Skye Above

November 1, 2014
Grades 2-5 Skye has just celebrated her ninth birthday and is delighted to be on vacation in Costa Rica with her parents, who are both professional pilots. Skye's lifetime ambition is to fly, not just commercially, like her folks, but also to sail and zoom through the air like birds, which are her true passion. As their vacation unfolds, her parents unveil surprise after surprise, including snorkeling with sea turtles, paragliding, and the ultimate experiencezip-lining through the rain forest. The story moves along at a fast pace and manages to pack in a great deal of unobtrusive background detail about outdoor activities and rain forest flora and fauna. Full-page black-and-white line drawings align closely with the text and effectively convey Skye's continuing delight and wonder. Emerging and newly independent readers will enjoy the unfolding story and appreciate the accessible vocabulary and logical sequencing. This should be equally popular with boys and girls, and it definitely deserves a spot in school and public library high/low collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)