Roll

Seeing birds fall out of the sky may lead a person to doubt himself. When you are a very short eleven-year-old boy named Lauren, you doubt yourself often. Ren, as he prefers to be called, senses that he is growing apart from his best friend, Aiden--Aiden is now hanging around with the popular kids and is no longer interested either in the comics he and Ren previously enjoyed or in Ren's company. Ren attempts to adapt to his changing circumstances by joining the cross-country team, emulating his trophy-winning runner father. When he meets new neighbor Sutton, with her bright-red dyed hair, he becomes curious about her. He learns that she is training Birmingham Roller pigeons to drop from the sky and do backward somersaults. Somehow, helping Sutton produce champion somersaulting pigeons feels as normal as anything else. Readers will easily predict the story's destination but will still delight in Sutton's fierce honesty and Ren's geeky self-discoveries (guess what? He really hates running). Readers will also have very little trouble rolling with the human characters--and the pigeons--and will willingly accept the growth Ren makes as a natural byproduct of the events of the novel. Plus, we learn about Birmingham Roller pigeons. How cool is that? ed spicer