Coming on Home Soon

This is a large (8 1/4" x 10 3/4") paperback book, beautifully illustrated in watercolor on Arches paper. It is wartime, and "colored women" are being hired in Chicago to fill in for the men who are off fighting. Ada Ruth is left with her grandmother while her mother takes a job washing trains. Ada Ruth watches for the postman and adopts a stray cat to fill the endless days until her mother finally writes that she will be "coming on home soon." It's a gently, almost poetically told story, and the watercolor illustrations are captivating...every time you look at one of them you see something more. I'd give this book a 10 on a scale from 1 to 10 for elementary age students, but it speaks to us older readers as well.