Searching For Summer - Good or Bad Literature?

I thought ''Searching for Summer'' possessed some terrific pieces for a reasonable piece of literature. In my opinion it was like a classic fairy tale , kind of like Cinderella but the whole story was reversed. Tom and Lily were married. but did not automatically live happily ever after. Their honeymoon contained distress everywhere, they met and I quote "a very repulsive looking man." Their bike was messed up on their way there while on the bus. and they had to leave it with a strange, mean, greedy Mr.Noakes but then, at the end their happily ever after came true when they finally saw a ray of sunlight.

My analysis on this piece of literature was more on the confusion side even though once you read through it a couple of times you begin to understand it. On the first page , fifth paragraph first the author uses personification on leaves and then right after that the family is talking. WHAT is that??? I assessed that part at least one hundred times and still I don't understand it. Who goes from leaves to a senior citizen...please explain this to me.