Savvy was one of the books that won the Newbery Award honorable mention in 2009, and I’m surprised it didn’t take the top prize! Of course, that’s not fair to The Graveyard Book, which did win the Newbery award for 2009 and which I haven’t yet read, but Savvy was such a charming and engaging book I could easily see it winning the Newbery altogether.
That said, Savvy, by Ingrid Law, focuses on the Beaumont family, living in middle America on the Kansas/Nebraska border. The family in this Newbery honoree is especially unique in that when each member (from generations and generations gone by) turns 13, they get a unique power or savvy. This children’s book starts with the main character, Mibs, getting ready for her 13th birthday. Her brothers can call down storms and electricity and so Mibs wonders what her savvy will be. The day before her birthday, her father is in a bad car accident, leaving the kids of the Beaumont family to be looked after by the stodgy pastor’s wife and her kids who – before the book is over – will prove that the Beaumonts aren’t the only ones who aren’t everything they seem.
Mibs is sure she’ll get a savvy that can save her father, so she – along with the pastor’s kids and her brothers – stow away in a bus bound for the town where her father is, still unconscious and bedridden. The story that ensues in this Newbery Award Honorable Mention winner at first seems somewhat unlikely and dramatic, but completely fitting for a 13-year-old girl with super powers. I remember being 13 and experiencing many of the same thoughts and feelings Mibs does so from that perspective it’s not over-dramatic at all. Being 13 is dramatic and this book does a good job of creating a coming-of-age story that just about any one can identify with. It’s just the right amount of realism and the right amount of fantasy.
