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Cloud Hopper
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection When a girl in a homemade hot air balloon falls out of the sky in rural Gilbertine, there are Who is this girl, where exactly did she come from, why won’t she talk, and what has she risked to live in a country that does not seem to want her? And what can Sophie, Wyatt, and K—three misfit best friends with complex and harrowing stories of their own—do to help the girl who can’t trust those who want to help her? What should they do? As seen through the eyes of 14-year-old Sophie, who lives with her terminally ill grandmother, Cloud Hopper by National Book Award finalist Beth Kephart is a poignant, high-flying adventure set among the old planes, Vietnam vets, and majestic hot air balloons of a run-down municipal airport. It’s about the rules we’ll break and the dangers we’ll face to do the most-right thing we can imagine, even when we’re feeling long past brave.
332 pages, Hardcover
Published September 8, 2020
2 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
About the author
Beth Kephart
58 books336 followersI'm the award-winning writer of more than two-dozen books in multiple genres—memoir, middle grade and young adult fiction, picture books, history, corporate fable, and books on the making of memoir.
I'm also an award-winning teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, co-founder of Juncture Workshops, and an essayist and critic with work appearing in The New York Times, Life magazine, Ninth Letter, Catapult, The Millions, The Rumpus, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and elsewhere.
Please visit me at junctureworkshops.com or bethkephartbooks.com.
I'm also an award-winning teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, co-founder of Juncture Workshops, and an essayist and critic with work appearing in The New York Times, Life magazine, Ninth Letter, Catapult, The Millions, The Rumpus, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and elsewhere.
Please visit me at junctureworkshops.com or bethkephartbooks.com.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 13, 2020
Like many other Beth Kephart books, readers will be swept into a new world — a world that is both real and fantastical. It’s poetic, it bends the rules, and it soars. Cloud Hopper by Beth Kephart is like the hopper, flying perilously toward danger without a safety net, but the journey is well worth the unpredictability.
Full Review: https://savvyverseandwit.com/2020/10/...
Full Review: https://savvyverseandwit.com/2020/10/...
August 29, 2020
**Thank you to Netgalley and Penny Candy Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my rating**
I'm a little at a loss with this book. It kind of feels like that "expectations vs. reality" meme. The synopsis made it sound like a very interesting and intriguing Middle Grade novel. The reality is one of the blandest books I've read with no plot and nothing to say.
Cloud Hopper professes to be about a girl who falls from the sky during a ballooning accident and three kids who are learning her story and want to help her. Technically, those things do happen, but it is not nearly as interesting as the synopsis is. The story is really about three bored white kids living in rural Oklahoma who see an accident happen to the child of a migrant worker and spend the rest of the book poking their noses into other people's business and possibly putting them in more danger.
To begin with, the characters are between 14-15, but they read like they have the logic and reasoning skills of a child around 8 years old. They bribe their way into hospital wards with baked goods. They attempt to bribe a cashier for credit card records using baked goods. They find an origami bird with a name on it at the crash site which inexplicably ends up being a clue. The last one especially was hard for me. I looked into the mechanics of "cloud hoppers" to see how they operate and the idea that this girl would have had time to fold an origami bird with information on it while operating the balloon is unrealistic at best. The idea that she folded it like that ahead of time, given the reason she cites at the end of the book, would likewise be unrealistic. It made no sense. One of the characters has a job, as well. They would be old enough to know that these tactics should not work.
Towards the beginning of the book, after no one claims the Hopper after the accident, the town puts out a $10k reward for information. This is a VERY rural area. There is no way they have that kind of money. That aside, however, the kids go into this thinking they're somehow going to get information, get the money and give it to the Hopper and her family without getting ICE involved (They are illegal immigrants). This plot is dropped without ceremony and never comes up again. There was no reason for it to be in the story. They also tell hospital staff and a social worker where the girls had been living, which would have outed any family members who returned there.
The way migrant workers are portrayed in this book was appalling. EVERY time they pass a farm, the main character mentioned Spanish music playing. They can't speak to the Hopper or her family because they don't speak Spanish. The store they go to says they remember the Hopper coming in to purchase shoes because the man with her paid with "crumpled, dirty dollar bills." They mention the threats of ICE and "kids in cages" and how horrible this is, but then give information away that could potentially be incriminating. And once the plot no longer needs the poor, sad, immigrant girl for the white children to learn a lesson about "compassion', she, too, is thrown away. There was ZERO reason for this to be a story about immigration. There is no plot purpose to it. There was no growth for the characters nor lesson for a reader outside of how sad immigration can be. All mentions of Hispanic characters are seen through the eyes of children who only know them as a stereotype, but are under the false notion that they are moved by "compassion" to help this girl instead of the real reason: they are bored and nosy. As I mentioned earlier, the book is set in Oklahoma. This means the family would have to get through Texas first to even be there in the first place. For a state that's not on the border, these kids spend a LOT of time thinking about the border.
