Enchanted Runner Book

Kendall believes in magic. He can feel it when he runs. And since his mother's death a year ago, the urge has become too big to explain. During her illness, Kendall ran to save her. Now he runs to retrieve the memory of her face. Sometimes, too, he imagines himself running like the warriors in Mom's stories, Acoma Runners returning to his mother's native pueblo tribe, to the cliffs of Acoma...Sky City...a place she promised they would visit together when he turned twelve.

As Kendall prepares for a summer-long adventure spent criss-crossing the states in his dad's semi, a letter arrives from his mother's grandfather, beckoning him to Acoma. He feels cheated, until it occurs to him that his mom might somehow be there, in Sky City. He's twelve, after all, and his mother always kept her promises.

Drawn into his great-grandfather's world of secrets and sacred ceremony, Kendall discovers that the magic he feels when he runs is a proud legacy, one linked to a way of life as ancient and mysterious as the earth itself. In the process of trying to recover his mother, Kendall reclaims his worldly and spiritual heritage, in a moving story of one boy's search for identity and belonging.

01-02 Land of Enchantment Book Award Masterlist (Gr. 6-9)

Author Biography: KIMBERLEY GRIFFITHS LITTLE lives in a solar adobe house along the Rio Grande with her husband, a robotics engineer, and their three sons. Taking walks along the towering cottonwood groves of the river banks gives her inspiration for her book ideas.

The author's favorite places are the library and her home, writing at the computer. She reads several books a week, is an excellent pianist, and likes going to the movies.

Twelve-year-old Kendall, half Anglo and half Acoma, discovers his heritage and his destiny as a runner when he visits his great-grandfather's pueblo and finds a culture he used to hear about from his deceased mother.