FAITH, HOPE, AND CHICKEN FEATHERS

Wyman's second is about survival, and about the trade-offs when some things are lost while others are found. Three likable but very different kids—YL, an African American boy; the overweight Sophie; free-spirit Harper—enter sixth grade in a small West Virginia town on the same mid-year day. While all three suffer social humiliations and malicious pranks, they become friends through sharing their problems, including a mystery concerning Harper's father. Meanwhile, their teacher reads a book about an Inuit girl who saves herself, her sister, and their dogs during a blizzard. At first, this story-within-a-story is distracting, but in the end both narratives become equally involving. The Inuit girl is saved, though her grandmother dies in the storm; the three friends survive sixth grade but lose Harper when she joins her newly found dad. The emotional turmoil of a move and its feelings of isolation are well realized in this bittersweet story. Though it's sometimes too complicated, readers are sure to relate to the predicaments of the well-developed main characters. (Fiction 9-12)