Thirteen-year-old Diggy Lawson has already shown his steers in several competitions at the county and state fairs in Minnesota but this year is supposed to be an important year for him. His competitor, July Johnston, is older and will not be taking any animals to the fair this year so Diggy has made it his goal to raise a steer that will win grand champion at the state fair.

Diggy’s family members are just he and his Dad, Pop, since Diggy’s mother abandoned them when he was just a baby. They have a good relationship and all is well until one day Wayne Graf’s father literally “dumps” fourteen-year-old Wayne in their drive and leaves. Diggy thinks that Wayne will be with them only for a short time but soon weeks have passed and Wayne has not gone home. Wayne’s mother has died and Diggy soon learns that Wayne’s real father is Pop Lawson who is also Diggy’s father. Eventually, since Wayne is becoming like a member of the Lawson family he joins 4-H and gets a steer to raise and show at the fair. Because they are sharing a home and a father, trouble soon brews between Diggy and Wayne as they both search for a resolution to their feelings regarding their parentage and their friendship. Steering Toward Normal is an excellent title for this book since the 4-H steer projects help Diggy and Wayne resolve the emotional issues that they are facing as a result of the recent turn of events.

This book is a wonderful read for the middle grade boy especially for one who can relate to the 4-H fair experience. The novel provides a good description of the essential efforts involved in preparing an animal for a fair competition. The details allow the reader to understand the intensity of the process but don’t overwhelm the story line.

How people deal with losing a loved one through death or abandonment is another theme that runs through the plot. The author includes believable events in the telling of the story that reveal how the characters grow and how they learn to cope with their losses.

I have attended many county fairs but have never participated in a 4-H project. I certainly gained a better understanding of the experience by having read this book.

This review is from an ARC courtesy of NetGalley.
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Diggy Larson is thirteen and smaller than his peers, but for the past four years he’s raised a steer from a calf to an adult weighing nearly a ton and entered it into the State Fair for 4-H. Last year he won a blue ribbon (the second highest honour) this year, though, he plans to win purple–Grand Champion. However, he hasn’t had his calf two days before a truck pulls up at the end of the road and out falls Wayne Graf–a boy from his class–and his suitcase falls out with him. His mother died three weeks prior and during that time it came out that Diggy’s father was also Wayne’s father, which had been something of a shock to the man who’d been married to Wayne’s mother and had raised the child as his own.

So now, on top of trying to raise the best steer the state of Minnesota has ever seen, Diggy is stuck with someone who claims to be his half-brother. All he wants is to spend time with July, a girl he likes–the one who won Grand Champion the year before and who’s left it up to him to win this year, but Wayne has arrived and disrupted his happy life.

I haven’t read a book intended for the nine to thirteen set in a few years, but Steering Toward Normal is excellent. Rebecca Petruck doesn’t shy away from some grown up subject matter–abandonment of a child by a parent, alcoholism and how difficult it can be to quit (Wayne’s father takes being widowed badly) and what impact that has on children. There’s also laughter and love and the importance of family and compassion. Every character is fully-formed–even the steers have their own personalities.

This book is the very definition of heart. Steering Toward Normal is full of heart.

The plot takes place between Diggy getting his calf and showing at the State Fair a year or so later. It moves at a clip and can feel a bit rushed at times, but Petruck probably didn’t want to saddle a nine year old with a 500 page book about raising a steer. Though, I must admit, the process was fascinating. Those kids put an impressive amount of time, energy and love into bringing up their animals.

There was one other subplot that concerned Diggy’s other hobby that seemed slightly unbelievable in terms of time–he was spending hours a day with his steer and had to do homework and presumably chores and had to eat and sleep–I simply wasn’t sure when he was working on this other, seemingly time-intensive hobby. Still, that didn’t take anything away from my enjoyment of the book and I would definitely recommend it to middle grade students, whether they were interested in farm animals or not, as they most certainly would be by the end.

[I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.] ( )

Diggy was left on his father’s doorstep when he was born, then his mom left town on a tractor. Over the years, he has managed to hide the hurt of being abandoned (and many tractor jokes) while establishing a great relationship with his dad who everyone calls Pops. Read the rest of the review on my blog: http://shouldireaditornot.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/steering-toward-normal-rebecc... ( )