From: EWRIGH61 at MAINE.maine.edu <EWRIGH61>
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 96 15:52:31 EDT

A final thought about _The Cuckoo's Child_ on the last day of the month (I've just finished reading it, and I hope this isn't repeating anyone I missed the beginning of the discussion). Like other readers, I particularly liked Mia's conversation with her neighbor, where Mrs. Swope (like swoop, like a bird? Mia Veery, like a vireo?) tells her that her "guess is that the cuckoo 's child gets put in a nest where they need its kind of trouble." At that moment I began to see Mia as an active participant in her own story (for good o r ill), rather than the passive character she had seemed until that time because I had seen the events only through Mia's eyes. When I realized the kind of 'trouble' Mia had stirred up: getting rid of Dan Flannery (no great loss), pushing her aunt Kit to reexamine her life, I saw her as more empowered, more in control of her own life, which was surely the source of some of her grief (along with missing her parents, of course). And although Mia doesn't seem to realize this explicitly
(which would have been out of character), her subsequent arguments and reconciliations with her new family tell me that she has started to heal. I'm looking forward to Suzanne Freeman's next book.

Beth Wright Asa Adams Elementary School Library Orono, Maine ewrigh61 at maine.maine.edu
Received on Mon 30 Sep 1996 02:52:31 PM CDT