Point of View

The novel is written in first person from the limited perspective of Isabella Thornton. She is 11 years old. Her parents are divorced, and Isabella has recently begun to split her time equally between her father's home and her mother's. There are several factors that Isabella considers to be major elements of her life and her identity, including the fact that her time is divided between her two parents. Another major element of her identity is that her father is Black and her mother is white. Isabella is acutely aware that some people stare when she is with her pale-skinned mother. At one point, she tells her mother that she hates when she is asked to identify her ethnicity. Though she is a “blended” combination of races, she checks “Black” when forced to choose.

Readers always have the responsibility of evaluating narrators for their ability to...