Sparrow

WHAT I LOVED:
My expectation were low. It seems like it’s going to be an okay story about a fourteen-year-old girl who thinks she can turn into a bird and may have tried to kill herself. She swears she didn’t, but that’s sure what it looks like when you’re found on the edge of the school roof.

Instead, you have a very thoughtful look at one girl’s struggle after the librarian she adores dies. It’s told in the classic three-act structure that lines up with the phases of Sparrow’s journey: her resistance to therapy in the immediate aftermath of the roof incident, her opening up to finally face her problems, and her adventures at the music camp Mrs. Wexler never got the chance to tell Sparrow about before a car hit and killed her.

There really aren’t a lot of YA books out there that deal with dissociative disorders, let alone the specific kind known as depersonalization. When Sparrow becomes a bird, it’s her escaping in her own mind to where she feels happiest: alongside the free-willed birds Sparrow has grown up adoring. It’s something with a magical touch but a perfectly scientific explanation.

Given Sparrow’s life, no wonder she turns to depersonalization after the accident. Her mother, who is raising Sparrow alone since she chose to get pregnant via donor, is too busy to be there for her. She doesn’t have friends her own age, just people she’s familiar with from Mrs. Wexler’s book club and bullies like one racist little mean girl. The one girl Sparrow thinks is her friend? Is not willing to be friends with her publicly.

But thanks to her therapist’s unorthodox therapist’s ways, things get better. Sparrow stops flying away with the birds. She and her mother grow closer again after all the distance the flight put between them. At the music camp, Sparrow unleashes her musical talent, her voice, and makes friends for the first time in a long time. The journey is well worth the read even though I’ve described so much of the book’s progress.

FINAL VERDICT:
What else can I say? Sparrow is just a good book. It slid in under the radar and is still there. If you can manage to track down a copy, it’s worth a read for the unorthodox approach to how one teen processes grief and learns to move on. Books of that kind are a dime a dozen and this is the one that will stick out in my brain for a long time.