Book review: The Importance of Wings

Friedman, Robin. (2009). The Importance of Wings. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.

Roxanne is a 13-year-old Israeli immigrant who wishes for nothing more than to be a "normal American kid." She wants to eat hot dogs and apple pie, play baseball, and have dinner with her parents, like the Brady Bunch kids she watches on TV. She wants her father to be like Pa Ingalls, taking an interest in her and showing her how to do things. She wants to date Eddie, the "all American" blond boy who lives in the neighborhood. Instead, her "Ema" is in Tel Aviv with a sister who has cancer and her "Aba" drives a taxi in New York into the wee hours of the morning while Roxanne and her sister Gayle eat Cocoa Puffs and watch I Dream of Jeannie. In spite of the fact that she adopted the name Roxanne to replace her Hebrew name "Ravit," she feels she will never fit in at school with the "all-American" girls who are good at sports and have "wings" in their hair.

Then Liat moved into the "cursed" pink house across the street. Liat has lived several places in the United States and remains proudly Israeli. When Roxanne questions her about the issues that Roxanne assumed were important--fitting in at school, having an American name, eating American food--Liat's universal reaction is a distinct "Yeah. So?" Liat, in her stay in the "cursed house," teaches Roxanne valuable lessons about friendship, what it means to be an American, and that the real way to be cool and fit in is simply to be oneself.

This book is designed for the middle schooler but can also be appealing to those of us who grew up in the 80s, when kids played Ms Pac-Man in the arcade, and tween and teen girls spent hours with a curling iron putting the atrocious "wings" in their hair. Those of us who may not have gained Liat's self-confidence until we reached our mid-30s. This book earned the Sydney Taylor Book Award for authentic portrayal of the Jewish experience, but it also has meaning for those of us who do not have a drop of Jewish blood in our veins.