Gr 4-6-Brendan Buckley is fascinated by rocks and minerals. While at the mall with his grandmother, he comes upon a mineral show and begins talking to an older man who's the president of the local society. Brendan wants to join, but when his grandmother, Gladys, sees them together, she drags him away. It turns out that Ed DeBose is the grandfather he's never met. Ed and Brendan's mom are white; his dad and Gladys are black, and Brendan has grown up as a black boy. No one in his family will talk about the man, especially his mom, who grows furious whenever her father's name is mentioned. So Brendan decides to find Ed and ask him what happened-and to do it without anyone in his family finding out. This is an absorbing look at a 10-year-old boy who has never had to deal with race and prejudice, who collides into years of anger and hurt in his family and must create a new identity for himself. Although the story occasional veers into sentimentality, Frazier writes affectingly about what being biracial means in 21st-century America.-Walter Minkel, New York Public Library Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.