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I as intrigued by Victoria Forester's The Girl Who Could Fly the first time I saw Kevin Hawke's haunting cover art, at left. When the paperback edition with Jason Chan's markedly different but equally enthralling cover art arrived, I knew I had to bump this book up to the top of my TBR pile. I tried more than once to get hooked by this book and just couldn't get past the hokey, drawling dialect of the narrator as the life of the girl who could fly was unveiled. Born in Lowland Country, Piper McCloud was the late-in-life, only child of Betty and Joe McCloud, farmers who believed in doing things the way they have always been done and tolerating no deviance when it occurred. Piper, however, is one massive deviation from the norm. Not only do women not give birth at Betty's age, but Piper seemed be unusually rambunctious. Buoyant both literally and figuratively, Piper finds that she can fly. Her thoughts seem to fly as well, and she is always sharing her crazy ideas (do cows have feelings and if so, is it wrong to eat them?) with her parents, much to their distress. However, some fifty pages into the story, Piper, who has been home schooled and kept away from her peers because of her differences, gets to go to the Fourth of July Picnic where she unwittingly lets her freak flag fly and the story really takes flight.

After the rest of the town sees Piper shoot up into the air to catch a fly ball, her secret is out and government agents are rolling up in their black SUVs with tinted windows. Just before her life changes forever, Piper hears a disembodied voice in her room offering to help her. The hoopla outside distracts her and the source of the voice is lost in the hubbub as the McClouds learn that there is a place for children like Piper and the sleek, beautiful Dr Letitia Hellion wants to take her there. I'm a widely read adult, so I knew right away (ok - Jason Chan's cover cued me in as well) that Dr Hellion has no intentions of improving Piper's quality of life. My adult-reader-mind also knew that Dr Hellion had some kind of secret, probably from childhood, that drove her to do what she did. And what did she do? Dr Hellion founded and ran the Institute of Normalcy, Stability, And Non-Exceptionality or I.N.S.A.N.E. in this, Forester has created a compelling, very visual setting. A small shack in the mountains, the institute actually is made up of thirteen underground floors, each dedicated to a different aspect of dealing with that which threatens the normalcy and stability of the world. Piper sees none of this as she takes the elevator ride down thirteen levels to the tiered level where the children live, learn and play. Entranced by Dr Hellion and convinced by her that flying is hurtful to those around her, Piper is excited to finally be with other children and attending school. She quickly learns that her "classmates" have special abilities of their own, from speed, strength and telekinesis to the ability to shrink, control the weather and electricity and, in Conrad Harrington III, extreme intelligence. Conrad quickly positions himself as Piper's nemesis and makes her life as miserable as possible, finally almost getting her expelled from the institute when he forces her to use her flying abilities or die.

At this point in the book, I was not sure where Forester was going with her story but I was on board and along for the ride, wherever it went. While the friction between Piper and Conrad makes for some great scenes, the real tension arises when Conrad reveals his reasons for being so cruel. 

*******QUASI-SPOILER ALERT****QUASI-SPOILER ALERT*********

 Conrad, being the braniac that he is, has figured out that Dr Hellion is drugging the children in an attempt to make them docile and uninterested in using their special talents. She is doing everything short of torture to make then normal, stabile, and non-exceptional. She also has floors and floors full of animals and plants who she is torturing into submission. Piper learns this inadvertently and from that moment on she and Conrad spend their time planning the children's escape.  When that goes awry, Piper is submitted to a hideous form of torture in a device the resembles a giant cookie cutter, which takes a bit of the edge off the horrific nature of Dr Hellion's device. This scene struck me as only a few notches below the scene in The Golden Compass when Lyra realizes that Mrs Coulter is separating children and their dæmons, in terms of adults treating children like objects to be experimented on. It takes weeks and weeks for Piper to be "rehabilitated" and returned to her classmates, but eventually she is. Her mind has been wiped clean and her legs have been mangled so that she has to walk with canes. Her classmates are devastated to realize that Piper can no longer be looked to as a leader, as they have been waiting for her return so that they can begin planning their escape again. It is Piper's broken state that rouses Jasper, the one child who's special power is unknown, to remember that he has the power to heal. The kids unite and kick the adults out of the institute then take the elevator up to see the sun and breathe fresh air for the first time in months. Dr Hellion is waiting and a fight ensues and her own special power is revealed. However, unwilling to rejoice in her difference, she instead falls to her death over the icy mountains seen on the cover of the book.


