Wren gets taken in the middle of the night to a juvenile boot camp in the desert. When she's grabbed she's angry, drunk, and her parents are kind of at the end of their ropes. Over the eight weeks she's in the program, she transforms physically and emotionally.
Her change begins to transform her relationship with herself and the relationship with the rest of her family.
There is action in the outdoor survival things she learns. But a lot of the change is intra and interpersonal.
Compelling. ( )

At first I wasn't sure that I was going to like this book - 14-year-old Wren, the main character & narrator of the story, wasn't very likeable. In the end, though, it is an uplifting story and I thought that the author made a bold & important choice with Wren. Unlike many of the other girls at the camp, Wren doesn't have a dysfunctional family or a history of some terrible abuse which caused her to turn to drugs and alcohol. That doesn't make her pain and anger any less real or her need for this intervention less urgent but it does make her a character that more readers (both teens and adults) can identify with.

Being an adult reader of this YA novel, in some ways I couldn't help feeling sympathy for her parents - I can imagine the situation at the start of the book as being one parents of teenagers have nightmares about. ( )

An amazing book! I devoured it in two sittings, my emotions rising and falling along with Wren's as she navigated the foreign gifts of the desert. I highly recommend it. ( )

At first I wasn't sure that I was going to like this book - 14-year-old Wren, the main character & narrator of the story, wasn't very likeable. In the end, though, it is an uplifting story and I thought that the author made a bold & important choice with Wren. Unlike many of the other girls at the camp, Wren doesn't have a dysfunctional family or a history of some terrible abuse which caused her to turn to drugs and alcohol. That doesn't make her pain and anger any less real or her need for this intervention less urgent but it does make her a character that more readers (both teens and adults) can identify with.

Being an adult reader of this YA novel, in some ways I couldn't help feeling sympathy for her parents - I can imagine the situation at the start of the book as being one parents of teenagers have nightmares about. ( )

See my trailer here: http://literarymatchmaker.blogspot.com/2018/01/wild-bird-by-wendelin-van-draanen... ( )