Scumble by Ingrid Law: Book Two in the Savvy Series

A few weeks ago, I finished Savvy, book one in Ingrid Law's series about a family that gets superpowers on their thirteenth birthdays. Unfortunately, they don't get to choose their superpower. Often their superpower is hard to control and can cause unfortunate things to happen, and these superpowers show up in embarrassing ways.

I enjoyed Savvy, so I jumped right into Scumble. Published in 2010, this story picks up nine years after Mibs' journey in Savvy. Her cousin, Ledger Kale, has just had his thirteenth birthday, and he gets the savvy of destruction. Everything around him comes to pieces, the toaster, the television, the wipers on the mini-van.

As they head to a family wedding in Wyoming, his savvy gets stronger, and a witness sees him accidentally destroy a motorcycle. Sarah Jane Cabot is a young reporter. She follows him to the wedding and sees all sorts of things that Ledger's family has tried to keep from the outside world. Will she publish what she sees and destroy the family? Will Ledger ever be able to scumble his savvy and keep things from falling apart?

Samson, Gypsy, Will, Gramps, Mibs, Bobbi, Fish, and Rocket are back in this installment. Rocket, Gypsy, Gramps, and Samson play the biggest roles in helping Ledger figure things out. I love Samson in this story even though he is pretty quiet throughout the book.

The lexile measure of Scumble is 900L, which is lower than Savvy's measure of 1070L, but both books have larger text and plenty of white space on each page. The books are short and fat to help readers not get overwhelmed. Matthew has set aside Brian Selznick's Wonderstruck  and is currently reading Savvy. For the first time in a long time, he is reading longer than is required.

I enjoyed this installment as much as the first one and will purchase the third book, Switch.

Here is what your reader will see on the page (or you if you are like me and enjoy books for young people).

As you can see, the text is large, the white space is large, and there are only two or three paragraphs on a page. Again, thanks to the publishing industry for creating books that are good for kids with brain injuries.

Read to a child today, even if that child is you.