Reviews for The Girl Who Threw Butterflies

The average rating for The Girl Who Threw Butterflies based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-10-23 00:00:00 Roy Berlin What a great book to read as the Giants are working hard to become this year's National League entry in the World Series. Knowing about baseball is not a requirement for enjoying 'The Girl Who Threw Butterflies,' however. A supporting character, Celia, could care less about baseball, and Celia is just as cool as cool can be. Mick Cochrane could have written a book about Celia. Baseball is only important to her because Molly, the girl of the title, the knuckleball pitcher, is her best friend. Celia calls knuckleballs mothballs. Molly wants to pitch on her elementary school's baseball team, the real baseball team as opposed to the girls' softball team. 'You're a pioneer,' Celia tells her. 'You're like one of the pioneers we read about during Women's History Month.' Categorizing 'The Girl Who Threw Butterflies' as a girl-power novel, though, would be doing it just as much a disservice as calling it a sports novel. Sports and gender equality are important to 'The Girl Who Threw Butterflies' but not as important as the story. It's a story about families, about eighth grade boys and girls, about adults and children, about death and loss, about friendships, about never really knowing your friends or your enemies, and about finding out who you are. If the book is making a point, it's to pay attention, to look closely, to work hard on the details. 'Baseball is all about doing little things right,' Coach Morales tells his team, fourteen boys and one girl. And doing little things right turns out to be a sort of salvation, a balm for Molly's sad and troubled soul. Mick Cochrane certainly does little things right. Like his careful characterization of the coach, 'slightly geeky' in the school corridors, who becomes a graceful athlete on the baseball field: 'He sounded like a drill instructor who'd studied Zen, or maybe hypnotism, like one of those perky TV fitness gurus but heavily tranquilized.' Or like Cochrane's spot-on observation on the way mothers and fathers interact with their children: 'After a certain point, every kid knows what his parents are going to say. It's what makes them so exasperating'and lovable, too.' 'The Girl Who Threw Butterflies' has it all'Cochrane's lyrical and witty writing, unforgettable characters, parts that make you laugh out loud, and parts that bring tears to your eyes. Highly recommended for fifth graders on up.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-11-23 00:00:00 Lawrence Wiener Molly Williams learned to throw a knuckleball pitch from her father. The two of them spent hours bonding over games of catch and watching baseball on TV as Molly grew up. But now Molly's father is gone - he died in a car accident a few months ago and 8th grader Molly is alone in her grief. Her workaholic, distracted mother is unavailable emotionally, and Molly just can't relate to her former teammates on the girls softball team any more. Impulsively, she tries out for the school baseball team as a way of expressing her true self, using her pitching talent and honoring the memory of her father. Molly's efforts to be accepted as the only girl on the team and to simultaneously work through the loss of her father are realistically chronicled in this short, poignant novel. Like the unpredictable flight of a knuckleball pitch ("Each floating and fluttering pitch was a little miracle. It was all about surprise"), Molly deals with sadness, anger, self-doubt and prejudice -- but also exhilaration, acceptance and reconciliation. Along the way she gets support from a loyal best friend, a caring coach, and the unexpected friendship of Lonnie, a catcher on the baseball team who understands what it's like to lose a parent, albeit through divorce. Molly's voice rings true, and author Mick Cochrane does a fine job of capturing the experience of an adolescent who unexpectedly loses a parent. Secondary characters are well-developed, and Cochrane succeeds in combining gentle humor, sports action and touching emotional moments (as when Molly surreptitiously sneaks into her father's clothes closet and tries on his favorite brown corduroy jacket). This book would be an especially good choice for teens dealing with a loss of their own, but will provide important insight into the grief process for all readers. Both boys and girls will care about Molly and find themselves rooting for her to succeed. The Girl Who Threw Butterflies is an excellent addition to any middle school library.