Skip to main content

Switch


Switch
(Savvy #3)
By Ingrid Law
Dial Books, 2015. Fiction. 356 p.
In this third story of the Beaumont family, Gypsy, the second to youngest, is wrestling with her new savvy (think special magical power) that each of her family members receive on their 13th birthday. Gypsy's savvy is the power to see into people's futures. When she looks into her own future, she sees herself watch her grandmother fall from a tall clock tower.  Soon after she has this premonition, her family experiences a savvy switch.  They each have new savvies, totally different from before. Still reeling from the switch, her family travels to Denver to bring their grandmother, who suffers from dementia, home.  While there, Gypsy's main goal is to keep her grandmother far away from clock towers, but she finds that it is much harder than she could have ever imagined.

The first book in this series, (Savvy, 2008) received a well deserved Newbery Honor medal.  The second and third are just as fun, and have the same amount of "savvy" wisdom. The stories have an element of magic, but they are each really about family relationships and kids learning to use self discipline to take control of their own lives.  This story, in particular, deals nicely with the challenges of coming to accept and value a loved one with dementia. This book is available from the library in print, as an ebook, and on audio CD.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Faker

Faker By Gordon Korman New York: Scholastic Press, 2024. Fiction. 214 pages. 12-year-old Trey is used to starting over at a new school -- he has the routine perfectly memorized: make new friends, introduce his dad to the wealthy parents of his new friends, and "Houdini" themselves out of there before they get caught running their latest scam. Trey's dad is a master con artist, and Trey has just been promoted to full-partner. Their new scheme for the next big score brings them to the affluent suburb of Boxelder, TN where Trey's dad has cooked up a fake electric car company for investors to buy into. The only problem is that Trey is starting to grow tired of moving around and never putting down roots, especially after forming a fast friendship with Logan and developing a crush on Kaylee, a socially conscious girl in his class. As Trey longs for a normal life, is there any way he can convince his dad to get out of the family business? Gordon Korman is a perennial favorit...

Review: The Bletchley Riddle

  The Bletchley Riddle By Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin New York: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2024. Fiction. 392 pages. It's spring of 1940, Hitler has swept through most of Europe, and people believe England will be next. Half Polish-Jewish, half American Jakob has been recruited from Cambridge to Bletchley Park where they are working on deciphering the enigma machine. Jakob's sister Lizzie, meanwhile, is being forced to move from London to Cleveland to live with her grandmother after her mother disappeared in a 1939 attack in Poland. Lizzie manages to escape the keeper her grandmother sent for her to bring her to America and makes her way to Bletchley, where she's eventually given the task of delivering messages between departments. When secret messages begin appearing with Lizzie's belongings, she must decipher them to find the truth about her mother's past and location, while keeping the secrets away from the MI5 agent that seems a little t...

Dragon Run

Dragon Run by Patrick Matthews Scholastic, 2013.  336 pgs.  Fantasy      Al Pilgrommor is excited for Testing Day, when he will receive his rank, a tattooed number on the back of his neck, and a path forward to his future occupation and life.  He feels confident because his parents were fours on a scale of seven, but he is worried for his friend Wisp who doesn't have much of a chance of scoring above a two at best. But when Al is scored a zero, he not only has no prospects, he may lose his life as the dreaded Cullers are unleashed to kill him and his family to purify the land's bloodlines.  Al's world is ruled by dragons--the lords and supposed creators of humankind--so he thinks that even if he survives, he will have to make his living as a beggar or thief. But when Al sticks up for his Earther friend in front of Magister Ludi, he is drawn into the struggle of a secret organization hoping to destroy the Cullers, and perhaps the dragons them...