Thanks to my friend and colleague Cindy, I have a small handful of Betsy Byars books with which to kick off my summer reading. I enjoyed the heck out of The Eighteenth Emergency with its parade of quirky characters. This short novel, House of Wings, is a different creature entirely. Young Sammy and his elderly grandfather are the only characters, and they populate a lonely house in a wooded area. The novel beings with Sammy running away from his grandfather and it ends with him falling completely in love with him.Along the way, we are introduced to an owl who lives indoors, a parrot who says "Good bye" when people aren't going anywhere, some geese who do their best to get underfoot, and a rescued crane, the object of deep fascination for Sammy and his grandfather for the majority of the story.There seem to be a lot of novels about young people growing to love their eccentric grandparents (see A Year Down Yonder, Walk Two Moons, Bud Not Buddy, and Dicey's Song, just to name four Newbery-winners that approach the same topic). This is a short and sweet version of that plot. It is well done and a nice, quick read.
What do You think about The House Of Wings (1972)?
I still like this book, but again, I didn't notice how TERRIBLE Sammy's parents were when I was a kid. What kind of parents let their kid run around wild and dirty? Then they dump him on his grandfather who lives in a house that is going to be mine in the future. Only not only will it have birds, it will also have spiders and I'll have to keep the birds from eating the spiders. But, as far as they know, he could be senile or something. They just left him to deal with their wild behind child. Who doesn't need to be hit, but he does need to have people tell him to TAKE A BATH!How they can have 9 kids and then just get lazy with the last one is a mystery to me. They suck.But, the book isn't about them, it's about how Sammy and his grandfather find a crane. The fact that they care for it brings them together.
—Synesthesia (SPIDERS!)
