The Girl Who Wanted to Fly

ISBN-13: 9781904987628 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 268 str.

L Rivlin

Opis

14-year-old Mo Tamworth keeps up a tough front while hiding her despair about her disability. She is especially miserable about how she looks during the three swimming lessons a week that she must take for remedial exercise. When horseriding is suggested as an alternative, she is overjoyed. However, when Mo starts learning to ride, she is forced to confront her attitudes to imperfection -- both in herself and in others. In the process, she comes to the realisation that the world is not divided into "whole" and "deficient" but that all people have their own level of handicap and even bullies have their individual hells to live in. This story charts the development of a teenage girl from her fury about not living up to an ideal of beauty and her disgust with any deviation from that ideal, to the realisation that her feelings of personal worth should depend only on her certainty that she is trying as hard as she can, to be the best that she can be.

Placed by The International Board on Books for Young People as an outstanding novel for 2011, The Girl Who Wanted to Fly is being exhibited worldwide by IBBY at international book fairs. This absorbing narrative examines the problems encountered by a disabled teenager, Mo Tamworth, but the voyage of self-discovery charted in the story is not limited to the experience of disability. The situations are familiar to all young people negotiating the often confusing transition between childhood and early adulthood. Just as with other young teens, Mo must learn to respect others in order to respect herself. Although the narration is from the point of view of a teenage girl, it offers compelling insights which adults will also find entertaining and instructive.