MMGM: The Girl Who Could Not Dream, by Sarah Beth Durst

There is so much to say about this book, I don't even know where to start. The sheer amount of imagination packed into it . . .

What if dreamcatchers could store the dreams they caught, and what if a dream distiller could extract the dreams and funnel them into bottles? Would you want to buy one? If you were a little girl living above the shop that sold bottled dreams, would you sneak downstairs and drink an unlabeled dream, just to see what it was like?

And if there was a monster in this dream, would you introduce yourself to it and tell it how nice its tentacles were?

That's our main character, Sophie, so you know right off the bat that she's all kinds of awesomeness. In a marvellous twist on "it followed me home can I keep it," Sophie discovers she can bring a monster out of a dream. "He's really very sweet. Can I keep him? Please?"

Monster is possibly the very best talking creature ever to appear in a book, and you have to read this book just to meet him. He is utterly hilarious. (Sometimes he does Sophie's homework: "Last time you wrote every letter upside down. I had to claim it was an artistic experiment.") He's also smart and fierce and loyal and loves cupcakes.

The Girl Who Could Not Dream is a sweet, cute, funny book about some very scary things. The smooth-talking kidnapper Mr. Nightmare, with his perfectly normal suburban house, frightened adult me. But Sophie is stalwart, kind and straightforward, and she thinks outside the box. With Monster by her side (and, yes, the odd pink ninja bunny) she is prepared to rescue her friends and parents from someone with a very twisted idea of what dreams are for.

The writing is vivid, tangible, tasty—I loved the descriptions of the dream shop and the dream-distilling process—it would totally work that way! All the characters are people you could meet (while you're walking down your street)—I was particularly impressed with Sophie's loving, protective parents, who would do anything to keep their daughter safe and happy—they just ended up being afraid of the wrong thing.

This is a book about families and friendship, about secrets and truth, about trusting the right people and being afraid of the right things. (Yes, sometimes you should be afraid of pink bunnies. Depending on who you are.) It was delightful, exciting and substantial; I would happily return to this world and spend time with these people again. And maybe drink a dream while I was there.

The Girl Who Could Not Dream is a sticky, flakey pastry and a mug of dark hot chocolate you bought in the bookstore/cafe a kindly older couple recently opened in a renovated old house in your neighbourhood.

It's been a while since I've had a middle-grade book to review, but I've been getting lots of great suggestions from Shannon Messenger's weekly blog round-up. Thanks for connecting us together, Shannon, and best of luck with your most recent book launch!