Flora and Ulysses

Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo is the Newbery Medal winner for 2014.  It is about 11-year-old cynic Flora who loves comic books.  One day she sees her neighbor outside with an extreme vacuum cleaner, and Flora witnesses a squirrel get vacuumed up.  After Flora does CPR (learned from the Terrible Things Can Happen To You comic strip she follows) on the squirrel, she realizes that the squirrel has been changed--and is now a superhero.  The book follows Flora as she builds a relationship with the squirrel (Ulysses), tries to protect the squirrel from her mother (probably Ulysses's archnemesis), and meets lots of friends along the way.

This book is so, so, SO weird but somehow also engaging, entertaining, and heart-warming.  Kate DiCamillo is an awesome author. (I have loved several of her books--Tale of Despereaux and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane are two of them.) This book had a familiar writing style to me since I've read her books before, and it was (obviously) super well written.  The characters were all so well developed and interesting.  There could be fascinating books written about almost all of the side characters as main characters (Dr. Meescham, Tootie, William Spiver, even Flora's parents).  Flora was a likable, relatable girl, and Ulysses was an unlikely hero.  I enjoyed the book.  The weirdness distracted me a little bit (since I kept stopping reading to comment to myself about how odd it was), but I think kids would find this book hilarious.  I think even Emmeline would love the humor in this book, but the vocabulary in the book is more upper elementary, so we'll wait.

Rating: * * (2/3 = Liked it)