Hippie Chick by Joseph Monninger
Who would like this book? Older teens who have an interest in survival stories and environmental/new age themes.
Why? Lolly Emerson, a precocious and free-spirited 15-year-old, loves to sail Mugwump, her Boston Whaler. One beautiful moonlit evening in the Florida Keys, her solo sailing goes awry and she is thrown into the ocean. Just when death seems certain, a manatee spirits her away to a tiny island with warm water and mangroves. Lolly narrates her story with a sensitive, intelligent voice that reflects a high degree of self-awareness. The narration alternates between her own experiences and the experiences of her mother and the others on land, who are missing her and searching for her. Monninger does a good job of straddling these two narrative sequences, bringing them together at the end. The descriptions of her experiences while she is with the manatees are riveting, and her sense of the beauty of the natural world is balanced by the harsh threats of bull sharks, alligators, and mosquitoes. The story, though, is predictable and the final chapters are uneven, inexplicably laying out the rest of her life and her mother’s life. Even so, it’s great to have a survival story about a sensitive young woman. The book would be a good choice for public and school libraries. Some middle school librarians should be aware of a couple of scenes with lots of kissing and one brief scene in which Lolly and her boyfriend drink beer.
The details: 156 p. 2008