Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

We inherited Victoria Forester’s The Girl Who Could Fly when my husband’s Uncle Dieter died. He was a lovely man and a voracious reader in his second language–which I find incredibly impressive–but he rarely read youth fiction; I’m not sure how or why he ended up with Forester’s book, but I would probably not have gotten around to it if he hadn’t had it on one of his many bookshelves. As it is, Stephenie Meyer’s cover blurb is surprisingly apt; she called it “the oddest/sweetest mix of Little House on the Prairie and X-Men.”*

Indeed.

Piper McCloud is from a close-knit farming community which prefers to do things the way they’ve always been done; this becomes problematic for her parents when she starts to float before her first birthday. Despite their valiant efforts to keep her grounded, Piper teaches herself to fly, which ultimately lands her in a top-secret school for those with special abilities. What happens there, of course, will change her world forever, because that’s how this sort of story works; how it happens, however, is utterly compelling. (Not so much my thing, I grant you, but compelling.) The Girl Who Could Fly should satisfy a goodly number of young readers, so check it out; for myself, I keep wondering what Dieter thought of it.

*Yes, I’m aware that I just used two semi-colons in a row. I tend toward semi-colons and I’ve decided not to fight the urge or make the effort to change things up today, because I put in my garden this morning and I’m poopered. Prepare for ALL the semi-colons…