The Question of Miracles
The Question of Miracles
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Houghton Mifflin
Annotation: Unhappy about moving from sunny California to rainy Corvallis, Oregon, and grieving over the death of her best friend, sixth-grader Iris looks for a miracle and may find one in new friend Boris.
 
Reviews: 5
Catalog Number: #119263
Format: Perma-Bound Edition
Special Formats: Inventory Sale Inventory Sale
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Copyright Date: 2015
Edition Date: 2015 Release Date: 03/08/16
Pages: 249 pages
ISBN: Publisher: 0-544-66852-9 Perma-Bound: 0-605-94018-5
ISBN 13: Publisher: 978-0-544-66852-2 Perma-Bound: 978-0-605-94018-5
Dewey: Fic
LCCN: 2014000738
Dimensions: 20 cm.
Language: English
Reviews:
Starred Review ALA Booklist

Starred Review Sixth-grader Iris hates her new home in rainy Corvallis, Oregon. The move from Southern California was ostensibly because of her mother's new job. But another compelling motivation was the accidental death of Iris' best friend, a tragedy that she witnessed. Iris finally makes a friend in Corvallis: Boris, a quirky nerd who is, just barely, better than nothing. Then Iris learns something astounding about Boris. He was not expected to live when he was born, but a group of nuns, dedicated to making Pope Paul a saint, prayed to him, and Boris was cured. An Italian committee from the Vatican is headed to Oregon to make sure that Boris' case can be counted as a miracle. This information intrigues Iris. Do miracles really happen? Who gets a miracle and who decides? And perhaps Iris' sense that Sarah is still around her may be the beginning of a miracle, if Iris can only make contact. The atmospherically dull, rain-swept landscape becomes almost another character as Iris tries to push away the fog, both literal and mental. She asks the questions that many children would ask in this circumstance, and the book puts a smart circle of caring adults to help her find answers. But it is her realistic relationship with the matter-of-fact Boris, a most unlikely miracle, that will catch readers and help pull them toward seeking answers of their own for the story's very large questions.

School Library Journal

Gr 4-6 Iris is starting sixth grade in a new school in Oregon-new house, new people, new life. Her parents want to distract her from the recent death of her best friend in California. The incessant rain echoes her state of mind and she turns away from potential friends, seeking instead someone she can barely tolerate-so that she must only endure minimal interaction. His name is Boris, and while he is obviously an outcast, Iris prefers to be on the outskirts right now. Her brain is grappling with unanswerable questions-is the essence of Sarah out there somewhere? Would Sarah's spirit follow her to her new house? Iris explores possible avenues to find the answers-priests, a psychic, and an experiment with electronic voice phenomena. Iris's relationship with Boris transmutes into a real friendship as she expands her horizons to include him and even confide in him. Boris, meanwhile, enjoys the first real friendship he has had in a long time. This is a realistic view of grief, with particular emphasis on the agonizing longing to know if a lost loved one is truly out there somewhere. Iris's stay-at-home dad fills the story with great flavors and textures-from the baby chicks he hatches to his homemade bread, giving the story a cozy touch despite Iris's impossible quest for answers. Recommended for larger collections and anywhere a new title on grieving is needed. Kathy Cherniavsky, Ridgefield Library, CT

Word Count: 41,837
Reading Level: 5.3
Interest Level: 4-7
Accelerated Reader: reading level: 5.3 / points: 6.0 / quiz: 175584 / grade: Middle Grades

