April 5, 2008

come in, it said, come in

The origin of my URL is the principal character of Sharon Creech's The Wanderer, which I recommend to my students every year. (So far no one seems to have developed as personal a connection with it as I have, but I'm still hoping. I love this book.) Sophie at 13 is so many things that I at nearly 30 am still trying to be. Along with E.L. Konigsburg's Nadia Diamondstein and Claudia Kincaid, Maurice Sendak's Ida, Andrew Clements' Nick Allen, and Creech's own Rosie of Granny Torrelli Makes Soup, Sophie is one of my favorite heroes of children's literature.

She's called "Three-Sided Sophie" by her father; she is in turns romantic and dreamy, logical, and hardheaded and impulsive. "... if I ever get all three together, I'll be all set, though I wonder where I will be then." Sophie speaks in exclamation points all the time - I miss and look forward to feeling that way about life - so in love with it that even when you're terrified of the unknown, no one can stop you from going out to sea to meet it.

The book is so well-written that I feel a little seasick when I read it; the rhythm of the prose and descriptions of the hell they go through at sea and with each other to get to England (and for Sophie to end up where she does) - I sometimes feel like I have to come up for air. My phobia of boats is so great that I almost passed up reading this story, because I was sure I'd hate it - but since I had never, to date, hated a Sharon Creech book, I delved - and have no regrets.

1 comment:

Sharon Creech said...

Oh, I love this! Thank you for leading me here.

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