Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 09/01/2010 Gr 4–7—In this rollicking companion novel to Savvy (Dial, 2008), nine years have passed since Ledger Kale's cousin Mibs turned 13 and began her magical experience. Since he was a young boy, Ledge knew his family was unlike others, with each member gaining an unusual and often unpredictable power, called a savvy, upon turning 13. He hoped that his would enable him to be supersonically swift and race marathons with his dad. Unfortunately, it seems just to entail breaking things. When the Kales travel to Wyoming for a wedding, Ledger's newly found savvy wreaks havoc upon the ceremony and its guests and levels the barn on his Uncle Autry's farm. The disaster has an unwelcome witness, Sarah Jane Cabot, daughter of a wannabe-reporter and local businessman. As Ledge's savvy grows by monumental and ever more destructive proportions, his family decides that he needs to stay on his uncle's farm until he learns to scumble (control) it, and he fears he'll be condemned to stay there forever. Ledge's need to scumble is a race against time before Sarah Jane figures out the family's peculiar secrets, or her father follows through with foreclosing of the family farm. Law's vibrant storytelling and cast of likable characters will keep readers hooked throughout. The title stands alone in its fast-paced plot with twists and turns galore, and readers familiar with Savvy will eat it up and wish for more.—Michele Shaw, Quail Run Elementary School, San Ramon, CA - Copyright 2010 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Bulletin for the Center... - 10/01/2010 First, some definitions: a savvy (as described in Savvy, BCCB 9/08) is an unusual talent that develops in certain members of certain families on their thirteenth birthdays. To scumble is to be able to control one’s savvy; akin to its original use as a painting term, scumbling a savvy means to tone down its brightness so that it doesn’t overwhelm the whole person. While some savvys are merely odd, others are wildly destructive, like that of Ledger (cousin of Mibs, star of Savvy), whose out-of-control emotions cause mechanical things nearby to explode into their component parts. Ledger’s parents decide it’s best to leave him on his uncle’s farm until he learns to scumble his savvy, but this task is proving difficult because of the interference of Sarah Jane, a girl whose nose for news of the weird and eccentric threatens to expose Ledger’s entire family. It doesn’t help at all that Sarah Jane triggers feelings in Ledger, and we’re not just talking fear and anger. The family members, some of whom appeared in Savvy, provide an endlessly entertaining background for Ledger’s quest, which turns into a save-the-family-farm tale as well as a learn-to-control-your-superpower one. Law’s clever plotting doesn’t miss a trick as it blends tall-tale Americana with adolescent boy angst with comic-book action-hero antics. Intergenerational relationships deepen the emotional register and sweeten the heroics. Law creates a distinctive, boyish voice for Ledger that is as colorful and down-home as Mibs’ was in Savvy but with a completely different flavor; indeed the whole package here-voice, setting, characterization, and plot-is decidedly more pulled together than the first book, which is saying something. While readers may want to go back to Savvy if they haven’t read it first, there is enough time and distance between the two books for this to stand alone as a rollicking good time with a deliciously odd cast of characters. KC - Copyright 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Booklist - 07/01/2010 *Starred Review* This companion to Newbery Honor Book Savvy (2008) provides the same high level of satisfying plot, delightful characters, alliterative language, and rich imagery. In this story, Ledger Kale’s thirteenth birthday arrives with the traditional family inheritance of a particular “savvy”—a power unique to each individual, who must then learn how to manage his or her new talent. At first it seems that Ledge’s savvy is one for destruction: “I could blow stuff apart without a touch, dismantling small things in bursts of parts and pieces: a light switch here, a doorknob there, garage door opener, can opener, Dad’s stop watch, his electric nose-hair trimmer too.” But during a summer visit to the Flying Cattleheart, Uncle Autry’s Wyoming ranch, Ledge learns to tame, train, and deploy his power to good ends as he struggles against 13-year-old Sarah Jane Cabot, an aspiring reporter looking to expose the family’s secrets, whose businessman father is trying to foreclose on the ranch. Other characters include Ledge’s safety-slogan-spouting seven-year-old sister Fedora, levitating twin cousins, and Grandpa Bomba, who is comforted in his last days by sweet music, preserved in old peanut-butter jars, from his long-dead wife. While adult readers will see this all as a beautiful conceptualization of the drama and metamorphosis of adolescence, younger readers will delight in the tall-tale tropes and Ledge’s authentic physical, emotional, and artistic challenges. - Copyright 2010 Booklist.

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