Hilary McKay.  Saffy’s Angel.  Margaret K. McElderry, 2002.  (Copyright 2001).  152 pages.  Age 9 to 14.

Everything can change in a moment.  For me, it happened when I was horsing around with my brother in the basement of our house in Maine, and I found an empty Magic 8 Ball package—a gift I thought Santa gave me.  My parents, people I thought I could trust, had lied to me.  Outlook not so good.  For Saffron Casson, it was when she learned to read and noticed that, unlike her siblings—Cadmium, Indigo, and Rose—her name was not on her family’s highly-regarded color chart.  Her mother uncomfortably admitted that she was adopted.  Suddenly, in her mind, Saffy became a pear in the Banana House (a name that predated the Cassons’ residence and “made no sense to anyone”).

The Casson household could be described as chaotic or a near-disaster, or we could just call it bustling.  The house isn’t cluttered or overflowing—it contains a lot of things.  Eve (the mother) isn’t negligent—she’s distracted.  Bill (the father) isn’t merely absent—he’s a respectable Artist.  These aren’t quite synonyms, nor are they euphemisms.  McKay describes the family so that you think the best of each family member.  (Except for Bill…only Eve would really consider him a respectable artist, though no one would argue with the fact that he’s “sensible.”)  Each family member has their own struggles and successes.  Caddy has her exams, Indigo has his fears, Rose has her art, and Saffy has her multiple road trip-inspiring angel.

I can’t remember ever reading a book where I thought to myself, “This must be optioned!”  Enter Saffy’s Angel.  There are countless scenes where the dialog outpaces the flow of the narrative, taking over the contextual cues.  An example from one of Caddy’s driving lessons:  “All right, I will overtake!  There!  Wasn’t that brilliant?”  It reads as though it is happening instantly.  And it’s not like we’d want to insert needless exposition between lines of dialog, like “Cadmium overtook the car.”  Yawn.  Instead, you want to watch it happen.  That, and I want some brilliant Hollywood mind to show me a car that will “jump in the air like a cat, all for wheels off the ground together.”  That’s worth the cost of a movie ticket.

Quotable:

In mud is better than on ice (Disney, take note!):

“I went to a concert in Denmark, years ago!  In a sea of mud.  Never stopped raining for three days.  Terrible place, Denmark!”
“Hamlet went mad.”
“So did a lot of us.”
“And his girlfriend drowned.”
“Not surprised at all.  Wettest place I’ve ever seen.”
“She was called Ophelia.”
“And she couldn’t swim?”
“No.”
“Poor old Oph.”
[ . . . ]  “And poor old Ham, in all that mud.”
[ . . . ]  “My tent was stolen and my two best mates got food poisoning.”
“Hamlet’s two best mates got murdered.”
“Dear, oh dear.”  (p. 81-82)

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