True Colors

Kinsey-Warnock, Natalie. True Colors.
13 November 2012, Knopf Books for Young Readers
Book received from Young Adult Books Central and Reviewed there.

Blue was found by Hannah on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed, wrapped in a quilt and stuffed in a kettle near Hannah's rural Vermont house.Blue is happy with her small town life- she has her haunts, like the newspaper office, and her friends, like the mentally challenged Raleigh and Mr. Gilpin, the newspaper editor. She even has a summer friend her own age, Nadine. Nadine comes to visit every summer, but this summer she is different. No longer interested in playing outside, Nadine prefers to talk about movie stars and hair styles, and indicates that Blue's life is really rather backwards. True is too busy to worry too much about what Nadine thinks-- she's writing the weekly gossip column for the newspaper, saving her cow from being slaughtered, trying to keep local bullies from giving Raleigh a hard time, and helping with preparations for the town's 150th anniversary. She is also intrigued about her mother and accompanies Hannah to her quilting group in hopes of finding clues to her identity. Hannah falls and is badly injured, and many events collide at the town's celebration. Can Hannah handle all of the things that are happening around her as well as uncomfortable information about her past?
Strengths: This was similar in some ways to The Moon Over Manifest, but I liked it better than that one. (Newspaper writing, family mystery, town goings on.) There is a very distinct feeling of time and place, but this adds to, rather than detracting from, Blue's search for identity.
Weaknesses: There are too many books with this title, which reminds people of a certain age of the Cindy Lauper song!