The Wish and the Peacock

by Wendy S. Swore

Overview

Be Strong and Wish Big

Paige's favorite family tradition on the farm is the annual bonfire where everyone tosses in a stone and makes a wish. This time, Paige's specific wish is one she's not sure can come ture: Don't let Mom and Grandpa sell the farm.

When Paige's younger brother finds a wounded peacock in the barn, Paige is sure it's a sign that if she can keep the bird safe, she'll keep the farm safe too. Peacocks, after all, are known to be fierce protectors of territory and family.

With determination and hard work, Paige tries to prove she can save the farm on her own, but when a real estate agent stakes a "For Sale" sign at the end of the driveway and threatens everything Paige loves, she calls on her younger brother and her best friends, Mateo and Kimana, to help battle this new menace. They may not have street smarts, but they have plenty of farm smarts, and some city lady who's scared of spiders should be easy enough to drive away.

But even as the peacock gets healthier, the strain of holding all the pieces of Paige's world together gets harder. Faced with a choice between home and family, she risks everything to make her wish come true, including the one thing that scares her the most: letting the farm go.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781629737959
Publisher:	Deseret Book Company
Publication date:	02/04/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

About the Author

Wendy S. Swore and her family are farmers. She writes part-time, particularly in winter when her farming chores give her time to plant seeds in her imagination. She is a member of SCBWI.

Editorial Reviews

"Emotional and rich, The Wish and the Peacock concerns families, loss, and acceptance...The story grapples with the pain of losing a parent. Paige conflates the farm with her father; its loss would be too much to bear. The fact that Paige cannot care for the farm on her own is a hard lesson. She and her friends plan multiple pranks to sabotage the sale, leading to the central conflict, which contains humor and sadness in equal measure.  

Set in Idaho, the story includes educational details about growing crops and tending to livestock. The families of Paige’s friends work together and help one another out, creating a sense of a close-knit community.

The peacock is an important character.... As Paige and Scotty learn about the bird, it becomes a symbol for all that they want to protect, and ultimately of all of the things that they must let go.

The Wish and the Peacock is a thoughtful novel about love, loss, and the hope of a new beginning."

Foreword Reviews

"A deftly crafted, thoroughly entertaining and engaging read from first page to last."

Midwest Book Review

02/01/2020

Gr 4–6—Red-haired and freckled Paige searches for a lost shovel, a symbol of her struggles in dealing with the loss that follows. Paige's life is upside down; her father died some months earlier in a car accident, leading to her mother and Grandpa deciding to sell their family farm. The appearance of a peacock is as startling as its disappearance. A real estate agent becomes the focus of Paige's antagonism, while she is afforded help by a reporter ostensibly there to research farms folding to developers—but who also happens to have an interest in peacocks. The farm is an odd one; while seeming to be focused on potatoes, it also has cattle, horses, pigs, and chickens. There's a greenhouse which features in the loss of a plant entrusted to Paige's care by good friend Mateo, who along with girlfriend Kimana, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe, diversify the cast. Their school bus stops at the Sho-ban Reservation, though Paige is not a member. An 80-acre farm in Idaho seems pretty small for all that this one seems to encompass. Most of the chores and animals are not distinct with the exception of Milkshake, a cow who delivers her calf later than most, requiring intense knowledge and effort from Paige. The ending undercuts most of the message about accepting limitations that Paige has had to learn, but brings in the wish element nicely. VERDICT Despite a lack of focus, this may be a useful mirror for contemporary rural kids, but its characters provide more of the appeal than the busy plot.—Carol A. Edwards, Formerly at Denver Public Library

School Library Journal

2019-12-22
A young Idaho girl tries to save her family's farm.

Since her father's death, 12-year-old Paige has been taking on all the farm chores, determined to keep her father's regular farming schedule. When her mother and grandfather bring in a real estate agent to try to sell the farm, Paige enlists her younger brother, Scotty, and some friends to try to sabotage the sale of the farm. Simultaneously, a wounded peacock shows up on the farm, which Paige and Scotty secretly nurse back to health. Heartfelt and funny, the story captures the lives of often underrepresented farming families, and though the trope of children scheming to save something beloved that's in peril through hijinks and humor is familiar, it engages in a deeper discussion of the threat development poses to farmland. The story is set on the Shoshone-Bannock Reservation in southeastern Idaho; Paige, who is white, is best friends with Kimana, a Shoshone-Bannock girl who's also her robotics partner, and Mateo, who is Latinx and whose family owns the neighboring farm. All characters are fully realized, and the book offers authentic views of rural kids navigating long distances between friends' houses on dirt bikes and to and from school via bus as well as some very visceral calf birthing. Swore, who lives on the Shoshone-Bannock Reservation, includes brief narratives from two Shoshone-Bannock friends in her author's note; there is no mention of the catastrophic Dawes Act of 1887, which enabled non-Natives to buy property on tribal lands, however.

An impressive tale carrying universal themes of grief, change, and letting go. (Fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews