Warning: This review contains minor (mostly vague) spoilers. 

I recently reread When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt. I first read it one summer - I think I was eleven or twelve - while I was staying at my grandmother's house. I liked it a lot.

When I started rereading it - a decade later - I thought I felt like I was reading an entirely different book.

I was amazed at the small details I remembered, Scarlett's lip gloss, Kate's POW bracelets, Juan's five iron. But I had forgotten whole characters and story lines. I thought there was much more about Toby (the main character) and his crush in the story. I completely forgot that his mother is absent the entire time.

However, I liked the book just as much the second time around, maybe more. It made me nostalgic for my own childhood when I first read it. But it also made me nostalgic for a childhood I never had (the book is set in a small town in Texas in 1971).
 
I also like that Holt writes about heavy subjects - the book touches on death, divorce, obesity/otherness, adolescence - without feeling preachy. There is a subtlety - Holt never beats her reader over the head with a message of acceptance - and a simplicity to her writing that make this book a good read for anyone (although that could be the nostalgia talking).