The main character, Sophie, also has a plot about her grandmother (and caretaker) dying from MS. This, too, has a plot that goes nowhere other than "this is sad". Sophie doesn't learn anything. She doesn't grow from any of the experiences she has. Her two friends have similarly tragic backstories without reason. They also pull her away from her dying grandmother every chance they can, which is kind of terrible. I truly can't explain what a child reader is supposed to get from having read this book other than "sad things happen to people sometimes."
While I have spent time harping on the lack of plot, the writing is also bland and strange. Sentences like "the higher we climb we keep climbing" and "the clouds cloud" were not uncommon. They are grammatically correct in most cases, but they don't mean anything.
I gave this book 1.5 stars, but rounded up to 2 for Goodreads. There is no reason I can see for giving a child this book about white children being sad for immigrants when there are excellent Middle Grade books that set that experience center stage instead of treating it like a side plot (For example, Esperanza Rising). Like a cloud, Cloud Hopper lacks substance.
I'm a little at a loss with this book. It kind of feels like that "expectations vs. reality" meme. The synopsis made it sound like a very interesting and intriguing Middle Grade novel. The reality is one of the blandest books I've read with no plot and nothing to say.
Cloud Hopper professes to be about a girl who falls from the sky during a ballooning accident and three kids who are learning her story and want to help her. Technically, those things do happen, but it is not nearly as interesting as the synopsis is. The story is really about three bored white kids living in rural Oklahoma who see an accident happen to the child of a migrant worker and spend the rest of the book poking their noses into other people's business and possibly putting them in more danger.
To begin with, the characters are between 14-15, but they read like they have the logic and reasoning skills of a child around 8 years old. They bribe their way into hospital wards with baked goods. They attempt to bribe a cashier for credit card records using baked goods. They find an origami bird with a name on it at the crash site which inexplicably ends up being a clue. The last one especially was hard for me. I looked into the mechanics of "cloud hoppers" to see how they operate and the idea that this girl would have had time to fold an origami bird with information on it while operating the balloon is unrealistic at best. The idea that she folded it like that ahead of time, given the reason she cites at the end of the book, would likewise be unrealistic. It made no sense. One of the characters has a job, as well. They would be old enough to know that these tactics should not work.
Towards the beginning of the book, after no one claims the Hopper after the accident, the town puts out a $10k reward for information. This is a VERY rural area. There is no way they have that kind of money. That aside, however, the kids go into this thinking they're somehow going to get information, get the money and give it to the Hopper and her family without getting ICE involved (They are illegal immigrants). This plot is dropped without ceremony and never comes up again. There was no reason for it to be in the story. They also tell hospital staff and a social worker where the girls had been living, which would have outed any family members who returned there.
The way migrant workers are portrayed in this book was appalling. EVERY time they pass a farm, the main character mentioned Spanish music playing. They can't speak to the Hopper or her family because they don't speak Spanish. The store they go to says they remember the Hopper coming in to purchase shoes because the man with her paid with "crumpled, dirty dollar bills." They mention the threats of ICE and "kids in cages" and how horrible this is, but then give information away that could potentially be incriminating. And once the plot no longer needs the poor, sad, immigrant girl for the white children to learn a lesson about "compassion', she, too, is thrown away. There was ZERO reason for this to be a story about immigration. There is no plot purpose to it. There was no growth for the characters nor lesson for a reader outside of how sad immigration can be. All mentions of Hispanic characters are seen through the eyes of children who only know them as a stereotype, but are under the false notion that they are moved by "compassion" to help this girl instead of the real reason: they are bored and nosy. As I mentioned earlier, the book is set in Oklahoma. This means the family would have to get through Texas first to even be there in the first place. For a state that's not on the border, these kids spend a LOT of time thinking about the border.
The main character, Sophie, also has a plot about her grandmother (and caretaker) dying from MS. This, too, has a plot that goes nowhere other than "this is sad". Sophie doesn't learn anything. She doesn't grow from any of the experiences she has. Her two friends have similarly tragic backstories without reason. They also pull her away from her dying grandmother every chance they can, which is kind of terrible. I truly can't explain what a child reader is supposed to get from having read this book other than "sad things happen to people sometimes."
While I have spent time harping on the lack of plot, the writing is also bland and strange. Sentences like "the higher we climb we keep climbing" and "the clouds cloud" were not uncommon. They are grammatically correct in most cases, but they don't mean anything.
I gave this book 1.5 stars, but rounded up to 2 for Goodreads. There is no reason I can see for giving a child this book about white children being sad for immigrants when there are excellent Middle Grade books that set that experience center stage instead of treating it like a side plot (For example, Esperanza Rising). Like a cloud, Cloud Hopper lacks substance.
