Blackbird Fly

Future rock star or friendless misfit? That’s no choice at all. In this acclaimed novel by Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly, twelve-year-old Apple grapples with being different; with friends and backstabbers; and with following her dreams.

Publishers Weekly called Blackbird Fly “a true triumph,” and the Los Angeles Times Book Review said, “Apple soars like the eponymous blackbird of her favorite Beatles song.”

Apple has always felt a little different from her classmates. She and her mother moved to Louisiana from the Philippines when she was little, and her mother still cooks Filipino foods and chastises Apple for becoming “too American.” When Apple’s friends turn on her and everything about her life starts to seem weird and embarrassing, Apple turns to music. If she can just save enough to buy a guitar and learn to play, maybe she can change herself. It might be the music that saves her . . . or it might be her two new friends, who show her how special she really is.

Erin Entrada Kelly deftly brings Apple’s conflicted emotions to the page in her debut novel about family, friendship, popularity, and going your own way. “A must-read for those kids cringing at their own identities.”—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books.

320 pages                        978-0062238627                  Ages 8-12

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“While you look so sweetly and divine, I can feel you here.

I see your eyes are busy kissing mine, and I do, I do.

Wondering what it is they’re expecting to see,

Should someone be looking at me?”

-- George Harrison, “Let it Down”

“My mother frowned. ‘Your father gave you that nickname.’

“I thought of my father’s name written in black marker on Abbey Road. When you write your name on something, it means it’s really important to you, so it must have been one of his most prized possessions. I always thought that meant he was creative and smart. But if he was so creative and smart, why did he give me such a stupid nickname? Did he ever think about how it would make me feel? Did he ever think about how my name would look when I had to write it on things?

“I swallowed. ‘I don’t care.’ And why should I? The only information I had about my father besides the tape were a few fuzzy memories and a postcard from our island in the Philippines, and that’s not really information, it’s just a picture of where we lived. There aren’t even any people in the picture. Just a white sandy beach and blue water. My mother’s always saying that she moved us to America to have a better life, and I still haven’t figured out how Chapel Spring, Louisiana, is better than a white sandy beach. When we first moved here, I’d stare at the postcard and imagine my mother and father holding hands and standing with their feet in the water, but now I keep in my nightstand under a pile of old notebooks. What’s the point?”

When Apple Yengko was younger, other children were not so outwardly judgmental about Apple being the only Asian-looking kid at school or about her having a heavily-accented mother who cooked differently. But now it is middle school, and many of Apple’s former friends are caught up in impressing boys and each other. No doubt their own insecurities make them feel that it’s a liability to hang with someone different, someone the not-so-bright boys make fun of by claiming she’s a dog-eater, someone who isn’t beautiful in that stereotypical manner.

Things might be different if this was a multicultural-rich metropolis, but Chapel Spring, Louisiana is anything but multicultural rich.

On top of her problems with her peers, Apple’s immigrant mother won’t even discuss Apple’s obsessive desire to get a guitar and learn to play. In her mind, Apple figures that, like her dead hero George Harrison who left school to join The Beatles, Apple can escape Chapel Spring by becoming a great guitarist.

After her friends abandon her, in the wake of Apple’s being listed on the “dog log” (the ugly girls list) that the boys compile, she becoming friends with a Evan, a newly-arrived California boy who sees the local unintellegencia for who they are, and with Heleena, the most despised girl at school--the fat girl--who turns out to be an incredible vocalist. Thanks to a music teacher’s generosity and the support of her new friends, Apple is able to at least make some of her dreams come true.