Friday, September 25, 2009

The Importance of Wings by Robin Friedman

Charlesbridge, 2009

Nothing is right anymore: Roxanne’s mother is in Israel caring for her sick sister, her father is working long hours as a cab driver, and she is left looking after her little sister, Gayle.

Meanwhile, fitting in at middle school is no easy thing, especially without the right clothes and the right hairstyle: the difficult to construct “wings” of the title.

When a new girl moves into the cursed pink house on her street, life becomes more interesting. Liat is also Israeli; she is also motherless, although permanently so, her mother having been killed in a bombing in Israel; she’s tough; and she doesn’t care about what other kids think of her.

Liat puts Roxanne’s troubles into a new light, and she matures as she deals with her situation.

Unfortunately, the setting of the book in the 1970s, with the TV shows of those years, will not draw in readers, and the concept of a house with a curse (which does play out once again at the end of the book), is a plot device more suited to a younger audience.

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