I am so happy to be able to announce the first day of the Kidz Book Buzz blog tour for The Year the Swallows Came Early. It is always a great pleasure to tour books that I have loved without reservation and this middle-grade book by an exciting new author, Kathryn Fitzmaurice, is one such book.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

We lived in a perfect stucco house, just off the sparkly Pacific, with a lime tree in the backyard and pink and yellow roses gone wild around the picket fence. But that wasn’t enough to keep my daddy from going to jail the year I turned eleven. I told my friend, Fankie, that it was hard to tell what something was like on the inside just by looking at the outside. And that our house was like one of those See’s candies with beautiful swirled chocolate on the outside, but sometimes hiding coconut flakes on the inside, all gritty and hard, like undercooked white rice.

Good gravy! That opening is a thing of beauty. This author is going to be one of those that school kids study fifty years from now.

Think about that opening. Four sentences. Tell me how much you know about Groovy in that space. She’s smart, she sees that things aren’t always what they seem, she’s a philosopher and a poet, and her daddy went to prison. Tell me you can stop yourself from turning the page to see why her daddy went to prison. There is in this short opening paragraph a promise of what the book will deal with–shattered illusions, the need to forgive, the need to live even when others let you down. And the author goes on to deliver on these things she’s promised us in this opening.

Thank God I have a an arc of this book. I can underline it, highlight it, and dog-ear it, as I go back through it, trying to learn how to write a great novel.

Anyone who has read my blog for very long knows that contemporary middle-grade girl books are way down low on my list of reading for pleasure. I love scruffy little orphan boys. I love action and adventure. I love fantasy. My favorite book in recent years has been Eoin Colfer’s Airman. Just before that it was The Bark of the Bog Owl, by Jonathan Rogers. Both boy books.

So what on earth am I doing singing the praises of a girl book? A lyrical, comfortably paced amble through a slice of life with a character named Groovy. A coming of age book. A book with no threat to world peace.

Here’s the deal: A good writer transports you into another world, gives you a character you can love, and gives her some problems you can relate to. And it doesn’t much matter that Groovy Robinson doesn’t go through a secret wardrobe and enter a fantasy world. Her real world is finely drawn, her friends and family members are real and well-rounded, her struggles are serious and she meets them with strength and grace and wit.

Check out the first chapter of this lovely book, here. Read reviews of the book here. Buy the book here.

Buy it now, and give it to a birthday girl you know and love. After you read it yourself first, of course.

If you can’t afford to buy the book, never fear. I’ll be giving a copy away. Come back and see me tomorrow.

In the meantime find out what the other bloggers on the tour thought of the book:

A Christian Worldview of Fiction
Becky’s Book Reviews
Booking Mama
Cafe of Dreams
Dolce Bellezza
Fireside Musings
Homeschool Buzz
Hyperbole
KidzBookBuzz.com
Looking Glass Reviews
Maw Books Blog
Never Jam Today
Novel Teen
Reading is My Superpower