Life on the Refrigerator Door: A Novel by Alice Kuipers

Here is the book on Amazon.

Claire is a teenage girl who lives with her mother. This book chronicles the way they communicate with each other in the midst of their busy lives. Claire is a young, caught up in the world of friends, school and boys. Her mother is a doctor with a tight schedule and a single parent. The two aren’t able to spend as much time with each other as they would like so they write each other little notes. They tape these notes to the fridge for one another to discover. The notes range from single sentences about the day, to grocery lists, to small quarrels between mother and daughter, but as the book progresses, there is more and more to write about as the women face hardship. In the end, it is these notes that keep the women communicating with one another when things become almost too difficult to discuss. In the end, the notes bring them together and grant Claire a sense of peace that is greatly needed in her life.

While it sounds a little sappy, I really liked this book. I felt it would be appropriate for students to read in the classroom and out. It teaches them about making inferences, the genre of the epistolary novel, and dialogue. The book encompasses the themes of family dynamics, grief, loss, communication and adolescence. It's poignant, but it's not too drawn out or dramatic. I think it would be a great book to use in the classroom and I think students would learn a lot through an easy read.