“Insignifiant Events in the Life of a Cactus” by Dusti Bowling

So get this. My 12-year-old baby read this book in school last month, then decided I needed a copy of my own to read. He conspired with Sam to get me one, it arrived on Monday, and Baby gave it to me as a surprise gift. Which marks the first time in about 15 years that one of my kids has been so strongly affected by a book that they coerced me to read it; I can remember Bookworm Child (who is now Bookworm Adult) reading a children’s novel and then telling me, “You have GOT to read this book!!” (Although now I can’t remember which book that was. I was sure I blogged about it! But I searched for it to no avail.)

I love surprise books! And it's even better when it's a book that I enjoy. I'm sure I never would have picked this book up (or even heard about it) on my own, but it definitely wasn't a chore to read. It was actually quite interesting. It's about a 13-year-old girl named Aven who moves from Kansas to Arizona in the middle of the school year so that her parents can manage a failing theme park called Stagecoach Pass. Such a move might be hard on any adolescent, but it's especially so for a girl who was born with no arms. Aven is very self-sufficient and has learned to do amazing things with her feet (including writing and playing guitar), but being "unarmed" certainly sets her apart as different. But instead of being mired in self-pity and moping about all the things she can't do, Aven is spunky and sarcastically funny and doesn't let her armlessness stop her. 

I think my favorite part about this book was how, every morning, Baby asked me how much I'd read and what I thought. You should have seen his eyes bug out on Thursday morning when I told him I'd already finished it!