Questions
- What is the relation you find between the title and the text?
- Have you ever been in that boy's situation or attitude?
- What is your impression of Sheryl? In your mind, what does she think of her brother?
- What do you think the end means? Why did the boy walk faster?
Two Girls
I believe we can find a parallel between this ill girl, this story's protagonist sister and the glamorous blonde we are introduced to in ¨A beautiful child¨. As we see they both are something they don't seem to be at the beginning: With Sheryl, I first thought of her as just an awkward, sick little girl who was on the way of his brother all the time; with Marilyn, I got the first impression of a strong, confident, amusing woman who had it all and felt pretty sure about who she was.
As both stories go on, they reveal themselves as something different: Marilyn, as this softened, insure, complex girl who just wanted to be loved and happy, and Sheryl, as a lovely little child that was a whole world inside of her and helps his brother discover some of his own worlds too as they interact.
They end up being something similar the two of them. They end up as brilliant, misunderstood, fragile, beautiful and complex creatures that, as they find themselves, enlighten the world that surrounds them.
I first read The Flight of the Snowbird in 1982 in grade 7 in an American Literature textbook. Sheryl was an autistic little girl and her brother Benjy resented having to take care of her. When Benjy wants to go ice skating his mother tells him to take his sister Sheryl with him. Sheryl falls through the ice in a near fatal accident. Benjy saves her by pulling her out of the icy water. After almost losing her Benjy comes to realize how valuable his sister Sheryl was.
ReplyDeleteAuthor Jean Lively was an educator who wrote for grade school. She has no known bibliography. One source says The Flight of the Snowbird was published in 1971.