Middle Grade Love
There’s nothing like the first moment your kid holds up a book that you’ve never seen and proclaims it her favorite. My daughter had always been an avid reader, with no shortage of books she loved, but most of them had come through her dad and me, and we’d read them together, or we’d talked about them as she brought them home from school. This book, though, with its beautiful cover and promising title, she had read entirely at school and loved enough to read again. It was The Key to Extraordinary by Natalie Lloyd.
Of course I had to read it too. We bought a copy for her to have of her own, and she shared it with me. I was enchanted from the first chapter, inside this small-town Tennessee world draped in magic that Natalie Lloyd created. I was completely delighted by the setting, the characters, the plot, the lyrical lines. We bought A Snicker of Magic, which our daughter read and re-read, and then when Over the Moon came out, we drove down to Starline Books in Chattanooga, where my daughter got to meet Natalie Lloyd, hear her speak and read, and get a little bobby pin for her hair with green streamers, to simulate the main character, Mallie.
She still has the pin and the streamers, and she used to wear them every now and then, which made my heart melt every time.
So when Natalie Lloyd’s new book, Hummingbird, came out, and I found out she was going to be at Parnassus in Nashville, I pulled the whole family down there. Never mind that my daughter is aging out of middle grade books. Never mind that it was a school night. Never mind that my husband wasn’t outrageously excited to drive down to Nashville. We needed to be there so my daughter could see and hear this author again, have this new book, and connect with something that she loved.
It wasn’t until we were there, sitting together on folding chairs, listening to Natalie Lloyd hold an audience and read from her new book, that I knew we weren’t really there for my daughter, who liked the author and the bookstore but was noticeably older than the other readers holding copies of Hummingbird. We were there for me, because I love her work so much and couldn’t wait to read the book, and because I was so grateful for what this author brought into our life and family. She shone brightly. She shimmered with the magic of her words. I couldn’t stop smiling.
When it was over and we had our book signed, my daughter disappeared into the young adult section and my son searched for a very specific basketball book that he just knew they would have. I wandered a little, looking at titles but really unable to stop thinking about the first chapter of the book Natalie Lloyd had just read, the music of the language, the way she writes about home.
Hummingbird was just as beautiful as I expected it to be.
They say when you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of you. I’d like to amend that to say that when your child reads a book and shares it with you, you can’t let that one go, and you may end up following that author forever.