Borrowed Children — George Ella Lyon

Golden Kite Award winner
1989 Booklist, Editor's Choice
School Library Journal, Best Books of 1988
Publisher's Weekly , Best Books of 1988
Twelve-year-old Amanda Perritt is pitched head-first into adult responsibilities when she has to quit school to care for her newborn brother and invalid mother. She gets an escape, she thinks, when she's offered a trip to stay with her grandmother and her sophisticated Aunt Laura in Memphis. But during the visit, she discovers unexpected parallels between her mother's childhood and her own and comes to understand her own individuality as well as what it means to be part of a family.