Bookverdict.com

Gr 5-8 An open-ended, interconnected narrative in three voices. Bird, 13, has run away from Cleveland to rural Alabama, trying to find her stepfather, Cecil, and bring him home. Ethan, who turns out to be Cecil's nephew, is adjusting to the freedom that a heart transplant affords him. Jay is grieving for his brother, whose death provided the necessary heart. Bird hides out in a shed on Ethan's family's farm, convinced that Cecil will come because she'd seen Ethan in the man's photographs. She soon gets...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Like a more bereft version of Goldilocks, thirteen-year-old Bird sneaks into the kitchen of the people she calls "the farmhouse family" and eats their leftover breakfasts while they are at church. Bird is one-third of the narrative trio Johnson delicately choreographs in this spare novel about matters of the heart. For the other two narrators, Ethan and Jay, these matters are literal—Ethan has recently had a heart transplant; Jay's younger ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More