My Fate According to the Butterfly

Sab is only a week away from her eleventh birthday, but it looks like it won’t be a great one. Her mother is away on business, her father doesn’t live with them, and her older sister, Nadine, hasn’t spoken to her father in over a year. Her dream is to have everyone together for her birthday, but it’s not looking good. Sab’s best friend, Pepper, helps Sab spy on Nadine to see if they can figure out why Nadine refuses to speak to their father. But when Sab gets a visit from a black butterfly, something her superstitious father had told her portends death, she decides she will do whatever it takes to repair the family before she dies.

Author Gail D. Villanueva has written a book that will give readers a real taste of life in the Philippines with their superstitions, their formal ways of addressing people, their prejudices, poverty and hunger, the overcrowded conditions in neighborhoods and on transit, and most of all, the destructive drug trade. Her writing is superb, the dialog seems very natural, the characters are well-rounded and interesting, and the story is compelling. This is a terrific addition to the middle-grade canon.