Words with Wings
*Starred Review* Gabby, named for the angel Gabriel, is a daydreamer, and words fire her imagination, creating new worlds for her to inhabit. After her parents separate and Gabby must go to a different school, her daydreams become increasingly vivid, intruding on the realities of the classroom and schoolwork. To Gabby’s occasional puzzlement, her mother worries (“Mom names me for a / creature with wings, then wonders / what makes my thoughts fly”), but her wonderful new teacher is more patient, wisely helping her capture her daydreams on paper and inspiring a new dream to become an author: “Dad is a dreamer / and Mom is a maker. / I’ve been thinking, / maybe / I can be / both.” Grimes, recipient of the 2006 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, has written a novel in verse that is an enthusiastic celebration of the power of words and imagination and a dramatic demonstration that daydreamers are, as Gabby hopes, “cool.” Always accessible, Grimes’ language is vivid, rhythmic, and figurative: Gabby says her dreams are “fancy dancing in my mind,” for example, and thoughts of a circus are a “trampoline to the big top.” Plain or fancy, Grimes’ words speak to the daydreamer in every reader. Grades 3-6. --Michael Cart