Chirp

De: Kate Messner

Narrado por: Merissa Czyz

From acclaimed author Kate Messner comes the powerful story of a young girl with the courage to make her voice heard, set against the backdrop of a summertime mystery.

When Mia moves to Vermont the summer after seventh grade, she's recovering from the broken arm she got falling off a balance beam. And packed away in the moving boxes under her clothes and gymnastics trophies is a secret she'd rather forget.

Mia's change in scenery brings day camp, new friends, and time with her beloved grandmother. But Gram is convinced someone is trying to destroy her cricket farm. Is it sabotage or is Gram's thinking impaired from the stroke she suffered months ago? Mia and her friends set out to investigate, but can they uncover the truth in time to save Gram's farm? And will that discovery empower Mia to confront the secret she's been hiding - and find the courage she never knew she had?

In a compelling story rich with friendship, science, and summer fun, a girl finds her voice while navigating the joys and challenges of growing up.

©2020 Kate Messner (P)2020 Recorded Books

Girl power

I loved the whole story. This is a great read for 5th through 8th grade students. Many life lessons.

Sexualizing narration for strong girls?

I liked the text and welcome the images of and ideas for strong girls, but the sexualized, cutesie, girl-voice-as-aesthetic-candy narration from the reader is an ironic kind of accompaniment / delivery for these themes. I’d like my daughter to grow up to be strong, smart, independent, sympathetic, and maybe even entrepreneurial (maybe)— I hope she’s confident enough to make her voice known and to speak out against aggressors, male or otherwise— but I hope her literal speaking voice is as unaffected and true to her as her as her social, economic, and political voice is. With this book— that is, with its themes and its narrator— young girls get a mixed message: Pack a punch but do it with a suggestive (seductive?) bow on top. If this is the narrator’s sense of a middle grades girl’s voice, the narrator and I (a middle school teacher and parent of a middle grades daughter) have quite different views of who this demographic is and what this demographic might become. She might be speaking to / for some, or even many, of these girls as they are (I hope not but I’ll grant it if only as a hypothetical), but she is not speaking to my idea of whom these girls might aspire to become as they journey toward their truth and away from the performative demands of some boys and men and some other girls and women.

The relatable story to many girls who have had situations that made them feel icky.

The story was well written with two different stories being told. The main character was dealing with two difficult situation with relatable feelings.