The final part of the book finds Piper back home with her parents and Conrad living in her spare bedroom, his father and mother having renounced him. The other kids have all found jobs living out their dreams, dreams that Piper encouraged them to foster while they were in the institute together. They all come together at the McCloud farm to celebrate the fourth of July and, as a baseball team headed up by Conrad, they put the other team to shame. A final aspect of the book that I found very refreshing was how Forester chose to tie up the loose end that is the disembodied voice in Piper's room from the start of the story. The voice, named J., shows up at the institute just after Piper has been placed in the giant cookie cutter and begins to help her to escape. Piper refuses to leave without the rest of the kids and J. is forced to leave, telling her he will find a way to return and rescue them all. J. finds Piper at the end of the book and tells her that there is a secret place where she and the other kids can go and fit in and be safe. He also shares more information with her, although we are left to guess what it is, knowing only that Piper found it too weighty to share even with Conrad. Forester drops enough clues about J. and Letitia Hellion to suggest a link, but, like Conrad, she ultimately leaves the reader to connect the dots on his or her own, and I like that!

Any reader, girls especially, with a taste for fantasy, will love The Girl Who Could Fly.

Readers who liked this book might also enjoy:

drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve
Savvy by Ingrid Law

Source: Purchased

More fantastic books continue to brighten the shelves of the board book section at the bookstore where I work as Abrams Appleseed Fall 2012 titles are released. As with their Spring 2012 titles (click here for past reviews) Abrams Appleseed titles consistently feature elegant artwork, attention to design and a thoughtful, fresh approach to conventional topics. Janik Coat's Hippopposites is a perfect example of an old, almost overdone concept that feels brilliantly new in her hands. While a toddler's steps toward independence may seem like well worn ground in picture books, I honestly can't think of a single title, especially in the board book format, that presents these steps in a way that little listeners will recognize and revel in the way that author, Stephen Krensky does. Add to the wonderful words the crisp, colorful and just a little bit retro illustrations of Sara Gillingham, award-winning art director, designer and author of over fifteen books for children (for more of her work, read The Changing Face of Board Books & Board Books Worth Buying) and you have board books that will get read so many times they might actually start to wear out.

I Love to Sleep and I Love to Eat (the titles alone are perfectly baby-centric) are billed as "Deluxe Trilingual Touch-and-Feel." And, while these two new board books are filled with fantastic touch-and-feely things on every page, and English, French and Spanish words for each baby item depicted, what  really makes these two books deluxe are the crisply modern, elegantly adorable illustrations by Amélie Graux. I have seen plenty of board books in my time and it takes A LOT for one to grab my attention. Not only do Graux's books stand out for their charming artwork, but for the unique style they bring to the otherwise standard, generic (and mostly dull) world of touch-and-feel board books. When it comes to style, Graux's books are leading the way along with Janik Coat's Hippopposites, the only opposites book your child will ever need. Interestingly, both artists are French. Actually, even if your baby doesn't need an opposites book or a book about food or bed, buy these books anyway. They are wonderfully lovely, superbly sturdy and creative in charming new ways. Below are images from both books. Sadly, the tactile aspects don't come through in these images, but even those are outstanding. From the terrycloth bib and the woody feel of the highchair to the shiny plastic representing the glass of a jar of baby food and the sticky feel of a spoonful of peas, each page has something new to offer.

