The Wish and the Peacock by Wendy S. SworeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Source: Received to Review
Genre: Middle Grade/Tween Fiction
Book Description: Paige’s favorite family tradition on the farm is the annual bonfire where everyone tosses in a stone and makes a wish. This time, Paige’s specific wish is one she’s not sure can come true: Don’t let Mom and Grandpa sell the farm.
When Paige’s younger brother finds a wounded peacock in the barn, Paige is sure it’s a sign that if she can keep the bird safe, she’ll keep the farm safe too. Peacocks, after all, are known to be fierce protectors of territory and family.
With determination and hard work, Paige tries to prove she can save the farm on her own, but when a real estate agent stakes a “For Sale” sign at the end of the driveway and threatens everything Paige loves, she calls on her younger brother and her best friends, Mateo and Kimana, to help battle this new menace. They may not have street smarts, but they have plenty of farm smarts, and some city lady who’s scared of spiders should be easy enough to drive away.
But even as the peacock gets healthier, the strain of holding all the pieces of Paige’s world together gets harder. Faced with a choice between home and family, she risks everything to make her wish come true, including the one thing that scares her the most: letting the farm go.
My thoughts: Change is hard. It is particularly hard for Paige.
Paige is twelve and has lived on the family farm all of her life. She is a hard worker and her dad trained her to do the chores, take care of the equipment, land, and animals. The farm is part of her legacy, until everything changes.
Paige enlists her younger brother, Scotty, to sabotage the sale of the farm. Some of the things they come up with are pretty ingenious. I really enjoyed her antics, but I am sure that it will be more fun for the tween/middle-grade reader. She shows a firm resolve and a lot of creativity.
Paige has some wonderful friends who are there for her to the point of helping her sabotage the open-house. They have helped her through the tough times she has had that year. Part of the reason why she takes the sale of the farm so hard is that her father recently died in a car accident.
The book has some sad situations but focuses more on the good things in life and the importance of family. Paige learns that with a little bit of creativity, she can find a happy ending, or in this case a beginning.
Online Purchase Links:
Praise for the Book!
“The Wish and the Peacock is a thoughtful novel about love, loss, and the hope of a new beginning.”
-Foreword Reviews
“Heartfelt and funny, the story captures the lives of often underrepresented farming families. An impressive tale carrying universal themes of grief, change, and letting go.”
-Kirkus
About the Author: Wendy S. Swore and her family are farmers. She writes part-time, particularly in winter when her farming chores give her time to plant seeds in her imagination. She is a member of SCBWI. She was named the Idaho Farm Bureau District 1 Woman of the Year in 2018.
Visit the author at WendySwore.com
This sounds like a fun read and I love the cover! :)
ReplyDelete