The only thing I knew about Betti on the High Wire was that it was a middle grade fiction book from the Cybils Shortlist. Bonus! It’s also about adoption, which means it is the first book I’ve read in Jenna’s Adoption Reading Challenge. Extra Bonus! It was good.

I reserved this one on audio and Prince J listened to it first. He wasn’t overly impressed but then again, his taste runs more toward Dexter. Elly listened to it and she liked it – except she didn’t like Lucy. Elly has very little time or patience for first graders.

Betti was Babo when she lived in a burned out circus camp with “Auntie Moo” and a bunch of “leftover kids” in a war torn country that Railsback never names. She was found wandering around the burned out camp when she was a toddler. Nobody really knows how old she is or exactly what happened to her circus parents but… odds are high, they were casualties of the war that’s raged in her country for years.

Americans come to the camp to meet the orphan children – and they generally adopt babies. Or pretty children. Not broken children like Babo, who has a broken eye and missing toes. They also don’t adopt broken children like Babo’s friend George, who is missing an arm. This is fine with Babo because she does not want to be adopted. She wants to stay in her circus camp and wait for her mother, the tallest woman in the world with a tail, and her father, the green alligator man with bumpy skin, to come back for her.

But Babo is adopted – and so is George. And they travel to the same city in the US, together but without an adult. George adapts pretty happily. Babo, who becomes Betti, does not. She wants to go home. She tries to be “bad” so the Buckworth’s will realize they made a mistake. But of course, she isn’t bad at all – and the Buckworth’s are a good family who work very hard to help her make her way.

There are the normal rough moments when Betti, whose English is good, gets confused about things like “free food at the grocery store” – or when the kids at day camp make fun of Betti (and George) —  or when both Betti and George are terrified by the fireworks on Fourth of July. And the moment when Betti realizes that her parents are dead… that’s hard.

Excellent storytelling. Excellent character development. So many children without families – in war torn countries and our own.

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