About the Author: “McCall Hoyle, writes honest YA novels about friendship, first love, and girls finding strength to overcome great challenges. She is a middle school language arts teacher. Her own less-than-perfect teenage experiences and those of the girls she teaches inspire many of the struggles in her books. When she’s not reading or writing, she’s spending time with her family and their odd assortment of pets. She has an English degree from Columbia College and a master’s degree from Georgia State University. She lives in a cottage in the woods in North Georgia where she reads and writes every day.”
I absolutely love novels that are empowering to kids, especially those that target girls in the teen years because that is a hard age for girls with a lot going on in that time period in their lives. I was pretty excited to receive a hardback copy of The Thing with Feathers by McCall Hoyle to read, review and include in our Holiday Gift Guide this year. Emilie Day is a girl who has seizures. She is homeschooled and spends the days with her best friend who happens to be a seizure dog. Emilie’s mom decides to enroll her in public school so she is thrown into a mix of students who she doesn’t want to find out she has epilepsy. She lives in constant fear that her meds will fail and that everyone will find out. She is already struggling with feeling secluded and struggling to fit in and that will in her eyes, only make it worse. Eventually her worse fear comes /to light and she has to decide if she will pick herself back up and continue pressing forward or withdraw and go back to being alone. It is a great story that helps young girls overcome obstacles like fear, making new friends and finding love. This would be a great gift or stocking stuffer for your tweens and teens this holiday season!
Disclosure: I received this product for free, in exchange for my honest review, which may differ from yours. Regardless, I only recommend products and services I used personally, and believe will be a good fit for consumers.
