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whitneymouse's review against another edition
2.0
**Thank you to Netgalley and Penny Candy Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my rating**
I'm a little at a loss with this book. It kind of feels like that "expectations vs. reality" meme. The synopsis made it sound like a very interesting and intriguing Middle Grade novel. The reality is one of the blandest books I've read with no plot and nothing to say.
Cloud Hopper professes to be about a girl who falls from the sky during a ballooning accident and three kids who are learning her story and want to help her. Technically, those things do happen, but it is not nearly as interesting as the synopsis is. The story is really about three bored white kids living in rural Oklahoma who see an accident happen to the child of a migrant worker and spend the rest of the book poking their noses into other people's business and possibly putting them in more danger.
To begin with, the characters are between 14-15, but they read like they have the logic and reasoning skills of a child around 8 years old. They bribe their way into hospital wards with baked goods. They attempt to bribe a cashier for credit card records using baked goods. They find an origami bird with a name on it at the crash site which inexplicably ends up being a clue. The last one especially was hard for me. I looked into the mechanics of "cloud hoppers" to see how they operate and the idea that this girl would have had time to fold an origami bird with information on it while operating the balloon is unrealistic at best. The idea that she folded it like that ahead of time, given the reason she cites at the end of the book, would likewise be unrealistic. It made no sense. One of the characters has a job, as well. They would be old enough to know that these tactics should not work.
Towards the beginning of the book, after no one claims the Hopper after the accident, the town puts out a $10k reward for information. This is a VERY rural area. There is no way they have that kind of money. That aside, however, the kids go into this thinking they're somehow going to get information, get the money and give it to the Hopper and her family without getting ICE involved (They are illegal immigrants). This plot is dropped without ceremony and never comes up again. There was no reason for it to be in the story. They also tell hospital staff and a social worker where the girls had been living, which would have outed any family members who returned there.
The way migrant workers are portrayed in this book was appalling. EVERY time they pass a farm, the main character mentioned Spanish music playing. They can't speak to the Hopper or her family because they don't speak Spanish. The store they go to says they remember the Hopper coming in to purchase shoes because the man with her paid with "crumpled, dirty dollar bills." They mention the threats of ICE and "kids in cages" and how horrible this is, but then give information away that could potentially be incriminating. And once the plot no longer needs the poor, sad, immigrant girl for the white children to learn a lesson about "compassion', she, too, is thrown away. There was ZERO reason for this to be a story about immigration. There is no plot purpose to it. There was no growth for the characters nor lesson for a reader outside of how sad immigration can be. All mentions of Hispanic characters are seen through the eyes of children who only know them as a stereotype, but are under the false notion that they are moved by "compassion" to help this girl instead of the real reason: they are bored and nosy. As I mentioned earlier, the book is set in Oklahoma. This means the family would have to get through Texas first to even be there in the first place. For a state that's not on the border, these kids spend a LOT of time thinking about the border.
The main character, Sophie, also has a plot about her grandmother (and caretaker) dying from MS. This, too, has a plot that goes nowhere other than "this is sad". Sophie doesn't learn anything. She doesn't grow from any of the experiences she has. Her two friends have similarly tragic backstories without reason. They also pull her away from her dying grandmother every chance they can, which is kind of terrible. I truly can't explain what a child reader is supposed to get from having read this book other than "sad things happen to people sometimes."
While I have spent time harping on the lack of plot, the writing is also bland and strange. Sentences like "the higher we climb we keep climbing" and "the clouds cloud" were not uncommon. They are grammatically correct in most cases, but they don't mean anything.
I gave this book 1.5 stars, but rounded up to 2 for Goodreads. There is no reason I can see for giving a child this book about white children being sad for immigrants when there are excellent Middle Grade books that set that experience center stage instead of treating it like a side plot (For example, Esperanza Rising). Like a cloud, Cloud Hopper lacks substance.
I'm a little at a loss with this book. It kind of feels like that "expectations vs. reality" meme. The synopsis made it sound like a very interesting and intriguing Middle Grade novel. The reality is one of the blandest books I've read with no plot and nothing to say.
