Savvy and Scumble are two wonderful companion novels written by Ingrid Law. They follow two young adults (I'd say kids but I'm not sure that 13-year-olds still count as kids...) from an extraordinary family: on their 13th birthdays, people in the family receive a gift, a special power called a savvy. Each person's savvy is different (and amazing!) and each person must learn how to control or scumble the savvy they receive.
Savvy is the story of Mibs Beaumont, a middle child in a savvy family. Just before her 13th birthday, her special savvy birthday, her father is in a car accident and ends up in a coma. Mibs is determined that her savvy can help save her father, but he is in a hospital two hours away. In her journey to reach her father, Mibs ends up on a pink bus with a traveling bible salesman, her brothers, and the local preacher's kids -- a cute boy and his obnoxious older sister.
As she travels, Mibs learns a thing or two (of course... what book is there where the protagonist ends the story the same as she began it?) about savvies, people, life, and herself. Any reader -- old and young, male and female -- can see a bit of themselves in Mibs, who, aside from her savvy, is completely normal and UNperfect, a tween just trying to find herself.
Scumble tells the story of Ledger Kale, Mibs' cousin, nine years after Mibs' savvy journey. Ledge, as everyone calls him, has hoped his whole life for a specific savvy and is completely and utterly disappointed when his savvy birthday presents him with a different savvy. He labels himself a dud and then must try to scumble (control) his savvy right away in order to attend a family wedding two states away.
Ledge mingles with the rest of the savvy clan -- including an insect whisperer, levitating twins, and an electric cousin -- and becomes more frustrated with his savvy -- "useless as a pogo stick in quick sand." But with the help of the same wacky clan and a new frenemy, Ledge learns what it means to scumble and comes to terms with who he is in the world, savvy or not.
Final word: A+. I recommend these books to anyone. That means you. Read it yourself, read it to your kids, hand it to your kids to read. Law has an amazing savvy of her own for telling heartfelt and entertaining stories that appeal to everyone, in a setting that is a perfectly magical blend of reality and fantasy. Seriously, go get the books now. You won't be sorry.
3 comments:
These sounds like a lot of fun. I wish we had a better library down here. Our library doesn't even have all the Harry Potter books. I will put these on my list of books to find when I move to place that actually cares enough about reading to keep up their library....
I'm going to see if my library has these so I can snag one for before our Christmas trip and one for during. Thanks for the review!
thanks so much. I've been pondering what to read next and this sounds right up my alley.
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