Book Review: Savvy by Ingrid Law

I have been on break from school for more than a week now. Granted, I still have to work but you know, it feels kind of like a vacation. I have filled all the free time with books . Naturally. Housecleaning was supposed to come before books but housecleaning does not a vacation make.While I have been depleting my TBR pile and watching the dust bunnies grow to maturity, I noticed I have failed to review any of the books I have read. I plan to correct this oversight during the course of the following week. So buckle in!

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First up is Savvy by Ingrid Law. This book won a Newbery Award in 2009. I originally checked the book out for a friend who needed it for a class project. When she returned it, I asked what her thoughts were on the book. I had heard a buzz about it a year or so ago but never followed up the lead to read it for myself. I also noted when I put a hold on it that only two out of seven books remained in the library system (the others were all billed). I thought this was a little strange. She looked underwhelmed as she shrugged and said "it was okay. It was not her cup 'o tea. It was a little too odd but otherwise okay." This review peeked my interest a little bit.

When I brought it back to the library, one of my regular library rats (I work the children's circulation desk in a small town public library) saw it and said they had just finished it the other week. I asked her what she thought of it. Her reply was a little more enthusiastic but it ended with "it was weird." Naturally, I was now completely intrigued, so I checked the book out for myself.Here is what I discovered between the pages of this mysterious, odd book that is weird but okay...and apparently good enough that others openly covet their library's copy.

Savvy is about a girl named Mibs Beaumont (Mibs is short for Mississippi). Mibs comes from a special family who upon their thirteenth birthday are gifted with their savvy. A savvy is a special kind of know how. Mibs' older bothers received powerful savvies when they turned thirteen. Rocket can manipulate electricity. Fish can create storms. In fact on his thirteenth birthday he created a hurricane, which forced their family to move inland so that no one would be hurt before Fish learned to scumble his savvy. Mibs is about to turn thirteen and is ready to inherit her savvy but before her big day arrives, her father is injured in a car accident on the interstate. As Mibs big day dawns, her father is in a coma in a hospital miles away from his family. Mibs prays very hard for a savvy that will help her father wake up and is convinced she will inherit one in time, if only she can find a way to be by her father's side in time.

Savvy takes the readers along for the ride as Mibs, two of her brothers, and Bill and Bobbi Meeks (who have secrets of their own) stowaway on a pink bus they think will take them to the hospital where Mibs' father lays unconscious.  The fun begins when the bus turns the wrong way on the highway.

I really liked this story. The characters were endearing and colorful. The story is obviously about more than a little girl's journey as a stowaway on a bible salesman's pink bus. It is a coming of age tale of a little girl  as she crosses the threshold into adolescence and learns to accept and embrace the changes that come with her new found powers. The vernacular of the narrative might be why some people have labeled it as odd or weird. It reminded me strongly of Faulkner's' As I Lay Dying (another book about a family's journey undertaken on the behalf of a parent).   The dialect in Savvy is some exaggerated  (or at least I think it is since I have never once heard someone speak this way in sooth) hokey Midwestern vernacular and not a backwater Southern hick dialect, still there is something about the dialect that made it hard for me to not compare the two books.  Savvy is not at all dark and dysfunctional as As I lay Dying but there were other things besides just the dialect that had me thinking of the Bundren family's journey as I read.

Granted some of this connection may be truly superficial and random. Every time I read the one brother's name, Fish, I thought about the chapter where Vardaman Bundren proclaimed "My mother is a fish." However, I also think that the comparison was invoked by the way the isolated part of the Midwest where the Beaumonts live is represented as a little backwards and slightly foreign. A world all its own. A world populated by quirky characters that could only be a product of their alien environment. I would be curious to see if other people have made such a bizarre connection between the books or if this is just proof my mind works at a slightly off angle.

I really enjoyed Savvy and would recommend the book to reader's of all ages.