Sparrow by Sarah Moon: Review by Ahana Sil

 Book Review by Ahana Sil

Sparrow by Sarah Moon

This novel features a young middle school girl, Sparrow, who everyone is convinced had been trying to commit suicide just a few weeks before. While Sparrow wants to prove everyone wrong, her anxiety causes her to self-isolate and withdraw from everyone in her life, even her own mother. In fact, the only time she feels truly happy is when she’s flying among the birds in the sky, while still in the confines of her own mind. She desperately wants to tell the people around her how she feels and maybe even make some friends so she isn’t eating lunch in a bathroom stall, but the journey isn’t easy, and she might even need a therapist to help her along. I really enjoyed this novel because it shows how there can be so much more to a person than what you see on the surface, and how difficult it can be to let those internal thoughts and feelings out. Sometimes if you’re going through a difficult situation, you want to just escape into your own head, like Sparrow, and it can be incredibly hard to resist that urge and continue to tackle your problems head on. Seeing a story about a young person finally attempting to come out of her shell and face the people around her was honestly really inspiring, as well as how it was clear that she would never have been able to overcome her fears without the help of others. So many people make the mistake of trying to work through problems without reaching out to anyone else, and it was great to see how even Sparrow struggled with that at first. Reading this made me feel like nobody is alone in feeling this way, and we can all work through our problems by working hard and having people who support us.