"Anna Was Here," by Jane Kurtz I was only 6 when my family moved, but I remember that day more clearly than the day I moved, as an adult, into the house where I live now. Certain details still stand out: saying goodbye to the old house through the back window of our Plymouth Duster; eating Charles Chips while waiting for the furniture to arrive; and, of course, the dread of falling asleep for the first time in my own room, no longer an arm's length away from my sister. These memories came flooding back as I read "Anna Was Here," Jane Kurtz's timeless and sweetly funny middle-grade novel about the Nickel family - two sisters, two parents and a cherished pet named Midnight H. Cat - who relocate from Colorado to Oakwood, Kan. Our narrator is 9-year-old Anna Nickel, consummate big sister and founding member of the Safety Club, which prepares for potential disasters like wildfires, floods and getting sealed inside Egyptian pyramids. Like many fourth graders, Anna hates the thought of starting over again someplace else, let alone smack dab in the middle of Tornado Alley. She scrawls a message in the closet of her old bedroom: "Anna was here. And she'll be back. The question is, how soon? Anna's family has deep roots in Oakwood. Her father, Micah, now a minister, grew up in the tiny town and is eager for Anna and her sister, Isabella, to get to know the family he left behind. He's going back to help a troubled local church get "over the hump," which turns out to be more complicated than anyone imagined. As soon as the Nickels arrive in their new town, Micah becomes absorbed in the work of guiding his flock. He's constantly on his phone and seems to spend more time changing the messages on the sign outside the church than he does with Anna, who feels adrift among unfamiliar cousins. This modern thread in an otherwise old-fashioned tale reminds us that even ministers" kids have to deal with parents who are ­hyper-connected to their jobs. The Kansas Nickels squire Anna and Isabella around the family farm and a local graveyard, where their cousin Morgan tells them about their hardscrabble forebears. Both girls are haunted by the tale of three sisters - Faith, Hope and Charity - who froze to death in a blizzard on the way home from their one-room school. Yet even as Anna comes to appreciate her father's people, she craves the comfort of Colorado. She's well versed in the language of faith, but taking a leap is another matter - and adjusting to this move will require the biggest, bravest one of her life so far. As Anna's mother, a historian, says, "Wouldn't it be handy if God sent important messages on a banner behind an airplane, so everyone can read them?" But then we wouldn't have the pleasure of watching Anna puzzle through her own catastrophic worries and conflicts of loyalty. If home is where the heart is, will hers have to split time between two places? In the vein of books like Sydney Taylor's "All-of-a-Kind Family" series, Kurtz delivers a gentle, optimistic story about a devout family whose spirituality functions as both a safety net and an umbrella (a must-have in Kansas). The Nickels may navigate change - and even disaster - with a lot less friction than the average family (or at least mine), but they're far from perfect. That's precisely what will make "Anna Was Here" a moving-day classic, destined to sidestep its boxed-up brethren for the important job of steadying someone's shaky little hands. Elisabeth Egan is the books editor at Glamour magazine.