Here are a few more images from Amélie Graux's website:

Buckley lets us know right off the bat what kind of series N.E.R.D.S. is going to be, with the great illustrations by comic book artist Ethen Beavers and the fantastic book design from Chad W Beckerman, the amazing creative director for Abrams Books that makes the books read like top secret dossiers and other vital information. In Book 1 in the series, each break represents a different security level and the request to provide various forms of identification from hair to sweat to ear wax (obtained with an elbow) and a laugh from the narrator. Speaking of the narrator of the chapter breaks, s/he also happens to be a former NERDS operative. And speaking of chapters, each one includes the latitude and longitude of the location of the NERDS and hopefully will have readers running to a map (or website, like I did) to log in and find out where the kids are.

But the N.E.R.D.S. series isn't just about fantastic production values and clever extras like the illustration of the author to the left. As he demonstrated in The Sisters Grimm series, Michael Buckley is a great writer, from dialogue to setting to the emotional landscape of his characters. Before we even meet the NERDS, we get to know a bit about their new director and even more about their newest recruit. With a few quick strokes, we learn that Alexander Brand was once a James Bond-type spy who saved the world over and over. However, an injury has left him with a limp, a cane and no desire for a desk job. As General Savage is offering Brand the position of director of the secret, mythical team of child spies (their last director died under "mysterious" circumstances - he jumped out a window that overlooked the shark tank at the local aquarium with a bomb strapped to his chest and three knives in his back...) the men are interrupted with news that Greenland has just slammed into Iceland.

When we first meet fifth grader Jackson Jones he and his buddies are in hiding, about to attack some of the many geeks that make Nathan Hale Elementary School the center of Nerdville, USA. Life is good for Jackson. He's athletic, popular, cute and comes from a family with a similarly gifted brother and father. That all changes when a visit to the orthodontist reveals two complete sets of teeth in Jackson's mouth, one of which must be pulled, leaving him in need of a heinous set of braces that will bring an end to Jackson's days as a Golden Boy and hurtle him into geekdom and beyond. Especially when he discovers that his new headgear-hardware (which does not fit into a football helmet and thus causes him to be cut form the team) is magnetic, attracting all manner of things from "cuff links, belt buckles, hairpins, cafeteria trays, call phones and umbrellas" to trophies, school buses and in one near fatal incident, kebab skewers. Ostracized from his former pack, the absence of a social life allows Jackson to see things that he never noticed before and a spy is born. As his skills increase and his status decreases, Jackson stumbles upon an organization of spies so secret that the Commander in Chief doesn't even know of their existence. At the same time, Jackson gets on the wrong side of the horns of the bull-like Principal Dehaven. Hiding in a locker to avoid those horns, Jackson unwittingly stumbles into the "Playground," the training ground, laboratory and headquarters of  NERDS where he is mistakenly outfitted with upgrades - spy-gear braces made from nanobots that can change into any tool at any time. His code name, Braceface, is one that his pride steadfastly refuses to accept over the course of the story.

What makes this book different and ultimately interesting is the clashing personalities between the team,  Jackson and Agent Brand, who poses as the school janitor. The team, lead by Ruby Peet, code name Pufferfish, understandably hates and refuses to trust Jackson, their former tormentor, despite the fact that they could have wiped the floor with him at any moment - and still can, until he learns his way around the spy game. The team also has a hard time trusting their new director, a man of few words and even fewer compliments. Jackson, despite being knocked down several social pegs at school, still sees himself as superior to the NERDS and makes more than one blunder out of hubris, giving the team even more reasons to want him gone. Jackson's transformation over the course of the book is fascinating, and the moment when he truly understands why the team is filled with animosity for him and how he responds is genuine and rewarding. The fact that the evil villain at the heart of the story is reacting against years of teasing and torment from bullies is a nice wrinkle as well. As a parent, I would be happy to have my child read a book with this level of humanity and complexity, cloaked as it is in spy gear and kids with weird abilities.

