Growing Wings - Hardcover

Winter, Laurel

3.74

767 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618074058 ISBN 13: 9780618074051

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000

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"Linnet waited with her eyes closed for the door to open and her mother to peek in. Waited for her to touch Linnet's shoulder blades lightly...Linnet knew that touch in her bones, as if it had happened every night of her life. An imprint, a memory of the skin itself."

So begins this startling first novel about an eleven-year-old girl who suddenly begins to grow wings -- wings with soft auburn feathers, which only at first can be hidden with long hair and loose clothes. Funny, sad, and hopeful, this remarkable story captures a girl's shock at feeling alone in life, as it follows her journey to answer a most important question: how can a girl with wings ever fit into the world?

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Review:

When 11-year-old Linnet discovers she is growing wings, her bewilderment is confounded by her mother's obvious distress. As it turns out, her mother also grew wings on the cusp of adolescence, only to have them cut off by her mother. Linnet's life seems to speed up rapidly after her shocking discovery; she soon finds herself alone on her estranged grandmother's doorstep, and shortly thereafter, at a type of secret residence for winged people like herself. As she tries to adapt to a life she never expected, Linnet struggles with desires common to anyone who has ever wanted desperately to fit in, while simultaneously seeking to embrace uniqueness.

This unusual novel will strike a chord with young readers who long to both blend in and stand out. Linnet is a sensitive, strong, fallible girl, easy to relate to (in spite of her unusual physical traits). Her adventures as she tries to learn how to fly (just having wings isn't enough--it takes hard work and practice), make friends, find her mother, and, with her winged community, avoid being noticed by the media, make for an entirely new kind of science fiction-fantasy story--one that soars. (Ages 9 to 12) --Emilie Coulter

About the Author:

"I grew up as an odd kid in the mountains of Montana," writes Laurel Winter. "I didn’t have wings, but I was klutzy and bookwormish and didn’t always fit in. I attended a one-room country school for eight grades." Today Laurel writes poems and short stories, and she loves to paint and draw and sculpt. She says this novel began as a short story, but its plot surprised her. Together with her husband and twin sons, she lives in Rochester, Minnesota. GROWING WINGS is her first novel.

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