Jonathan Safran Foer, EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE

A young boy loses his father in the 9/11 attacks and afterward finds a "key" in an envelope that he believes will lead him to some understanding. (The "key" could be too heavily symbolic, but it didn't seem so to me, partly because it isn't Oskar's, or even his father's.) There are also other stories of loss and departure and pain woven in too, giving a sense that heartbreaking, history-making tragedies occur periodically ... and by facing our own losses, we can help the next generation with theirs. A clever, outside-of-the-box sort of narrative, with pictures and other elements that call attention (in a good way) to the many ways we make sense of our world by representing events to ourselves. I was moved to tears several times, and some of the phrases and sentences are so beautiful, I found myself wishing I'd written them. (Thanks to Lucy for this one!)