Amreena Khan (Do Not Hope, Observe)

Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo is about Flora who is a 10-year-old natural born cynic who lives by the phrase “Do not hope, observe”. Floras parents are divorced.  Her mother writes romance novels so she is always busy and her father visits only on weekends.  Flora greatly believes in superheroes and The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto is her favorite comic book.  This includes other comics at the back of each issue such as Terrible Things Can Happen to You, The Criminal Element and more. Whenever something tragic is occurring she refers to these skills throughout the story. She learns a lot from her comics.

One day she looks out her window and something unusual was happening; her neighbor was running with an out of control vacuum and before you know it she vacuums up a squirrel. Flora runs outside pulls the squirrel out and gives it CPR, the squirrel comes back to life and Flora names it Ulysses which was the name of the vacuum that almost took it. Flora then decides she’s going to keep the squirrel and slowly learns that it has superpowers and believes that it is because she got powered by the vacuum. Flora makes friends who help her protect the squirrel from the evil. She makes decisions to what the comics have taught her. The squirrel bring adventure for Flora and changes her life.

I can relate to this story because it reminds me of my childhood. I would sometimes recall lessons that I have learnt and make decisions accordingly. I think this is the whole point why we learn lessons, but I like the idea of how she gets them from comics. In the real world people think we can’t learn from comics or other related things as Flora’s mother believes she’s wasting her time but it is interesting to see how children take in with different perspectives.

I chose this book because it was animal related and I love animals. I think children will love reading this book or be read too because of the idea of having a pet squirrel with superpowers. I feel children are naturally more interested in books which have animal/pet characters.  Something I liked and different about this novel is the rephrasing, some common ones are “Holy Bagumba “, “Do not hope, observe” etc.  It is a fun read and I couldn’t guess on what’s going to happen next so I wanted to keep reading.