Book talk: Twelve-year-old Apple Yengko moved from the Philippines to a small town in Louisiana when she was four, but she still doesn't feel like she fits in. She wishes her mother would cook normal meals while her mother thinks she's become too American. Things go from bad to worse when she ends up on the school's Dog Log, a list of the most unpopular girls. Even the few friends she has start to turn on her, afraid her Dog Log status will contaminate them. But just when she thinks she's lost everything she gains something new: she discovers a talent at the guitar that just might be enough to turn things around.
Rave: This book is a sweet story about friendship and finding your place in the world. Apple's struggles with bullying will ring true with many students and open the eyes and the hearts of others. The new friends that she makes are characters worth rooting for even as they struggle and make mistakes. Apple's passion for the guitar adds more appeal. Her struggles with her mother are deftly handled showing Apple's frustration without painting her mother as some unreasonable villain. The other children aren't portrayed as completely two dimensional either.
Every book its reader: I'd give this to fans of Wendy Mass and the like looking for a sweet school story. It's about middle schoolers but I wouldn't hesitate to give it to a fourth grader looking for a story about older kids.
Topics and Trends: guitar, music, diversity, bullying, the Beatles, immigrants, popularity
Extras:
You can visit the author's website for more information http://www.erinentradakelly.com/
Source: school library
Blackbird Fly by Erin Entrada Kelly: buy it or check it out today!
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