And now Miguel by Joseph Krumgold

The first hundred pages were so slow that this book was pretty hard to get through. Basically, a boy named Miguel really wants to go on the annual sheepherding journey up into the mountains. His obstacle is that his parents think he's too young, so he spends the first hundred pages hoping they will notice how grown-up he is. Finally, at almost to the halfway point, he starts taking initiative and making his own luck. Also, The topic of prayer becomes pretty important. How do you respond when your prayers are not answered, or are answered in a surprising way? What is the right way to pray? Joseph Krumgold manages to show his characters wrestling with these questions without stepping in and giving answers. because he maintained some authorial distance, I thought that he managed to stay just barely on the secular side of the line. The discussion of prayer was easily the most unique thing about this book, and by far the most interesting to me