The Wish and the Peacock

January 15, 2020
A young Idaho girl tries to save her family's farm. Since her father's death, 12-year-old Paige has been taking on all the farm chores, determined to keep her father's regular farming schedule. When her mother and grandfather bring in a real estate agent to try to sell the farm, Paige enlists her younger brother, Scotty, and some friends to try to sabotage the sale of the farm. Simultaneously, a wounded peacock shows up on the farm, which Paige and Scotty secretly nurse back to health. Heartfelt and funny, the story captures the lives of often underrepresented farming families, and though the trope of children scheming to save something beloved that's in peril through hijinks and humor is familiar, it engages in a deeper discussion of the threat development poses to farmland. The story is set on the Shoshone-Bannock Reservation in southeastern Idaho; Paige, who is white, is best friends with Kimana, a Shoshone-Bannock girl who's also her robotics partner, and Mateo, who is Latinx and whose family owns the neighboring farm. All characters are fully realized, and the book offers authentic views of rural kids navigating long distances between friends' houses on dirt bikes and to and from school via bus as well as some very visceral calf birthing. Swore, who lives on the Shoshone-Bannock Reservation, includes brief narratives from two Shoshone-Bannock friends in her author's note; there is no mention of the catastrophic Dawes Act of 1887, which enabled non-Natives to buy property on tribal lands, however. An impressive tale carrying universal themes of grief, change, and letting go. (Fiction. 8-12)

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February 1, 2020

Gr 4-6-Red-haired and freckled Paige searches for a lost shovel, a symbol of her struggles in dealing with the loss that follows. Paige's life is upside down; her father died some months earlier in a car accident, leading to her mother and Grandpa deciding to sell their family farm. The appearance of a peacock is as startling as its disappearance. A real estate agent becomes the focus of Paige's antagonism, while she is afforded help by a reporter ostensibly there to research farms folding to developers-but who also happens to have an interest in peacocks. The farm is an odd one; while seeming to be focused on potatoes, it also has cattle, horses, pigs, and chickens. There's a greenhouse which features in the loss of a plant entrusted to Paige's care by good friend Mateo, who along with girlfriend Kimana, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe, diversify the cast. Their school bus stops at the Sho-ban Reservation, though Paige is not a member. An 80-acre farm in Idaho seems pretty small for all that this one seems to encompass. Most of the chores and animals are not distinct with the exception of Milkshake, a cow who delivers her calf later than most, requiring intense knowledge and effort from Paige. The ending undercuts most of the message about accepting limitations that Paige has had to learn, but brings in the wish element nicely. VERDICT Despite a lack of focus, this may be a useful mirror for contemporary rural kids, but its characters provide more of the appeal than the busy plot.-Carol A. Edwards, Formerly at Denver Public Library

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