The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty

 

Last week, I read The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty. This realistic fiction novel is about a girl, Lucy Callahan, who was struck by lightning when she was eight years old. After the trip to the hospital, Lucy and her grandmother thought things would go back to normal, but the lightning strike caused Lucy to become a math genius from a condition called acquired savant syndrome. Four years of homeschooling later, Lucy has already graduated from high school, passed the GED, and earned a perfect score on the math section of the SAT, but her grandmother decides to send her to middle school for a year instead of allowing her to go to college because she needs to work on her people skills. For Lucy, starting middle school as a seventh grader is awful. Even though she decides to hide her math skills, the other students still tease her because she obsesses over cleanliness and has to stand and sit three times before she stays seated. When Lucy is assigned a group service project, she gradually learns the meaning of friendship and embraces her uniqueness.

I found this book to be delightful, although it was very emotional at times. I could really relate to Lucy's struggles from being out of her comfort zone. She prefers to do math and stay away from dogs, but she ends up developing a huge soft spot for a sick dog she names Pi. I definitely got a little teary-eyed when Lucy and her newfound friends, Windy and Levi, had a hard time finding a home for Pi. There was also this mean girl, Maddie, who made me really angry with the way she treated and spoke about Lucy. She reminded me of the mean girls in my middle school years ago. I was rooting for Lucy to stick up for herself, and I was so proud of her when she finally did. Additionally, I thought it was cool that the author wrote every number in the novel as digits and included information about the mathematical constant pi and the Fibonacci sequence after the story ended. Anyone who feels different, enjoys friendship or dog stories, or likes math would enjoy this wonderful and hopeful book.