FALLING IN

Isabelle Bean is one of those kids that many of us who are teachers know well. She's smart, not the "get straight A's in school" kind of smart, more the kind of living in her own world, super creative, going to be an artist or inventor or entrepreneur as an adult kind of smart. She's quirky, but not the kind of quirky that kids, or even most adults, like or appreciate. Instead she is the kind of smart and quirky that causes her to be isolated and lonely. "By the time Isabelle reached third grade, she had given up on friendship. She'd grown tired of sending birthday party invitations to children who never RSVP'd, much less appeared at her door on the given date with brightly wrapped packages in their hands. She'd given up making persimmon cookies to bring to school, where other children called them Cootie Cookies and refused to eat them. She'd given up handing out Valentines stenciled with pictures of beating, winged hearts. She'd even given up smiling at girls who seemed shy and in need of a friend themselves."

Isabelle's situation becomes even sadder when we learn about her family- she lives alone with her mother, who was raised in an orphanage, and doesn't quite know how to parent her very different daughter. One day, Isabelle is sent to the office for not paying attention in class. She opens a door, and finds herself falling into a whole different world. She soon meets Hen, who is as pragmatic as Isabelle is spacy, and Grete, who after being declared a witch by her community, has been hiding out in the forest for more than fifty years.

FALLING IN is a fantasy, which is not generally my favorite genre, and even though I loved Frances O'Roark Dowell's SHOOTING THE MOON, I didn't absolutely love this book. Isabelle is a quirky character, and I can only think of two or three kids in my school, mostly our "Isabelles" who would really understand her. At the same time, I'd love to try the book as a read aloud early in the school year. I think FALLING IN could open up some really big and important conversations about how we treat and care for people in our community. And those are exactly the kind of doors I want books to open for kids…