Cloud Hopper professes to be about a girl who falls from the sky during a ballooning accident and three kids who are learning her story and want to help her. Technically, those things do happen, but it is not nearly as interesting as the synopsis is. The story is really about three bored white kids living in rural Oklahoma who see an accident happen to the child of a migrant worker and spend the rest of the book poking their noses into other people's business and possibly putting them in more danger.
To begin with, the characters are between 14-15, but they read like they have the logic and reasoning skills of a child around 8 years old. They bribe their way into hospital wards with baked goods. They attempt to bribe a cashier for credit card records using baked goods. They find an origami bird with a name on it at the crash site which inexplicably ends up being a clue. The last one especially was hard for me. I looked into the mechanics of "cloud hoppers" to see how they operate and the idea that this girl would have had time to fold an origami bird with information on it while operating the balloon is unrealistic at best. The idea that she folded it like that ahead of time, given the reason she cites at the end of the book, would likewise be unrealistic. It made no sense. One of the characters has a job, as well. They would be old enough to know that these tactics should not work.
Towards the beginning of the book, after no one claims the Hopper after the accident, the town puts out a $10k reward for information. This is a VERY rural area. There is no way they have that kind of money. That aside, however, the kids go into this thinking they're somehow going to get information, get the money and give it to the Hopper and her family without getting ICE involved (They are illegal immigrants). This plot is dropped without ceremony and never comes up again. There was no reason for it to be in the story. They also tell hospital staff and a social worker where the girls had been living, which would have outed any family members who returned there.
The way migrant workers are portrayed in this book was appalling. EVERY time they pass a farm, the main character mentioned Spanish music playing. They can't speak to the Hopper or her family because they don't speak Spanish. The store they go to says they remember the Hopper coming in to purchase shoes because the man with her paid with "crumpled, dirty dollar bills." They mention the threats of ICE and "kids in cages" and how horrible this is, but then give information away that could potentially be incriminating. And once the plot no longer needs the poor, sad, immigrant girl for the white children to learn a lesson about "compassion', she, too, is thrown away. There was ZERO reason for this to be a story about immigration. There is no plot purpose to it. There was no growth for the characters nor lesson for a reader outside of how sad immigration can be. All mentions of Hispanic characters are seen through the eyes of children who only know them as a stereotype, but are under the false notion that they are moved by "compassion" to help this girl instead of the real reason: they are bored and nosy. As I mentioned earlier, the book is set in Oklahoma. This means the family would have to get through Texas first to even be there in the first place. For a state that's not on the border, these kids spend a LOT of time thinking about the border.
The main character, Sophie, also has a plot about her grandmother (and caretaker) dying from MS. This, too, has a plot that goes nowhere other than "this is sad". Sophie doesn't learn anything. She doesn't grow from any of the experiences she has. Her two friends have similarly tragic backstories without reason. They also pull her away from her dying grandmother every chance they can, which is kind of terrible. I truly can't explain what a child reader is supposed to get from having read this book other than "sad things happen to people sometimes."
While I have spent time harping on the lack of plot, the writing is also bland and strange. Sentences like "the higher we climb we keep climbing" and "the clouds cloud" were not uncommon. They are grammatically correct in most cases, but they don't mean anything.
I gave this book 1.5 stars, but rounded up to 2 for Goodreads. There is no reason I can see for giving a child this book about white children being sad for immigrants when there are excellent Middle Grade books that set that experience center stage instead of treating it like a side plot (For example, Esperanza Rising). Like a cloud, Cloud Hopper lacks substance.
serenaac's review against another edition
5.0
Like many other Beth Kephart books, readers will be swept into a new world — a world that is both real and fantastical. It’s poetic, it bends the rules, and it soars. Cloud Hopper by Beth Kephart is like the hopper, flying perilously toward danger without a safety net, but the journey is well worth the unpredictability.
Full Review: https://savvyverseandwit.com/2020/10/cloud-hopper-by-beth-kephart.html
Full Review: https://savvyverseandwit.com/2020/10/cloud-hopper-by-beth-kephart.html
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