Savvy by Ingrid Law

"You never can tell when a bad thing might make a good thing happen," she said quietly, and at first I wasn't sure if she was talking to herself or to me."

 

Title: Savvy
Author: Ingrid Law
Published: 2008 by Dial Books for Young Readers
Number of pages: 342
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

One of the ways to know if a book for Young Adults is powerful is if it hits you, the adult reader, right in your solar plexus. And this one does.

Meet Mississippi, nicknamed Mibs, our heroine turning thirteen who anxiously awaits the discovery of her savvy. What's a savvy?

' "A savvy's not a sickness or a disease, Mibs", Grandpa told me. It's not magic or sorcery, either. 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." Grandma Dollop had loved the oom-pah-pah sounds of polka music and had collected jars full before she died; Momma even had one or two of those jars left among the others on top of our kitchen cupboards in Kansaska-Nebransas. They were the ones Gypsy favored dancing to with all of her make-believe friends." ' (p. 121)

Now don't start thinking that a savvy is just an inheritance, like brown eyes or curly hair. Mississippi's brother, Fish, can start hurricanes with his savvy. Her Momma can make anything perfect because that's her savvy. Her Grandmother Dollop could catch her favorite songs from the radio and store them in glass jars like jam preserves.

As Mississippi awaits her thirteenth birthday along with her savvy, the family receives news that her father has been in a serious accident and is laying in the hospital unconscious. When Mib's mother and older brother immediately go to him, Mibs and her other two brothers unexpectedly follow them in a big pink Heartland Bible Supply bus which they have practically hijacked while its driver was delivering pink  Bibles. Which he was promptly ordered to take right straight back to where they came from.

So, we follow Mibs, her brothers Fish and Samson, her slowly-becoming-a- friend Bobbi with her brother Will,  the bus driver Lester, and a woman named Lill whom they've picked up because she had car trouble, all over tar-nation hoping that Mibs will get to her father in time. Hoping that her savvy will somehow deliver him, or herself, or those she's with, from the troubles they're in.

Other stops along the tour can be found here:
A Christian Worldview of Fiction, All About Children’s Books, Becky’s Book Reviews, Booking Mama, Cafe of Dreams,  Fireside Musings, Hyperbole, KidzBookBuzz.com, Looking Glass Reviews, Maw Books Blog, Never Jam Today, Olive Tree, Our Big Earth, The 160 Acrewoods, Through a Child’s Eyes