In case any kids are reading, I'll dish a little about the spy gear and weird abilities as well as the demented villains. Team leader Ruby Peet is allergic to everything and acts as a walking human detector. She breaks out in hives in the face of a lie, a betrayal or the like. As with all the NERDS, she is a highly trained combatant and takes out Jackson with a back scratcher. Paste eater Duncan Dewey, code name Gluestick, can shoot powerful polymers that allow him to stick to walls. Wheezer, aka Matilda Choi, is an asthmatic with enhanced inhalers that can act as jet packs, flame throwers and torches to cut through metal when needed. Julio Escala, code name Flinch, is a sugar loving, hyperactive force of nature who wears a control panel that gives him super speed and strength. Sometimes he speaks a bit too fast and has to tone down his garbled speech with a twist to his control nob. Finally, there is Heathcliff Hodges. His unfortunately large buck teeth have been treated with a special nano-designed hallucinogenic whitening agent that allows him to control (or wipe) peoples' minds with them. Despite this gear and all the training they've had, they seem to be no match for Dr Jigsaw, the demented scientist (and jigsaw puzzle enthusiast) who is building a mechanism that will allow him to fit all the continents together and reform Pangea, or Dr Jigsaw's boss, a person in a black mask with a ghostly skull face painted on it who goes by the name Simon. Then there is the Hyena, a twelve-year-old former child pageant winner (Georgia Beef Beauty, Little Miss Florida Citrus, California's Canola Oil Charmer, WisconsinWheat Fairy, Dairy Princess of Lawrence, Kansas, and Idaho Spud Queen) who has decided to become a professional assassin. The chapters told from the Hyena's perspective are some of the funniest and deconstruct and poke fun at the conventions of the demented villain or "professional crime boss," as she refers to them. I especially love her description of the four kinds of bosses. With the N.E.R.D.S. series, Buckley has done for boys what he did for girls with the Sisters Grimm series. He has taken a conventional theme (fairy tales, spies) and layered it with complex characters that turn convention on its head, fascinating settings and fast paced action that keeps kids interested and reading.

The Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett, usually known for his humorous science fiction for adults, is part satire, part parable and all adventure story. My husband and I (mostly my husband) first read these books out loud at bedtime to our older son some eight years ago. Now my husband is reading them out loud to our youngest, who is seven. Long after my son has fallen asleep, my husband can be found reading ahead. In his words, "Pratchett, in his portrayal of the nomes, the little people who are the protagonists, displays the best and worst of human nature, the yearning for simple answers and the wisdom not to embrace them completely and slide into complacency." The main characters in these stories are a group of four inch high nomes, lead by young Masklin.  In Truckers, Masklin's group of outside nomes joins up with hundreds of other nomes living in a department store (that is going to be demolished in 21 days) who have lived there for so many generations that they no longer remember - or even believe in - life beyond the walls of the store, Arnold Bros. They also do not believe in the existence of outside nomes and Masklin has to convince them of his reality before any movement can begin. Living this way for so long, the nomes have come to believe that everything contained in the store is the entirety of their world, a world which was created by the great Arnold Bros. They don't even realize that Arnold Bros is short for Arnold Brothers and nothing more than the name of the men who founded the store. Of course, in a way, these men did create the world - the world that the nomes know. Masklin brings with him a mysterious black box that has been handed down from generation to generation, told that it is of great importance despite the fact that is seems to be an inert lump. The story connected to this Black Box, as well as the origins of the nomes, has been long forgotten. 

Truckers follows the nomes through their shock and disbelief that their world is about to be destroyed and that there is a world beyond their world. Their eventual exodus from the Store, along with the mysterious Black Box that begins to tell the story of their past and their future when near a source of eletricity, is a rude awakening, but met with ingenuity and creativity as well as determination on the part of Masklin to save his people whether they want to be saved or not. The Black Box also shuts off at times, telling the nomes that they have to prove they are intelligent beings and not clever animals.  Diggers  follows their struggle to survive outside on their own and come to terms with the rent in their belief system and learn how to drive a backhoe to further their escape. In Wings, a story that happens concurrently with the events of Diggers, Masklin leaves the nomes in the hands of Nicodemus, a messianic store nome, so that he can pursue Grandson Richard, the heir to Arnold Bros who has started his own satellite company. Grandson Richard is in Florida to see one of his company's satellites launched into space. If Masklin can get the black box onto the satellite, a message can be sent out into  space and the nomes just might be able to return to their true home. Towards the end of the book there is a remarkable scene where you discover why these phenomenal books are called The Bromeliad Trilogy.

