This gently mystical, thought-provoking, and enchanting rumination on conformity is, in some ways, a YA version of The Little Prince, or a female version of Spinelli's own award-winning Maniac Magee. A bittersweet paean to eccentricity and nonconformity, it is also a scathing commentary on teenagers, which makes its popularity with them all the more interesting.

Like much of Spinelli's best work, it straddles the line between reality and fantasy, dwelling in the land of legend and allegory. Spinelli himself says, in an interview printed in the back of the book, "the character [is] intended to raise dust in the corners of credibility, to challenge our routine ways of seeing ourselves." It does that -- it's hard to imagine young teens reading this and not having to think hard about their friends, actions, and the outcasts in their own world.

From the Book:
The girl was picking up her ukulele. And now she was strumming it. And now she was singing! Strumming away, bobbing her head and shoulders, and singing, "I'm looking over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before." Stone silence all around. Then came the sound of a single person clapping. I looked. It was the lunchline cashier.