Savvy by Ingrid Law
Penguin; May 2008; 352 pp; $16.95 HC
978-0803733060
Core Audience: Readers 12+ and folks who love predicting award winners
Strengths: Completely original from cover to cover and then some
Twelve-year-old Mibs Beaumont has been counting down the days till her thirteenth birthday—the day her “savvy” will make itself known. Will she be able to create hurricanes like her brother? Or capture wonderful sounds in canning jars like her grandmother? Then Mibs’ father has a terrible accident just before her birthday, and Mibs feels sure that her savvy will be to help her dad. When she stows away on a traveling salesman’s pink bus to try to get to her father’s distant hospital, she finds herself on a madcap odyssey in the heartland of America—one that is as full of unexpected adventure and friendship as Mibs herself. Like some of my other favorite offbeat books of recent years, this story is absolutely original, with detail and a richness in the writing that paves its own way. This novel is also remarkable in the fact that it combines matter-of-fact bible belt imagery and fantastical super-powers in the same story in a way that manages to be neither off-puttingly dogmatic or overly fantastical, but rather sort of dreamy and lyrical. A book as unexpected as its main character and anyone who reads it seems to love it, no matter where they are coming from.
Rating: 9.0
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February 10, 2009 at 8:51 pm
billie
i thought SAVVY had a great, interesting, different theme that caught my interest. to me it’s one of those books that some people love and others think is boring. i loved it. if i were you i’d give it a try. the writing carries detail, emotion, feelings, thoughts and spunk. Savvy is a fantastic book!!!