27. The Year the Swallows Came Early - Kathryn Fitzmaurice

Booklist Starred Review
Grades 4-6, ages 9-12
273 pages
Published Feb. 2009
Rating: 5

Madelyn, my Because of Winn Dixie lover, is going to adore this book. I can't wait to share it with her. This is Kathryn Fitzmaurice's first . Wow. And here's an oxymoron for you, it's a simple, complex book. There's a little bit of everything in it, and real people, imperfect adults, imperfect kids, but real. That's what I liked best. There's lots of metaphor and symbolism, but when it comes right down to it, it's the books simplicity that got me. I couldn't put it down.

Groovy Robinson's in the sixth grade, and all of a sudden her life is turned upside-down. Her father is arrested and taken to jail, and Groovy knows not why. When her mother finally tells her the story, her whole world is shaken, and the father she'd been ready to welcome home no matter what he'd done looks a lot different in her eyes. The normally-positive kid goes into a decline, even refusing to be called "Groovy", the nickname her father gave her, but her given name, Eleanor, instead. Her love for cooking, her plans to be educated at a great cooking school, disappear. She mopes. She's depressed. Many stories are woven into this one. Her best friend, Frankie's problems with his wandering mom. Even her mother's horoscope, supersticious-filled pronouncements and her firned Mirasol's determination to be an artist all work into the plotline. It's a delicious story. It's real.

It takes place in or near San Jaun Capistrano, California, where the swallows are said to return thousands of miles every year at the same time (like the monarch butterflies to Monterey). However, I researched a bit on the internet (isn't that what a good story's supposed to do, make you think further and relate to it?) and it sounds like they haven't returned for a few years. Nevertheless, I'm hoping my summer jaunt through southern and mid-coastal California next month will take me to this well-defined setting so that I can see it for myself. And one of the California Missions is here, too!

FIRST LINE: "We lived in a perfect stucco house, just off the sparkly Pacific, with a lime tree in the backyard and pink and yellow roses gone wild around a picket fence."