I really appreciate a good short story collection. They are perfect if you just want a quick little story and don’t want to get hooked into a long narrative. Caroline Adderson’s new middle grade short story collection inspired by kids during the pandemic, Sunny Days Inside will help children process their experiences from last spring and fall and help them to understand they are truly not alone in those experiences.

Set in an apartment building across from a hospital, Caroline Adderson shares stories of children from so many different walks of life. There is the story of Jessica learning ASL so she could communicate with her neighbour Meena. There are the stories of the parents barely holding it together. There is the story of an elderly neighbour who contracted COVID and is taken to the hospital. Caroline Adderson mined all of the different experiences to bring young readers a diverse book of stories from the pandemic.

There is a lovely thread throughout all of the stories. Although they are separate accounts of different families there is always a connective tissue, a line or a neighbour in each chapter that brought the book together, brought the community together. It truly made me appreciate our home and the backyard we got so much use of these past 18 months.

We have all experienced things differently since March 2020. All of our experiences have been unique to our families but the stories in Sunny Days Inside bring with them a new appreciation for all of the different experiences from the early days of the pandemic. Readers will have a renewed appreciation for their peers as they transition back to school and all of the different ways we have experienced and continue to experience this ongoing pandemic.