The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester

The Girl Who Could Fly is an absolutely charming book. It made me cheer and clap, smile with tears in my eyes and shush my family so I could please finish in peace.  This delightful book intended for children through 6th grade. Clearly, Scholastic is stating the age appropriateness of this book’s themes and not capping the readership at age 11. Victoria Forester’s first novel marches along classic story lines of good and evil, right and wrong, how to make friends and when to trust people. Add a dose of accepting people as they are and voila – you have this book. Those are lessons we just keep encountering regardless of our chronological age and as such the child in all of us will love this book.

Piper McCloud is born late to her Mother and Father and blessed with an innate sense of right and wrong that is truly enviable. She is also gifted with the ability to float which she cultivates into the ability to fly. Her parents seem to understand that the world will not accept her differences and so they try to keep her safe and secluded on their farm.  This doesn’t work – it never does – and after a while she is taken to a special school to be with kids like her.

I must admit, the special school bit almost kept me from reading this book. I am a little tired of the Hogwarts aspect of so many books that I have started turning my nose up when the jacket mentions such a place. Trust me – the institute they take Piper is no Hogwarts.

This book was published in 2008 but a second in the series The Boy Who Knew Everything  was published in late 2016. The only thing more important to me right now than getting my hands on a copy of the second book is talking to someone (anyone?!) about this book.

So, has anyone read it? Will you please? Or, have you ever had a book you needed to talk about and so you were begging people to hurry up and read it?