Shortlisted for the Independent Booksellers' Book Prize 2010.
Prize-winning author Sharon Creech tells a magical story that's truly original, touching and funny of an unusual friendship between an unusual angel and Zola who find themselves sharing a tower high in the Swiss Alps.
The story is told by Angel who doesn’t usually like people much partly because they talk just when she longs for them to be quiet, and she certainly doesn’t expect to like Zola when she first meets her. But soon the two become excellent companions and both learn a lot from each other. A charming and original story told with delicacy and grace that deserves to be read out loud and more than once to truly enjoy the angel's hilarious malapropisms and outright invented words, and to appreciate the book's tender, comical celebration of the human spirit.
The shortlisted titles for the 2010 Independent Booksellers' Award were:
Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech crafts a truly endearing story, one that is imbued with happiness, wonder, and an appreciation for all the little things that make life big. With beautiful, fresh new cover art, this is a gem of a book.
In the winding stone tower of the Casa Rosa, in a quiet little village in the Swiss Alps, lives one very unlikely angel--one that is still awaiting her instructions from the angel-training center. What happens to an angel who doesn't know her mission? She floats and swishes from high above, watching the crazy things that "peoples" say and do. But when a zany American girl named Zola arrives in town and invades the Casa Rosa, dogs start arfing, figs start flying through the air, lost orphans wander in, and the village becomes anything but quiet. And as Zola and the angel work together to rescue the orphans, they each begin to realize their purpose and learn that there is magic in the most ordinary acts of kindness.