The Size of the Truth by Andrew Smith

New Andrew Smith!!!  It really doesn't get much better than that!  The Size of the Truth is Smith's first middle-grade novel.  This much anticipated novel did not disappoint.  I loved every minute of it.  This story is so full of heart.  It is about growing up and forging your own path.  It is about not letting others fill in the blanks about you, while at the same time not filling in the blanks about the others around you.  This novel is about finding the truth about ourselves and being brave enough to show the world.  As usual, Andrew Smith has given us a story that we will be thinking about long after we have turned the last page. 

For those that have read Winger, and subsequently Stand Off, this new novel tells us the story of Sam Abernathy, a character that was introduced to us in Stand Off.   The Size of the Truth is told in both the present day and in flash backs to when Sam was just four years old.  When he was just a young boy, Sam fell down an abandoned well and was trapped for three long days.  Luckily he met a talking armadillo (or unicorn maybe?) that helped him survive those long days and nights. Bartleby vows to be there for Sam whenever he may need him.  And as Sam grows up dealing with the trauma of being "the boy in the well," he has to come to grips with the truth of what happened to him all those years ago, who he is now (besides an 11 year old boy in 8th grade), and who he wants to become.  The truth he discovers as he learns what growing up is really all about, leads us to find the Sam we all learned to love as Ryan Dean's new roommate. 

From Amazon:

When he was four years old, Sam Abernathy was trapped at the bottom of a well for three days, where he was teased by a smart-aleck armadillo named Bartleby. Since then, his parents plan every move he makes.

But Sam doesn’t like their plans. He doesn’t want to go to MIT. And he doesn’t want to skip two grades, being stuck in the eighth grade as an eleven-year-old with James Jenkins, the boy he’s sure pushed him into the well in the first place. He wants to be a chef. And he’s going to start by entering the first annual Blue Creek Days Colonel Jenkins Macaroni and Cheese Cook-Off.

That is, if he can survive eighth grade, and figure out the size of the truth that has slipped Sam’s memory for seven years.