“There’s a hurricane smashing, trashing, bashing through our house. CRASH! BANG! WALLOP!” The hurricane is Wills, Chris’s thirteen-year-old brother. He has ADHD. Having a brother who causes so much chaos around the house is hard on eleven-year-old Chris. Sometimes Wills acts like he’s six years younger, sometimes like he’s only a toddler. He throws food on the floor, has tantrums, and teases Chris relentlessly. And when Chris and Wills’s dad moves out, everyone feels abandoned. Chris believes he has to be even more supportive towards his mom when sometimes all he wants to do is shout and scream just like Wills. In the wake of his parents’ divorce, Wills starts hanging out with a bad crowd, shoplifting, and not coming home directly after school. When Chris finds a stash of money under Wills’s mattress, he knows he is up to something bad. It is only when things get truly out of control that the two brothers manage to help each other, and even find some solutions for the problems they share.
Sally Grindley captures the difficulties of living with ADHD and divorce, two of today’s most challenging family issues. Written for a wide audience of young readers, Hurricane Wills provides an honest narrative that balances daily hardship with the optimistic resiliency of a family that’s just trying to get by.
