Bird

Zusatztext "Daughter of a Jamaican father and her half-Mexican! half-white mother! Jewel has always felt out of place in her small Iowa town. . . . When Jewel meets John! an adopted black boy staying with his uncle! she finds a kindred spirit! someone as out of place as she is. . . . Chan has carefully crafted John and Jewel as effective foils for each other; their shared interest in science propels multiple metaphors that help Jewel figure out what is solid and knowable versus what must be taken on faith or intuited. . . both character arcs show a deep respect for readers’ abilities to negotiate the complexities of belief and doubt! and to find meaning via character reflection." Informationen zum Autor Crystal Chan Klappentext Entrenched secrets, mysterious spirits, and an astonishing friendship weave together in this extraordinary and haunting debut. Nothing matters. Only Bird matters. And he flew away. Jewel never knew her brother Bird, but all her life she has lived in his shadow. Her parents blame Grandpa for the tragedy of their family's past; they say that Grandpa attracted a malevolent spirit—a duppy—into their home. Grandpa hasn't spoken a word since. Now Jewel is twelve, and she lives in a house full of secrets and impenetrable silence. Jewel is sure that no one will ever love her like they loved Bird, until the night that she meets a mysterious boy in a tree. Grandpa is convinced that the boy is a duppy, but Jewel knows that he is something more. And that maybe—just maybe—the time has come to break through the stagnant silence of the past.Bird CHAPTER ONE GRANDPA stopped speaking the day he killed my brother, John. His name was John until Grandpa said he looked more like a Bird with the way he kept jumping off things, and the name stuck. Bird’s thick, black hair poked out in every direction, just like the head feathers of the blackbirds, Grandpa said, and he bet that one day Bird would fly like one too. Grandpa kept talking like that, and no one paid him much notice until Bird jumped off a cliff, the cliff at the edge of the tallgrass prairie, the cliff that dropped a good couple hundred feet to a dried-up riverbed below. Bird’s little blue bath towel was found not far from his body, snagged on a bush, the towel that served as wings. From that day on, Grandpa never spoke another word. Not one. The day that Bird tried to fly, the grown-ups were out looking for him—all of them except Mom and Granny. That’s because that very day, I was born. And no one’s ever called me anything except Jewel, though sometimes I wish they had. Mom and Dad always said that I was named Jewel because I’m precious, but sometimes I think it’s because my name begins with J, just like John’s name, and because they miss him and didn’t want to give me a normal name like Jenny or Jackie. Because John had a normal name, and now he’s dead. It was my twelfth birthday today, and everyone was supposed to be happy. It was hard to be happy, though, when Grandpa shut himself up in his room for the whole day, like he does every year on my birthday. Mom and Dad made me a cake with vanilla frosting and sprinkles, gave me a present—some socks from the dollar store, but they’re cute and all—and the three of us went to the cemetery to visit Bird and Granny. I always watch those movies where kids have big birthday parties with music and party hats and huge presents and even ponies, and I think it would be nice to have a birthday like that. Especially the ponies. Just once. Instead, I’ve always had to share my special day with the silence behind Grandpa’s closed door and the silence at the cemetery and the silence that hangs thick between Mom and Dad’s words.

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Crystal Chan
• Verlag: Simon & Schuster USA
• Sprache: Englisch
• Altersempfehlung: 8 bis 12 Jahre
• Produktform: Fester Einband
• Erschienen: 28.01.2014
• EAN: 9781442450899
• ISBN: 978-1-4424-5089-9
• Seiten: 304
• Thema: Kinder- und Jugendbücher