Title: Up in the Air
Author: Ann Marie Meyers
Illustrator: Ethan Aldridge
Publisher: Jolly Fish Press
ISBN: 978-1-939967-03-0
“We guides do what we can to help you trust and believe in yourselves. Melody, you wouldn’t have been able to solve all the clues if you continued to shut Dreamstar out. By facing what happened with the accident, you freed yourself from guilt and allowed him in.” Sara comforts in Ann Marie Meyers’s children’s book. Up in the Air.
This two hundred and two page paperback book has a young girl jumping off a swing, flying in the air on the front and back covers. Targeted toward older elementary and middle-school children, there is no profanity or too scary scenes but there is adventure and fantasy involving witchcraft, magic and make-believe.
Melody wants to fly – we are talking flying with wings, not on an airplane. She dreams of it constantly and habitually injures herself trying to fly has high as possible on the swing set at the park, only to come crashing down midair as she vaults off the seat.
One day she swings so high, so far, like never before and when she jumps off, everything turns black around her. She awakens to the land of Chimeroan, where dreams can actually come true. With the aid of her guide, Sara, she is sent on a treasure hunt with three questions to answer to reach her dream goal of soaring through the sky with wings.
Landing in a tall, grassy meadow of mainly children, she encounters fairies, dragons, unicorns, snakes and leprechauns along with good and bad witches, elves, and other friends who have their own dreams come true.
Through her and her friends’ adventures of getting their wings, learning to fly, saving a pot of gold, receiving a magical ring, helping three trapped animals and rescuing two girls in an underwater spaceship, Melody has secret pains and sorrows to face to fly.
Being ashamed of her father being in a wheelchair due to a car accident, she learns what bullying, eavesdropping, selfishness, stealing and lying are as she learns everything happens for a reason, not to scare others, to trust her intuition and to let go of the past.
From magical Exit Doors in the Dream Stone, she faces her terror of snakes as she whispers her fears away to “black holes,” while making friends who have their own special dreams. When she understands her purpose, her wings emit a flowery smell and hum with pleasure.
Although the book covers a vast amount of concepts of both fantasy and reality in a short time with so many characters, the reader gets caught up in cheering Melody on to do the right thing and for the right reason.
This book was furnished by the publisher for review purposes.
connywithay 