The Truth About Sparrows

Beleive it or not, it is not about sparrows. I think that is hard to understand, but I can see why it is called that, though. See, this girl named Sadie and her family had to move to the coast of Texas during the Great Depression. They were cooking on the road and an old man comes by asking for food. She calls him Mr. Sparrow.  She feels like she and everybody eles who had to leave from their home. So she says, "we are all sparrows."  I think that, in a way, it is really great, but it is also a sad book. Not sad as in burst out in tears. Just sad where you wonder why she did that and you ask yourself what you would do in her place, or how you would feel.

In the process of the book her mom is pregnant and one month away from giving birth. They went out to pick pecans about five miles away from town with Sadies friend Dollie. So their just picking, picking, picking, and all of a sudden she can't find her mom. I felt this pang. It was like having the wind knocked out of me. Anything could be happening. When she finds her she is lying in a ditch, and her breathing is heavy and labored. I won't go in to detail, but that wave of nervousness and feeling of fear is so powerful it made me bang my head on the ceiling of an annoyingly small plane.

She got mad at Dollie and called her a bay rat (an insult that basicly says, "I'm big, your little, I'm right, your wrong, I'm smart, your dumb."). So Dollie, her previous best friend, and Davis, Dollies brother who at first thought he was really great and Sadie liked him to someone who Sadie likes yeah, not as a friend, start to leave her alone. I felt really sorry for her because now she was friendless, and felt lower than mud. I could feel how much remorse she felt.

Her dad told her that they were going to live by the sea and fish for a living. On the way to earn more money they had to stop to pick cotton. She felt really angry at her dad and thought he was a big, fat, liar. Her anger flowed into me and I agreed that is completly the way I would feel if I was in her position. Then you also feel like she is a little brat. The kind of person who if things don't go just their way they throw a fit.

This book is really powerful, it is rather slow. I could totally feel the emotion. So I would give it an 8. I hope you read it. It is in our school library.