thegoosegirl

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The Goose Girl

Shannon Hale

Hale, Shannon. The Goose Girl. HarperCollins. New York. 2010.

The Goose Girl is a book written by the award winning author Shannon Hale. Shannon Hale is also the author of many best sellers such as, Princess Academy and Other Worlds. The Goose Girl was chosen as a 2011 IRA Children's Choice and was named to Kirkus Reviews Best of 2012.

Mia grew up on a farm with her parents in a small town called Brighton, Kentucky. Next to the farm where Mia grew up, was a small lake. Many geese lived at the lake and more each day. One horrific day in third grade, a goose decided to follow Mia all the way to school. She thought it would be fine and maybe she could show it to her classmates for show and tell that day but things had gone a little different than Mia had planned. As soon as she arrived at school, everyone made fun of her. Several people from her school didn’t live on farms and thought it was silly to have geese follow you to school. After that day, she was known as “Goose Girl.”

The name calling annoyed Mia so much to the point where she wanted to switch schools. Two years since her goose incident, everyone was still talking about it and calling her “Goose Girl.” To make matters worse, over the years her farm had about ten to twenty more geese. One time, five of them tried to follow her to school and she had to trick them. Mia was getting tired of being called “Goose Girl” and having to run away from geese before she left for school. One day, on her way to school, Mia found a goose just laying on the sidewalk. She walked up to it and suddenly it ran away off to her farm.

That afternoon, Mia came back from school and the same goose that she had seen that morning, walked up to her. Then he said “ Hi, my name is Leo. What’s yours?” Mia was confused. She looked all around her but there was no one else. She introduced herself and suddenly all of the geese gathered around her. “We never knew you were capable of communicating with us,” said one of the geese. “Neither did I,” said Mia.

The Goose Girl teaches that you shouldn’t judge another person without actually knowing them. Shannon Hale did a fantastic job of writing this book. Every word of it pulls the reader even more into the book. She also did an exceptional job of capturing the characters’ feelings throughout the whole book!

4 out of 5 stars

Contributed by H. Gebremariam

September 4, 2013