Grace Welcomes the Lady Next Door: Book 1 in the “Growing Up Polite” Series

​

Grace Welcomes the Lady Next Door is the first in a series of books to instill manners in children during a time when the world seems far from civility. 

 

In this first book, Grace Polite is missing her home state of Georgia and her mother after Mama died of breast cancer and her family moved to the state of Michigan. It’s just her father, little brother and sister and her now. The move to Michigan was designed to give the family a fresh start, but the adjustment is difficult for all of them. 

 

Grace misses everything about home, including the southern hospitality. However, when summer brings a new neighbor next door, Grace has an idea to use the manners her mother taught her to make their new house feel more like home. 

 

Overview

Grace Welcomes the Lady Next Door opens with Grace Polite, a second grader, watching a moving van pulling into the house next door. She and her family - her father, little sister, Hope, and little brother, Jojo, short for Joseph - moved to this town in Michigan from Georgia in February, the dead of winter in Michigan. It is now August, and with the weather being much nicer, the Polites are getting a new neighbor. 

 

Grace and her family are feeling a loss because they moved to Michigan to get a fresh start after Grace’s mother died. Their father needed new scenery, and Grace sees him occasionally emotional at times. She and her siblings miss their mother, too, but Grace says their mother always told her that they could talk to God about her in their prayers. Grace’s mother also taught her good manners. 

 

As she watches a new neighbor move in, she gets an idea she is sure her mother would have liked. She asks her father if she and her siblings can take food to their new neighbor. The encounter exhibits their polite behavior and leads to their new house starting to make them feel more at home.

 

Logline: 

A homesick little girl shows kindness to a new neighbor and discovers how the polite gesture is the beginning of making her new house feel more like home.