July 13, 2020
Cloud Hopper
by Beth Kephart
Penny Candy Books
Penelope Editions
Middle Grade | Teens & YA
Pub Date 08 Sep 2020
I am reviewing a copy of Cloud Hopper through Penny Candy Books/Penelope Editions and Netgalley:
After a girl in a homemade hot air balloon falls out of the sky in rural Gilbertine there are understandably questions, like why won’t she talk, and why has she risked her life to live somewhere that does not seem to want her.
Is there anything Sophie, Wyatt and K, three friends who are misfits and each have stories of their own that are rather complex. What should they do to help her.
Told in the perspective of fourteen year old Sophie who lives with her Grandmother who is s loosing her battle with Multiple Sclerosis.
Cloud Hopper is an adventure that is set amongst old plane, Vietnam veterans and majestic hot air balloons.
Cloud Hopper is part adventure, but more than that it is a story of family, it’s a story of loss, and learning to let go. It’s a story of pain and heartbreak, but that of adventure and joy as well.
Cloud Hopper reminds us that it is okay to be unique, to be your own person!
Five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
by Beth Kephart
Penny Candy Books
Penelope Editions
Middle Grade | Teens & YA
Pub Date 08 Sep 2020
I am reviewing a copy of Cloud Hopper through Penny Candy Books/Penelope Editions and Netgalley:
After a girl in a homemade hot air balloon falls out of the sky in rural Gilbertine there are understandably questions, like why won’t she talk, and why has she risked her life to live somewhere that does not seem to want her.
Is there anything Sophie, Wyatt and K, three friends who are misfits and each have stories of their own that are rather complex. What should they do to help her.
Told in the perspective of fourteen year old Sophie who lives with her Grandmother who is s loosing her battle with Multiple Sclerosis.
Cloud Hopper is an adventure that is set amongst old plane, Vietnam veterans and majestic hot air balloons.
Cloud Hopper is part adventure, but more than that it is a story of family, it’s a story of loss, and learning to let go. It’s a story of pain and heartbreak, but that of adventure and joy as well.
Cloud Hopper reminds us that it is okay to be unique, to be your own person!
Five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
October 7, 2021
Contemporary fiction for ages 11-14, this book includes discussion questions at the end for a classroom or youth book club. This book was moving, deep, and lyrical. The issues addressed are illegal immigration and the real people affected, adoption, aging/death, friendship, wonder, acceptance, unusual family groups, and more. The lingo and colloquialisms used in this book may be difficult for junior high kids to understand. I don't know if it would be a roadblock to their enjoyment or not. It isn't smooth reading, but it's so different that it makes it intriguing. It moves at a moderate pace and has a beautiful ending.
July 10, 2020
Cloud Hopper is shelved as both YA and Middle Grade and though I don't frequently read a lot of middle grade, I was so intrigued by the plot that I decided to give it a try, after all, most of my favourite books are shelved in that same in-between.
For whatever reason, I just couldn't get into the writing here and that meant I also couldn't get into the story. It's not a bad book. It's story is incredibly unique and it has a lot of heart and great messages, but it ended up being a fairly 'meh' experience for me.
For whatever reason, I just couldn't get into the writing here and that meant I also couldn't get into the story. It's not a bad book. It's story is incredibly unique and it has a lot of heart and great messages, but it ended up being a fairly 'meh' experience for me.
November 4, 2020
Beth Kephart never tells a story in a traditional way. Her use of language is like that open window in Sophie B and Grandma Aubrey’s house, all fresh air and alive. Cloud Hopper is an adventure story, a family story, a friend story, a story of how the past mingles with the present, how the past never really goes away. And yet people change, and grow, come and go from our lives. It is about hope and the power of stories. It is ultimately full of love, and warm as a fresh-from-the-factory-of-Gilbertine blueberry crumble.
January 6, 2021
I love Beth Kephart's books like Small Damages and Going Over and this gem is so so good. Three misfits living in a small town that lives hot air balloons sees and rescues a girl, cloud hopper who falls from the sky. Talking amongst themselves they try to find out more about this silent girl, where she is from, who she is and why no one is looking for her. I fell in love with K, Sophie and Wyatt, their friends and Sophie's grandmother. This is a must read that will be cherished by middle grade and YA readers. I read this book as part of the #BitAboutBooks Winter Reading Challenge.
February 27, 2021
Lyrical and atmospheric, this story is a great choice for fans of Kevin Henkes and Gary D Schmidt. Follow Sophie's journey as she searches for the identity of a hopper who crashed at the local airfield. This story has a timeless feeling, the words are mesmerizing, and the heart is pure.
December 10, 2020
Poetic, fantastical, and with such great heart. Recommended!
April 19, 2022
Not my favorite book, but I did love how real the naive point of view felt.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews