Savvy

by Ingrid Law

Overview

Mibs Beaumont is about to turn thirteen, which in the Beaumont family means her "savvy"-her special power-is about to strike. Her brothers' savvies let them create hurricanes and spark electricity, but Mibs has yet to learn what her savvy is. Then, two days before her birthday, her father is in a terrible car accident. He is sent to a hospital two hours from their isolated small town, and Mibs determines that she must get there, adamant that her savvy is going to help save him. She ends up on a traveling bible salesman's pink bus with all her siblings and the preacher's children, including the preacher's son, Will, who has a crush on her. The story chronicles the ups and downs of their journey to the hospital-where, in the end, Mibs's savvy (she can hear the thoughts and feelings of people with ink on their skin) helps her hear Poppa's tattoo speak and, ultimately, save his life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780142414330
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	03/23/2010
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	17,758
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	1070L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Ingrid Law has sold shoes, worked in a bookstore, helped other people get jobs, and assembled boxes for frozen eggplant burgers. She and her twelve-year-old daughter live in Boulder, Colorado, in a lovely old mobile home that they like to believe is a cross between a spaceship and a shoe box. They enjoy writing on its walls and painting on its ceiling, and have two harps, a flute, and a ukulele, as well as a fondness for muffins.

Read an Excerpt

Savvy - Chapter One

wHen my brotHer FisH turned tHirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it. I had liked living down southontheedgeofland,nexttothepushing-pullingwaves. I had liked it with a mighty kind of liking, so moving had been hard—hard like the pavement the first time I fell off my pink two-wheeler and my palms burned like fire from all of the hurt just under the skin. But it was plain that fish could live nowhere near or nearby or next to or close to or on or around any largish bodies of water. Water had a way of triggering my brother and making ordinary, everyday weather take a frightening turn for the worse.

Unlike any normal hurricane, fish’s birthday storm had started without warning. One minute, my brother was tearing paper from presents in our backyard near the beach; the next minute, both fish and the afternoon sky went a funny and fearsome shade of gray. My brother gripped the edge of the picnic table as the wind kicked up around him, gaining momentum and ripping the wrapping paper out of his hands, sailing it high up into the sky with all of the balloons and streamers roiling together and disintegrating like a birthday party in a blender. Groaning and cracking, trees shuddered and bent over double, uprooting and falling as easily as sticks in wet sand. Rain pelted us like gravel thrown by a playground bully as windows shattered and shingles ripped off the roof. As the storm surged and the ocean wavestossedandchurned,spillingragingwateranddebris farther and farther up the beach, Momma and Poppa grabbed hold of fish and held on tight, while the rest of us ran for cover. Momma and Poppa knew what was happening. They had been expecting something like this and knew that they had to keep my brother calm and help him ride out his storm.

That hurricane had been the shortest on record, but to keep the coastal towns safe from our fish, our family had packed up and moved deep inland, plunging into the very heart of the land and stopping as close to the center of the country as we could get. There, without big water to fuel big storms, fish could make it blow and rain without so much heartache and ruin.

Settling directly between Nebraska and Kansas in a little place all our own, just off Highway 81, we were well beyond hollering distance from the nearest neighbor, which was the best place to be for a family like ours. The closest town was merely a far-off blur across the highway, and was not even big enough to have its own school or store, or gas station or mayor.

Monday through Wednesday, we called our thin stretch of land Kansaska. Thursday through Saturday, we called it Nebransas. On Sundays, since that was the Lord’s Day, we called it nothing at all, out of respect for

His creating our world without the lines already drawn on its face like all my grandpa’s wrinkles.

If it weren’t for old Grandpa Bomba, Kansaska-Nebransas wouldn’t even have existed for us to live there. When Grandpa wasn’t a grandpa and was just instead a small-fry, hobbledehoy boy blowing out thirteen dripping candles on a lopsided cake, his savvy hit him hard and sudden—just like it did to fish that day of the backyard birthday party and the hurricane—and the entire state of Idaho got made. At least, that’s the way Grandpa Bomba always told the story.

“Before I turned thirteen,” he’d say, “Montana bumped dead straight into Washington, and Wyoming and Oregon shared a cozy border.” The tale of Grandpa’s thirteenth birthday had grown over the years just like the land he could move and stretch, and Momma just shook her head and smiled every time he’d start talking tall. But in truth, that young boy who grew up and grew old like wine and dirt, had been making new places whenever and wherever he pleased. That was Grandpa’s savvy.

My savvy hadn’t come along yet. But I was only two days away from my very own thirteen dripping candles—though my momma’s cakes never lopped to the side or to the middle. Momma’s cakes were perfect, just like Momma, because that was her savvy. Momma was perfect. Anything she made was perfect. Everything she did was perfect. Even when she messed up, Momma messed up perfectly.

I often reckoned what it would be like for me. I pictured myself blowing out the candles on my cake and fires dying in chimneys across four counties. Or I imagined making my secret birthday wish—getting my cheeks full and round with air—then floating up toward the ceiling like my very own happy birthday balloon.

“My savvy is going to be a good one,” I told my brother Rocket. “I just know it.”

“Girls don’t get the powerful jujubes,” said Rocket, running one hand through his dark shock of unkempt hair with a crackle of static. “Girls only get quiet, polite savvies—sugar and spice and everything humdrum savvies. It’s boys who get the earthshaking kinds of savvy.”

I had scowled at my brother and stuck out my tongue. Rocket and I both knew that there were plenty of girls climbing round our family tree that had strong and sturdy savvies, like Great-aunt Jules, who could step back twenty minutes in time every time she sneezed; or our second cousin Olive, who could melt ice with a single red-hot stare.

Rocket was seventeen and full of junk that I wasn’t allowed to say until I got much, much older. But he was electric through and through, and that had always gone to his head. for fun, Rocket would make my hair stand on end like he’d rubbed it with a balloon, or hit fish with a wicked zap from the other side of the room. But Rocket could keep the lights on when the power went out, and our family sure liked that, especially the littler Beaumonts.

Rocket was the oldest, with fish and me following after. Born only a year apart, fish and I were nearly the same height and looked a lot alike, both with hair like sand and straw—hair like Momma’s. But while I had Poppa’s hazel eyes, fish had Momma’s ocean blue ones. It was as if we’d each taken a little bit of Momma, or a little bit of Poppa, and made the rest our own.

I wasn’t the youngest or the smallest in the family; broody Samson was a dark and shadowy seven, and doll-faced Gypsy was three. It was Gypsy who started calling me Mibs, when my full name, Mississippi, became far too much for her toothsome toddler tongue to manage. But that had been a relief. That name had always followed me around like one of fish’s heavy storm clouds.

The itch and scritch of birthday buzz was about all I was feeling on the Thursday before the friday before the Saturday I turned thirteen. Sitting at the dinner table, next to Poppa’s empty chair and ready plate, I barely ate a bite. Across from me, Gypsy prattled endlessly, counting the make-believe creatures she imagined seeing in the room, and begging me to help her name them.

I pushed the food around my plate, ignoring my sister and daydreaming about what it would be like when I got my very own savvy, when the telephone rang right in the middle of pot roast, mashed potatoes, and mighty unpopular green beans. As Momma rose to answer, us kids, and Grandpa Bomba too, seized the chance to plop our mashers on top of our beans while Momma’s back was turned. Samson tucked some of those beans into his pockets to give to his dead pet turtle, even though Momma always said he shouldn’t be giving it any of our good food, seeing how it was dead and all, and the food would just go to rot. But Samson was sure as sadly sure that his turtle was only hibernating, and Momma hadn’t the heart to toss it from the house.

We were all smiling to each other around the kitchen table at the smart way we’d taken care of those beans when Momma dropped the phone with a rattling clatter and a single sob—perfectly devastated. She sank to the floor, looking for all the world as if she were staring right through the checkered brown and blue linoleum to behold the burning hot-lava core at the very center of the Earth.

“It’s Poppa,” Momma said in a choked voice, as her perfect features stretched and pinched.

A gust of wind burst from fish’s side of the table, blowing everyone’s hair and sending our paper napkins flying pell-mell onto the floor. The air in the room grew warm and humid as though the house itself had broken out into a ripe, nervous sweat, and the many dusty, tightly lidded, empty-looking jars that lined the tops of all the cupboards rattled and clinked like a hundred toasting glasses. Outside it was already raining fish rain—drops hastened from a sprinkle to a downpour in seconds as fish stared, wide-eyed and gaping like his namesake, holding back his fear but unable to scumble his savvy.

“Momma?” Rocket ventured. The air around him crackled with static, and his T-shirt clung to him like socks to towels straight from the dryer. The lights in the house pulsed, and blue sparks popped and snapped at the tips of his nervous, twitching fingers.

Momma looked at Poppa’s empty chair and waiting plate, then she turned to us, chin trembling, and told us about the accident on the highway. She told us how Poppa’s car had gotten crushed up bad, like a pop can under a cowboy boot, and how he’d gone and forgotten to get out before it happened, landing himself in a room and a bed at Salina Hope Hospital, where now he lay broken and asleep, not able to wake up.

“Don’t fret, child,” Grandpa consoled Momma as though they were back in time and Momma was still a young girl sitting on his knee crying over a broken doll. “Those doctors know what’s what. They’ll fix your fellow up in no time. They’ll get his buttons sewn back on.” Grandpa Bomba’s tone was soft and reassuring. But as the strobe-like flashes from Rocket’s nervous sparks lit Grandpa’s face, I could see the worry etched deep into all his wrinkles.

For half of a half of a half of a second I hated Poppa. I hated him for working so far away from home and for having to take the highway every day. I hated him for getting in that accident and for ruining our pot roast. Mostly, I realized that my perfect cake with its pink and yellow frosting was probably not going to get made, and I hated Poppa for wrecking my most important birthday before it had even arrived. Then I felt the burning shame of even having those thoughts about my good, sweet poppa and sank low in my chair. To make amends for my selfish feelings, I sat quietly and ate every last unwelcome green bean from beneath my mashed potatoes, as fish’s rain lashed against the windows and Rocket caused every lightbulb in the house to explode with a live-wire zing and a popping shatter, sending shards of glass tinkling to the floor and pitching the house into darkness.

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION
For generations, the Beaumont family has harbored a secret. They each possess a “savvy”—a special power that strikes when they turn thirteen. Grandpa Bomba moves mountains, Mibs’s older brothers create hurricanes and spark electricity…and now it’s the eve of Mibs’s big day. As if waiting for her savvy to show up wasn’t hard enough, Mibs’s family gets scary news two days before her birthday: Poppa has been in a terrible accident. With the hope that her new power will save Poppa, Mibs sneaks onto a salesman’s bus bound for the hospital… only to find the bus heading in the opposite direction. Suddenly, Mibs finds herself on an unforgettable odyssey that will force her to make sense of growing up—and of other people, who might also have a few secrets hidden just beneath the skin.

ABOUT INGRID LAW

Ingrid Law is a writer and an artist. She is the author and illustrator of two e-books for children, and her artwork has appeared in local and national art shows in the US. She lives in Colorado with her teenage daughter. Savvy is her first novel.

A CONVERSATION WITH INGRID LAW
Q: What inspired Savvy?

Watching my own daughter, I am constantly reminded of the challenges young people face—the struggle for identity, the enormous physical and emotional changes, the often conflicting voices of parents, friends, teachers, and media. While these challenges may not manifest themselves as hurricanes and electrical sparks in real life, I think they can feel just as powerful and out of control to the young person navigating them.

Q: What do you think your savvy would be?

If I could choose, I think I would like to fly or breathe underwater. When I was a kid, I was convinced that I could see air—see its movements and patterns through a room—but everyone insisted that it was impossible. I’ve always wondered how many things are impossible only because we are told they are.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Mibs wishes, at least temporarily, that her savvy could “give [her] the muscle to turn nasty girls into slimy green frogs or to glue their mouths shut tight with a nod of [her] head.” (p. 17) Why do the girls in Mibs’s class make fun of her? What would you do in her place?

The Beaumonts have to keep their savvies a secret from everyone. Would that be difficult for you? Do you think everyone has a secret? Who would you trust with your big secrets?

Why does Rosemary Meeks come to the Beaumont house? How are things different with the Meeks family around? Is her influence on the Beaumont house positive or negative?

Describe Mibs’s relationship with her parents and siblings. How is it complicated by their savvies? What are the positive and negative aspects of having siblings with extraordinary powers?

Grandpa says to Mibs, “Your savvy’s in your blood. It’s an inheritance, like your brown eyes or your grandma’s long toes or her talent for dancing to polka music.” (p. 121) Are people born with special talents or do they have to work at developing their unique abilities? Are there any talents you wish you had?

Explain how Mibs ends up on a bible delivery bus with Bobbi, Will, Fish, and Samson. Where do they hope to arrive? How do things go awry? Which scene in their wild adventure is your favorite?

“Perhaps Samson’s strengthening touch was just an ordinary sort of human magic, the kind of magic that exists in the honest, heartfelt concern of one person for another.” (p. 113) Explain “ordinary human magic” in your own words. Give another example of “ordinary human magic” you find in Savvy.

Slowly, Mibs discovers the way her savvy works. How does she figure it out? How is it different from the savvy that she originally hoped for? In the last year, what have you, like Mibs, discovered about yourself?

How does Lill Kiteley end up on the bus? What would you say is her special know-how? How does she use that know-how during her time on the bus and how does it affect the passengers?

How does Mibs’s relationship with Will and Bobbi change over the course of the adventure? Who do you think changes the most in the story?

Fish and Rocket have a terrible time scumbling their savvies. How does this cause a ruckus for the Beaumont clan and others who know them? Are there any parts of your own personality that you have a difficult time controlling? Is it better to tone down parts of yourself so that you fit in society or is it more important to be yourself completely?

Momma warns Mibs that, “You can’t get rid of part of what makes you you and be happy.” (p. 186) What makes youyou? How do you let that special part shine through?

When Mibs thinks about Will’s obvious feelings for her she realizes that it“[makes her] feel too young and too old at the same time.” (p. 223) Do you feel like kids today are forced to grow up too fast? How might different aspects of modern life (the media, school, friends, etc.) affect the ways in which kids mature?

After listening to so many voices in her head throughout the novel, what does Mibs discover about the voices that she and others listen to? Is their anything that boosts or stifles your confidence? How can you drown out the voices that don’t matter?

What do you think makes Poppa wake up at last? Do you think it has anything to do with one of the Beaumont’s savvies?

Editorial Reviews

Reviewed by Sarah Mlynowski

In Mississippi Beaumont's family, turning 13 means your savvy kicks in. When her grandfather turned 13, he created Idaho. And when her brother turned 13, he caused a hurricane. At the start of Law's winning debut novel, Mississippi's 13th birthday is only two days away.

With her dad in a coma after a horrible car accident, Mississippi is convinced that her savvy will have something to do with waking people up. Along with her brothers, the cute preacher's son and his obnoxious gum-chomping sister, she sneaks aboard a delivery bus she believes is heading toward her dad, hoping to save him.

The thing about Mississippi? She's not always right. Turns out, her savvy has her hearing a whole bunch of voices-in her head. When people around her have any type of ink-say, a tattoo or a pen mark-on their skin, she can't help but read their minds.

