictatorial Great-Aunt Grace. GAG (as the girls refer to her) is a terrible cook, she sets off Treasure's asthma with her cat and her chain smoking, and her neighbors suspect her in the recent jewel thefts. As the hope of finding their dad fades, the girls and their great-aunt begin to understand and accommodate one another. When a final dash to their dad's last known address proves unsuccessful, Treasure has to accept that he's gone for good. When she goes back to Great-Aunt Grace's, it is the first time she has returned to a place instead of just moving on. Convincing, fully realized characters, a snarky narrative voice, and laugh-aloud funny dialogue make The Perfect Place a standout among stories of adjustment and reconfigured families.