One of the trilogy's greatest strengths is it's depiction of the civilization the nomes have built up over the generations, including an intricate religion based on advertising signs hung about the Store. Reminiscent of Mary Norton's The Borrowers, these books have enough imagination and excitement to keep kids interested and the right amount of humor and philosophical leanings to keep adults and older kids reading.

It's a Tiger! is the new book from the fantastic David LaRochelle. I am remiss that this is my first full review of one of his books, but I did feature two of his books in my Best Picture Books of 2008 post. Happily, It's a Tiger! is a fantastic book and an instant story time staple for me at the bookstore and also great place to begin to introduce you to the books of David LaRochelle. Jeremy Tankard's illustrations are perfectly matched to LaRochelle's story and will have little listeners following closely.

"A TIGER! Run!" Bulging eyes (for the monkeys and the main characters), a vivid red background and the need for speed burst from the two page spread. A quick visit back to the first page of the story reveals a stripy tail amongst the monkeys and vines that sharp eyes will have noticed. Even if they don't, by the next spread they will figure out what's going on. Tankard's illustrations are bright, simple and a little bit primitive, which adds to the excitement. La Rochelle's narrative has a "Going on a Bear Hunt" feel to it, which keeps listeners on the edge of their seats, but the text is smoother and doesn't have the sing-songy promise of a rhyme that never comes like "Bear Hunt" does. 

The Cobble Street Cousins is another fantastic emerging reader series by the prolific and amazing Cynthia Rylant. The length and reading level are slightly higher than her Lighthouse Family Series, as is the subject and tone, but if the interest level is high enough readers will make the reach. Rylant's series are the antithesis of the reigning queen of chapter books, Junie B Jones and, while The Cobble Street Cousins may seem a bit too sweet for adult tastes, I have no doubt that there are many parents out there searching for better role models and more out-of-the-ordinary stories that what dominates the shelves today. I also have no doubt that the adventures of the cousins will inspire readers to pursue some creative endeavors of their own after reading.

The titular characters, sisters Rosie and Lily and cousin Tess, are all in the fourth grade and staying with their Aunt Lucy, owner of a flower shop, while their parents tour the world with their ballet troupe for a year. Rosie is "very domestic and loved being at home for any reason at all." Tess sings and wants to be a famous Broadway star and has a record collection that includes opera, blues, jazz and show tunes. She knows "the words to every song she owns." Lily is "very good with ideas and wanted to be a writer when she grew up - a poet - so she listened for ideas in her head all the time." In one book the girls decide to make a miniature of Aunt Lucy's flower shop to surprise her and get a little help and ice cream cones from Aunt Lucy's friend Michael who isn't "interested in the family fortune and simply wants to be a botanist." Wendy Halperin Anderson's illustrations are perfectly matched to Rylant's writing with sweet-faced characters and detail filled artwork that expresses the personalities of the characters wonderfully. For more of Anderson's work, again matched perfectly with the book, check out Mary Ann Hoberman's semi-autobiographical Strawberry Hill. As the series progresses, the cousins start a cookie business, get to be bridesmaids and help plan the wedding reception, learn how to sew, throw a Winter Solstice party and throw a party when their parents return home from their tour.

I would have devoured these books as a child. I loved everything the sisters love and would have identified with each one. I would have loved the creativity and warmth that existed in their home. I would have loved to sit down to tea with my mom (or aunt) every day as the cousins do with Aunt Lucy. I would have loved to wander over to the craft store, stopping to visit a friendly adult who offered to join me AND buy me ice cream afterward as the cousins do with Michael!! And, not having these things in my life as a child, I wanted to read about them. In the absence of any available artwork from the The Cobble Street Cousins books, I have included some of Anderson's other illustrations for you to enjoy.