I wish this girl could fly. But mostly I wish I could read minds... but enough about me, onto the book. This book is about little Miss Piper McCloud, written by Victoria Forester. I learned about this book from Stephenie Meyer's website, after she gave it such an awesome review. She said something about it being sort of X-Men-ish. I just so happen to love the X-Men, so I decided to pick this one up. And I'm glad I did.
Yes Piper can fly, and she does, which earns her all the wrong kind of attention: gossip, headlines, government interference, and the invisible man, Mr. J.
Mr. and Mrs. McCloud are confused, Piper is confused , and so they reach out to the first available hand of help in the form of Dr. Hellion (he he), who runs an institute for kids just like Piper who have special talents. Not to mention a certain cricket.... This is really where the story begins, so without giving anymore away, Let's review it.
I love this book, on a scale from 1 to 10 , 1 being raunchy and violent, 10 being the cutest fluffiest thing you've ever read, I'd give this book an 8. It's cute but smart. It also provides wonderful imagery so the characters and the actions really come alive, and you can see it playing out in your mind relatively clearly. This is definitely something I want to read again, read to my kids, and I'm definitely buying this one. I'm going into the deep recesses of theory here so don't read on until you've read the book. I mean it this time, READ THIS BOOK BEFORE YOU READ ON!!!
Theory: This on the surface is about being yourself. As Piper's phrase goes: "You just can't keep a good girl down." But I think the real meaning is that appearances can be oh so deceiving. A person can feel comfortable and excepting and nice and warm, but in reality their true motives are to create apathy and complacency and really drown out your spirit and snuff out your light. Such people create a world where nothing else matters but acceptance. This kind of person is is embodied in one Dr. Letitia Hellion. Everything about her surface appearance says warmth and love and comfort. But all she is doing is going around snuffing out lights, gathering up the children with special gifts and drugging them and conditioning them for a life of normalcy. You see Dr. Hellion hates anything abnormal, and wants everything to be in it's place and act accordingly. To me this feels a lot like the church system and certain cults that create that all alluring community feeling. This is the way I see it, a person gets born again, and the Holy Spirit comes to fill them up with a love for Christ and an outpouring of revelation and gifts, and then the young christian says, "I need to go to church!" (and naturally, when Jesus is the theme) so off he/she goes in search of like-minded folk who share his/her love. Unfortunately most churches are ruled by an oligarchy, a select few who dictate what where who and how the Holy Spirit gets to move. So if said young christian decides to bless his/her new found Spirit on an undeserving strictly run church, the Spirit and light will surely begin fade (unless he/ she runs for their spiritual life!) Moral of the story: If you can fly then by golly don't let ANYONE keep you down! There are plenty of wolves in sheep's clothing lying in wait to snatch away your gift, because they themselves are too afraid to use their own.
