Written by H.M. Bouwman
2026 ALA Notable Children’s Book
National Jewish Book Award Finalist
Minnesota Book Award Finalist
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2025
Junior Library Guild selection
2026 Capitol Choices selection
Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year
Whippoorwill Honor Book
A KidLit Love Podcast feature
“Scattergood truly shines, because on some level it investigates not only whether we can survive great loss, but also how. . . . Isn’t that precisely what happens in moments of tragedy? We falter in ways we couldn’t have anticipated, and emotions spiral beyond our control.
What is the proper response to a child’s pain at a time when she is growing into herself, seeking both care and independence?. . . Scattergood is a brave, beautiful book, wise enough to reach for something beyond certainty.”
—The New York Times
"[W]ise and tender. . . . Within the narrow focus of one girl’s coming-of-age in a small town, “Scattergood” raises a lot of big questions about God and fate and sickness and war. To Ms. Bouwman’s credit, the novel resists the temptation to moralize and its characters don’t provide the sort of pat answers that middle-grade readers would easily sniff out. Peggy is a delightfully no-nonsense character to spend time with. Clear-eyed about her own shortcomings, she’s steadfast in her determination to do right by her cousin, occasionally to the point of singlemindedness. As she struggles to navigate her new, not-so-quiet life, Peggy wrestles with her growing realization that there will always be questions that don’t have answers. Her friendships with the residents of Scattergood provide a backdrop for perhaps the most important question the novel raises: In the face of tragedies large and small, how do we accompany the people around us?"
—The Wall Street Journal
★ "Equal parts tender and heartwarming and tragically heartbreaking, this story, which will appeal to fans of Lauren Wolk, also offers a realistic depiction of marriage, showing compromises, challenges, and the different ways people care for and love each other. Readers will become deeply invested in the fully developed characters—each flawed and human but doing their best, Peggy included. The power of stories to connect people with others, bear witness, and create joy is an interwoven theme running throughout the text.
An engaging, textured, and deeply humane coming-of-age novel."
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
★"[A] heartfelt bildungsroman that even adult readers will enjoy. . . . The unfiltered, yet tightly woven narrative culminates as Peggy comes to understand that everything must get worse before it can get better. This is a timeless coming-of-age novel that breathes new life into the middle-grade WWII genre."
—Booklist, Starred Review
“A steady narrative pace and a variety of secondary characters who inspire questions in Peggy solidify the book’s overall appeal.”
—Publishers Weekly
"Bouwman’s writing is crisp and specific, painting a convincing picture of rural life of the period, and she stays firmly in the consciousness of her spirited, questing, analytical, mathematically inclined heroine."
—The Horn Book
"The descriptions of Peggy’s life on the farm are seamlessly woven into the narrative, anchoring it to the rural Midwestern setting. The tone is somber overall, peppered liberally with Peggy’s wry observations. . . . Secondary characters are fully developed and are not reduced to moral lessons. Through Peggy’s strong support system, Bouwman depicts small town life at its best. . . . A powerful coming-of-age story about life, loss, and community."
—School Library Journal
“This book—a rectangle of golden proportions itself—sets out to solve for the love and grief of imperfect people in an imperfect and heartbreaking world. It’s a nearly impossible equation, but Bouwman has created something akin to an answer, a kind of comfort that only comes from the very truest of made-up stories. Oh, mercy, there’s a lasting lump in my throat and its name is Scattergood.” —Liz Garton Scanlon, New York Times bestselling author of All the World
“While Peggy follows the horrors of World War Two remotely, her own grief proves more devastating than news of distant battles. The slow loss of a cancer-stricken friend, the potential dissolution of her parents’ marriage, the mistakes made with friends, the accidental maiming she causes—all lead her to appalling questions about herself in a hard world. This is a novel that gives no easy answers, no simple equations; it suggests that life is complex and challenging, that easy answers are illusions. As such, its honesty is as bracing as its prose. Scattergood really is a courageous novel.” —Gary D. Schmidt, Newbery Honoree and National Book Award–winning author of Okay for Now
“H. M. Bouwman writes with so much empathy and respect for both her characters and her readers, giving us a rich and nuanced story of a girl coming of age in a time of personal and global crisis. Immersive, thoughtful, and absolutely gorgeous, Scattergood reads like a classic.” —Anne Ursu, National Book Award–longlisted author of The Real Boy
“Scattergood is a perfect poem of a book about a girl who can’t understand poetry and seems to break everything she longs to mend. I think it may be perfect.” —Anne Nesbet, California Book Award–winning author of The Long Way Around
“Scattergood is a deeply researched and powerfully moving novel about an Iowa farm girl dealing with life and death in the fraught months leading up to Pearl Harbor. Bouwman doesn’t spare 12-year-old Peggy, whose math genius can’t save her best friend or fix broken war refugees, the pain of loss. Peggy is a character so richly drawn she leaps off the page, and as she learns hard but profound life lessons, her story will touch the hearts of young readers. This novel is truly a masterpiece, emotionally engaging to the last page. I could not put this book down, and cried several times, gasped at others.” —Janet Fox, author of Carry Me Home
“Scattergood has an intensity to it, subtle but raw, that makes its tranquil rural setting burst to life in all its hidden complexity. Peggy’s struggle to understand—and to be understood—will resonate with anyone who has felt powerless to control their own small corner of a rapidly-changing world. This thoughtful, bittersweet exploration of friendship, grief, and turbulent times reminds us that the gap between past and present is rarely as large as it seems.” —J. Anderson Coats, award-winning author of A Season Most Unfair and The Night Ride