1

Iris stood inside the great big double-wide doorway of the gymnasium-slash-auditorium-slash-lunchroom. It was crazy in there--track marks from wet, muddy shoes crisscrossed the lacquered wooden floor. A miserable teacher sopped up spilled milk right in the middle of everything. Three more teachers wandered the perimeter, keeping an eye on the whole scene, shushing kids when they got too loud, telling a pair of boys to "Cut out the horseplay!" when they started tossing some girl's orange back and forth over her head.
   The acoustics were terrible; the voices from the crowd of kids inside made Iris feel like her brain was an apple on a tray, tipping over and knocking against the side of her head.
   Back home in California, no one ever ate lunch indoors--lunchtime was a strictly outdoor activity. On the two or three rainy days each year, they'd eat in their classroom while the teacher played a movie, but other than that, they ate outside at concrete picnic tables, just to the right of a big open field. It was humane. There was room to breathe.
   But that was back home. Here in Oregon, where it had rained literally every day since they'd parked the moving van in the long gravel driveway of the farmhouse Iris's dad had bought sight unseen (except for the video tour on the real estate agent's website), school lunch had to be consumed indoors.
   It was another reason to hate it here. As if Iris didn't have a long enough list already. Along with the ridiculous noise of the reverberating voices, there was also the smell--the musty, mildewy, earthy stench of too much rain, socks that never did dry out completely, and wet hair.
   But she couldn't just stand there all day. The other kids were starting to turn and stare at her.
   There was a table at the far side of the gymnasium, just under a basketball hoop, that wasn't completely crowded. Iris headed there, ignoring the questioning glances on the other kids' faces. Ignoring the occasional smile, too. Ignoring everything.
   And when she slid into an empty spot near the end of a bench, she ignored the kid sitting next to her--a mouth breather she remembered seeing in her Social Studies class before lunch. She felt him there, though--the aura of his curly hair, the wet-wool scent of his red and blue striped pullover, the weight of him taking up space.
   This was Iris's first day of school, even though September was almost over. Her dad had wanted her to be homeschooled, which had sounded like a good idea to Iris--she wasn't in a big hurry to be around a lot of people--but after two weeks of trying to do schoolwork at their kitchen table, with her dad sipping coffee and looking over her shoulder, Iris had insisted that her parents enroll her at Linus Pauling Middle School. At home in California, sixth grade meant being the oldest kids at the elementary school. Here, it meant being among the youngest, lumped into the gym at lunchtime with teenagers whose bodies smelled like grownups and who looked at each other in a way that Iris didn't have all the words for but knew she didn't like.
   Iris pulled out her lunch. The boy from Social Studies class was eating a microwaved burrito. It smelled worse than the packed bodies, worse than the rain. Iris could hear him chewing.
   To block out the sound, she took a big bite of her apple and listened to it crunch between her teeth. Iris put all of her attention into eating that apple--bite, chew-chew-chew-chew, swallow. Bite.
   "You really like apples," said Burrito Boy.
   Iris ignored him.
   "You like the red ones, too, or just the green kind?"
   "The red ones are mealy," Iris answered begrudgingly. It was one thing to ignore a tablemate; another thing entirely to ignore a direct question. She didn't feel like being that rude.
   "Yeah, I think so too," said the boy. "You ever try a Pink Lady?"
   Iris shook her head.
   "You should," he said, enthusiastic now. "They're the best. They're crisp like a green apple, but sweeter, like a red. Kind of tangy, too." Then he added, "My name's Boris."
   Finally, Iris turned to look at the boy next to her. She wondered if he was teasing her, making fun of her in some way she wasn't quite catching on to.
   But his expression was wide open, earnest. His dark brown curls rioted around his face, there was a flush in his round cheeks, his eyes--as dark as his hair--weren't laughing at her, but waited eagerly for her response.
   Everything about him was doglike--the way he sort of sat forward in his chair, the way he waited for her to answer, the way his eyes stayed on her face.
   Unfortunately for him, Iris was a cat person.
   She turned away. "Thanks for the recommendation," she said. "I'll ask my dad to pick some up."
   She unwrapped the sandwich her dad had packed for her that morning--egg salad. At least there was that.
   "Your dad does the shopping at your house, huh?" In typical doglike fashion, Boris didn't take the hint that Iris was done talking. Not seeming to care that she didn't answer, Boris continued. "My mom's the grocery shopper for our family. But I make her take me along whenever I'm around, because she buys all the wrong stuff. Like plain Cheerios instead of the honey kind. Low-fat milk instead of whole."
   Iris didn't tell Boris that her dad did the shopping because her mother was busy working at the university, doing important research, or that her dad was actually a really good grocery shopper, and a good cook, and even a good gardener. That was the thing her dad had been the most excited about, when they moved--the gardening. "Can't grow anything in that sandy beach soil. When we get settled in, I'm going to grow all the produce we can eat. Self-sufficient, that's what we'll be," he'd told them both--Iris and her mom--on the sixteen-hour drive up the coast of California, through half the length of Oregon, and plop into the heart of the Willamette Valley. That's what Corvallis meant, even--Heart of the Valley. And the town was surrounded by farmland. Cows and great big rolls of green alfalfa.
   But it had rained every day since they'd moved, and her dad still hadn't braved the weather to dig his garden.
   Iris tried not to feel smug.
   Around her, the other kids were finishing their lunches. And they all seemed to know the routine; when a table emptied, they signaled one of the teachers, who came over to fold the table. Then the kids would help push it to the far side of the gymnasium.
   A tall, skinny girl with long, skinny braids rolled out a cart full of balls. Dodge balls and basketballs.
   A boy with feet as big as Iris's father's came over and stared at her and Boris. "You almost finished?" he asked. "We wanna play."
   Iris looked up. Above her was the basketball net, strung onto a red metal hoop. The net was made of thin off-white rope, knotted and tied in a series of loops. Each of the topmost loops attached to one of the hooks that rimmed the hoop--fifteen of them, Iris counted. From there the net narrowed in a series of diamonds down to a limp, not-quite-circular mouth that yawned at her.
   Iris shoved the crusts of her sandwich and her apple core into her lunch bag. She hadn't even opened her orange juice. She stood and watched as the teacher collapsed the table, as it contorted in on itself.
   There was a loud bang behind her, and Iris gasped, jumped a little. She felt her heart pound, her stomach sicken.
   "It's just a stack of trays that fell over," Boris said. "Over there." He pointed across the gym, where a dozen pea-green lunch trays were scattered across the floor. In the midst of them, two boys played around, one trying to knock a baseball cap off the other's head. "You okay?" asked Boris. He looked concerned, earnest. Doglike.
   Iris nodded as she grabbed her backpack and turned away, hurrying out of the gym.
   It was a terrible school, Iris told herself. And she hated basketball.



Excerpted from The Question of Miracles by Elana K. Arnold
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Sixth-grader Iris Abernathy hates life in Corvallis, Oregon, where her family just moved. It’s always raining, and everything is so wet. Besides, nothing has felt right since Iris’s best friend, Sarah, died.
     When Iris meets Boris, an awkward mouth-breather with a know-it-all personality, she’s not looking to make a new friend, but it beats eating lunch alone. Then she learns that Boris’s very existence is a medical mystery, maybe even a miracle, and Iris starts to wonder why some people get miracles and others don’t. And if one miracle is possible, can another one be too? Can she possibly communicate with Sarah again?


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