Hattie Owen prefers to be steeped in the familiarity of her small-town life than to think about the vast world beyond her own. Her family's boarding house is where she feels most at home, with its eccentric tenants and predictable routines, so different from the controlling and repressive home of her well-to-do grandparents who live nearby.But during the summer that Hattie turns twelve, her world is turned upside-down with the startling arrival of an uncle no one has ever spoken about. Now that Adam's "school" (an institution for the mentally disabled) is closing, Hattie's family must deal with a childlike young man whose existence they've denied for years. And Hattie experiences a summer that expands her world in the most unpredictable ways.
With grace and compassion, Ann. M. Martin tells a story of a complicated and fated friendship in which listeners will lose a piece of their hearts. A Corner of the Universe was a 2003 Newbery Medal Honor Book.