Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I’m actually doing it today–yippee! And by “IT” I mean reviewing Celia C. Perez’s (pretend that first “e” in “Perez” is accented) Strange Birds: A Field Guide to Ruffling Feathers, which I finished several days ago now. It was on my radar before it showed up on Granite School District’s “Best Books” list, but I moved it up when I saw it there, and I’m glad I did. Perez’s “strange birds” are a group of disparate girls who find themselves joining together in protest against a traditional hat used by the local Girl Scout-ish group, the Floras. Lane is spending the summer with her grandmother and trying NOT to think about her parents’ in-process divorce; Ofelia is hoping to convince her older and extremely protective parents to sign an application for a journalism contest that might culminate in a trip to New York; Cat has secretly dropped out of the Floras and hasn’t told her parents yet; and Aster, after being homeschooled by her grandfather thus far, is facing middle school in the fall. They’re a somewhat predictably unlikely group, but their journey is unexpected and realistically bumpy. A few pages here and there teeter on the edge of feeling didactic instead of an organic part of the story, but they never–quite–fall in, and what’s a few pages in a few places in a 350-page book? I enjoyed reading Strange Birds AND learned new things about Florida history, so I’d call that a win-win; older elementary girls are going to be fans of this one.