What makes this book so engaging is that aside from the whole mind-reading thing, Mississippi isn't extraordinary. She's not excessively brilliant, incredibly attractive or overly girly. She's afraid of growing up. She prefers to be called Mibs, but the mean girls call her Missy-Pissy. She wishes she could mess up less and be more like her perfect mom. (Literally, perfect-that's her mother's savvy.) Readers, boys and girls alike, will see a bit of themselves in Mibs.

Also, the Beaumonts aren't the only ones with savvys. Normal people (the bus driver, the hitchhiker, the obnoxious gum-chomper) have them, too-they just don't recognize them. As Mibs's mom says, "One person might make strawberry jam so good that no one can get enough of it.... There are even those folks who never get splashedby mud after a rainstorm or bit by a single mosquito in the summertime." The 10-year-old boy or the 40-year-old mom reading the book-they might just have one, too.

Besides saving her dad, Mibs's quest in the novel is to learn to "scumble"-in other words, control her savvy. She has to learn to quiet the voices she hears, and to find her own voice.

Law has definitely found hers. Short chapters and cliffhangers keep the pace quick, while the mix of traditional language and vernacular helps the story feel both fresh and timeless. And while road-trip novels tend to be more about the journey than the destination, the ending, like Momma's savvy, is pretty perfect. I wasn't sure how Law was going to manage it without going all fairy-tale, but she does the story justice, making the conclusion happy and heart-rending simultaneously, resisting the urge to tie it all up with a fancy ribbon and a happily ever after.

Law's savvy? She's a natural storyteller who's created a vibrant and cinematic novel that readers are going to love. Ages 9-11. (May)

Sarah Mlynowski is the author of the Magic in Manhattan series, the most recent of which is Spells & Sleeping Bags (paperback reprint from Delacorte due this month), and, with E. Lockhart and Lauren Myracle, the coauthor of How to Be Bad (HarperTeen, May).

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Law's storytelling is rollicking, her language imaginative, and her entire cast of whacky, yet believable characters delightful . . . wholly engaging and lots of fun. Starred review.

Booklist

Gr 4-7- Mississippi Beaumont ("Mibs" for short) simply cannot wait for her 13th birthday. There's the allure of finally becoming a teenager, of course, but in the Beaumont family, 13 is when family members get their "savvy," or unworldly power. For Mibs's older brother Fish, it's control over the elements, and for her mother it's the ability to do everything perfectly. Unfortunately, Mibs's excitement is cut short when her father is injured in a car accident. Convinced that her new powers will be able to save her Poppa, she and some new friends climb aboard a bus toting pink bibles on her birthday, in the hopes of getting to the hospital. Instead they find themselves headed in the wrong direction with the cops looking for them, Mibs's powerful brother seriously angry, and the son of a preacher man she has a crush on coming dangerously close to figuring out the Beaumonts' secret. Mibs's real savvy isn't what she expected, and neither are her traveling companions. Though the story never lives up to the brilliance of its opening chapter, Law has a feel for characters and language that is matched by few. With its delightful premise and lively adventure, this book will please a wide variety of audiences, not just fantasy fans. Definitely an author to watch.-Elizabeth Bird, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

Mibs can't wait for her 13th birthday, when her special gift, or "savvy," will awaken. Everyone in her family-except beloved Papa, who married in-has one, from Grandpa Bomba's ability to move mountains (literally) to Great Aunt Jules's time-traveling sneezes. What will hers be? Not what she wants, it turns out, but definitely what she needs when the news that a highway accident has sent her father to the ICU impels her to head for the hospital aboard a Bible salesman's old bus. Sending her young cast on a zigzag odyssey through the "Kansaska-Nebransas" heartland, Law displays both a fertile imagination (Mibs's savvy is telepathy, but it comes with a truly oddball caveat) and a dab hand for likable, colorful characters. There are no serious villains here, only challenges to be met, friendships to be made and some growing up to do on the road to a two-hanky climax. A film is already in development, and if it lives up to this marvel-laden debut, it'll be well worth seeing. (Fantasy. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews