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The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl Kindle Edition
Lucy Callahan was struck by lightning. She doesn't remember it, but it changed her life forever. The zap gave her genius-level math skills, and ever since, Lucy has been homeschooled. Now, at 12 years old, she's technically ready for college. She just has to pass 1 more test--middle school!
Lucy's grandma insists: Go to middle school for 1 year. Make 1 friend. Join 1 activity. And read 1 book (that's not a math textbook!). Lucy's not sure what a girl who does calculus homework for fun can possibly learn in 7th grade. She has everything she needs at home, where nobody can make fun of her rigid routines or her superpowered brain. The equation of Lucy's life has already been solved. Unless there's been a miscalculation?
A celebration of friendship, Stacy McAnulty's smart and thoughtful middle-grade debut reminds us all to get out of our comfort zones and embrace what makes us different.
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"An engaging story, full of heart and hope. Readers of all ages will root for Lucy, aka Lightning Girl. No miscalculations here!" --Kate Beasley, author of Gertie's Leap to Greatness
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level3 - 7
- Lexile measure0530
- PublisherRandom House Books for Young Readers
- Publication dateMay 1, 2018
- ISBN-13978-1524767600
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From the Publisher
Praise for The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl
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Millionaires for the Month | The World Ends in April | |
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4.7 out of 5 stars
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4.7 out of 5 stars
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Price | $10.59$10.59 | $8.99$8.99 |
Read all of the middle grade novels from Stacy McAnulty! | A smart and thoughtful novel that reminds us all to get out of our comfort zones and embrace what makes us different. | Is middle school drama scarier than an asteroid heading for Earth? Find out in this smart and funny novel! |
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Review
"Prepare to fall in love."—School Library Journal, starred review
"Lucy’s journey is beautifully authentic in this debut brimming with warmth, wisdom, and math."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Well-rounded and believable characters and a convincing and appealing story…. Adds a useful STEM component as well.” —Booklist
“McAnulty’s well-drawn cast of characters grapple with the difficulties of middle school, friendships, and life. An engaging story, full of heart and hope. Readers of all ages will root for Lucy, aka Lightning Girl. No miscalculations here!” —Kate Beasley, author of Gertie’s Leap to Greatness
"Fresh story, great characters, a winner!" —Barbara O'Connor, author of Wish
"The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl is calculated to steal your heart!" - Alan Gratz author of Ban This Book and Refugee
About the Author
Twitter: @stacymcanulty
Instagram: StacyMcAnulty
Facebook: StacyMcAnultyAuthor
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I don’t remember the moment that changed my life 4 years ago. Call it a side effect of being struck by lightning. That bolt of electricity burned a small hole in my memory. It also rewired my brain, transforming me into Lucille Fanny Callahan, math genius.
I’ve been told the lightning-strike story 42 times, so it’s almost like my own memory. I see it perfectly: I’m at the Crystal Creek Apartments, where Nana and I lived then. (There’s not really a creek, just a big dirty fountain in front.) I’m playing outside with a girl named Cecelia when the thunderstorm starts. We live in North Carolina, and storms happen all the time in the spring and summer. We watch from behind a toolshed. For some reason, I climb on the chain link fence. Maybe 8-year-old me was a daredevil; 12-year-old me definitely is not.
Lightning strikes the fence, and the electricity runs through the metal links and then through me. Some of the current even jumps from me to Cecelia. I’m knocked out. Cecelia is just knocked over. She runs and gets help. Joe, the maintenance man, uses a defibrillator on me because the electricity from the lightning stopped my heart. The electricity from the defibrillator starts it back up.
I do remember the hospital and the black burns on my pale hands. I remember pretending to be asleep while Nana prayed next to my bed. I only stayed in the hospital 1 night. The doctors did all their tests. They said my heart took a 2- to 5-minute nap. (I hate that no one knows the exact number.) They said I was lucky and I’d be fine. Back to normal in a few days. But doctors are wrong sometimes.
A week later, Nana and I were watching TV, and a commercial came on for a used-car dealership. The man was screaming, so I had to pay attention.
“That’s $359 a month for 48 months, folks.” He was really loud. “Nobody beats Frank Fontana. Nobody.”
I yelled back, “17,232.”
“What?” Nana asked.
“That’s how much the car costs,” I said.
“Did you read it on the TV?”
“I just know. 359 times 48 is 17,232.”
Nana frowned and shook her head. But then she got up and went to find a calculator.
“What were those numbers again?” she asked.
I told her, and she punched them in. “And the answer?”
“17,232.”
“You’re right.” She sounded surprised. I wasn’t surprised, but I guess I should have been. I mean, I was only in 2nd grade, and we were still learning addition and subtraction.
Nana turned off the television.
“What’s 99 times 88?” she asked.
“8,712. Can we have McDonald’s for dinner?” I asked.
Nana ignored me and asked another math problem and then another. She kept using bigger numbers, more digits. But it never got harder.
The doctors call my condition acquired savant syndrome. Savant means that my math skills are far beyond normal, and acquired means I wasn’t born with this wacky ability. I got it because I was holding a metal fence during a lightning storm. Cecelia didn’t get any special powers. We stopped being friends soon after that. I was busy trying to understand my new brain, and in the fall Nana and I moved.
Acquired savant syndrome is caused by brain damage. I can’t say that in front of Nana. She thinks it’s a miracle. My uncle Paul likes to think of it as a superpower, something from a comic book or a movie. But really, I’m brain damaged. Part of my left lobe has been turned off, and now my right lobe works overtime.
My condition is really rare. I’ve never met anyone with it. It’s even rarer in females, and superrare in kids. 1 of my doctors, Dr. Emily Bahri, specializes in savant syndrome. She’s worked with a lady who can make a drawing so realistic it looks like a photo, and with a guy who can speak any language after hearing it only a few times. I’m her only acquired savant patient. Years ago, Dr. Bahri did have a guy who, after hitting his head on the bottom of a swimming pool, could suddenly play the piano. He’d never taken a single lesson. But that guy is dead now from old age.
My supercomputer brain can do more than add, subtract, multiply, and divide (which is no more impressive than a $3 calculator). I can also do calendar math. January 14, 1901, was a Monday. July 2, 1975, was a Wednesday. September 30, 2055, will be a Thursday. (Google can do this, too, and almost as fast.)
I also see math. Every number has its own color and shape. Take the number 5--it’s a jelly bean shape, red-brown, like the color of Carolina mud. The number 12 is a set of cream-colored squares. The number 47 is a fluorescent-orange oval. Prime numbers have curves. Non-primes have hard edges.
These colors and shapes make it fun and easy to play with numbers, and I can find patterns in anything from the stock market to baseball games to the price of cereal. Nana likes to bargain shop.
And then there’s my number memory ability. I remember every set of numbers I hear or see, like license plates or phone numbers or the digits of pi (π).
Pi is my favorite mathematical constant. But because the digits of pi after the point go on forever, I only let myself recite the numbers to the 314th decimal place.
π=3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190914564856692346034861045432664821339360726024914127372458700660631
These digits repeat in my brain even when I don’t want them to. It’s like getting a song stuck in your head. Only for me, it’s always the same song. Incredibly annoying, but still beautiful.
Being a savant does have its downsides. Like the guy who hit his head in the pool and could play the piano? He was blind after the accident. I’m not blind, but I do have my own issues. When people meet me, they expect Einstein or Maryam Mirzakhani (if they’re familiar with recent mathematical geniuses). But instead, they get the 1 and only freaky-strange Lucy. The girl who can’t sit down without making you stare at her because she needs to do it 3 times. The girl who would rather calculate your age down to the hour than talk about your hobbies. The girl who never leaves the house without a supply of Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer.
Lucky for me--and everybody else--I rarely have to meet people. I’m a reclusive genius.
Product details
- ASIN : B077M23JYR
- Publisher : Random House Books for Young Readers (May 1, 2018)
- Publication date : May 1, 2018
- Language : English
- File size : 8791 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 305 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #109,060 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Stacy McAnulty is a children’s book author, who used to be a mechanical engineer, who’s also qualified to be a dog therapist (is that a thing???), a correspondent for The Daily Show (why not), and a Green Bay Packer coach (totally!).
She's written thirty books including her debut middle-grade novel, THE MISCALCULATIONS OF LIGHTNING GIRL, a Junior Library Guild Selection, and the 2017 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Honor book EXCELLENT ED, illustrated by Julia Sarcone-Roach. Her other picture books include EARTH! MY FIRST 4.54 BILLION YEARS, illustrated by David Litchfield; MAX EXPLAINS EVERYTHING: GROCERY STORE EXPERT, illustrated by Deborah Hocking, BRAVE and BEAUTIFUL, both illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff; MR. FUZZBUSTER KNOWS HE'S THE FAVORITE, illustrated by Edward Hemingway; and 101 REASONS WHY I'M NOT TAKING A BATH, illustrated by Joy Ang. She’s also authored the chapter book series THE DINO FILES.
When not writing, Stacy likes to listen to NPR, bake triple-chocolate cupcakes, and eat triple-chocolate cupcakes. Originally from upstate NY, she now lives in Kernersville, NC with her 3 kids, 3 dogs, and 1 husband.
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Having this rare condition is not without its drawbacks. Lucy has obsessive compulsive tendencies, no offline friends, and hasn’t left the apartment she shared with her Nana for 32 days. While Lucy wants to begin college, Nana proposes an alternate plan. Go to middle school for at least 1 year. Make 1 friend. Join 1 activity. Read 1 book that is not math related. Nana wins.
Lucy accomplishes her first goal quickly. On her first bus ride to school, she becomes friends with socially conscious Windy. But adjusting to middle school is still tough especially because of Lucy’s constant need to sanitize, her repetitive sitting behavior, and her desire to keep her giftedness hidden from her peers including Windy. A group service project with Windy and budding photographer Levi gives Lucy the opportunity to use her math genius for a good cause-helping dogs gets adopted at a local shelter. At the shelter, Lucy meets Cutie Pi, a beagle mix (Yes, you heard it, a beagle!) with a lightning bolt spot on its back and is determined to find him a home. Being a dog mom, seeing Lucy’s affection for Pi was heartwarming. Her relationship with Pi was one of my favorite parts of the story.
The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl is a touching and engaging story about fitting in, finding yourself and most of all, friendship. Lucy soon learns that all things are not easy to calculate. As a reader, I calculate a few important lessons from this must read middle grade novel.
-Sometimes numbers aren’t all that matter.
-No problem is unsolvable.
-If you have a couple of friends who accept you for who you are, you are pretty lucky.
It is the middle grade equivalent of ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE. (If you haven't read that one, get right on it.) Thanks to a lightning bolt, Lucy is smarter than your average 12 year-old (or 40-something year-old, for that matter), but her Nana insists she needs to experience real life in the form of middle school. While she might be able to hide her math prowess to fit it, it's much more difficult to hide her OCD. Seeing how the world looks through Lucy's eyes was wonderful and thought-provoking. Stacy McAnulty manages to shows such character growth without Lucy ever changing who she really is. Ultimately, it's a story about friendship, forgiveness, and accepting people even when they turn out to be different than your first impression. I was in a puddle of tears at the end.
Bonus: This book makes learning a little something about math easy because you're not learning math, but rather learning about Lucy who loves math and sees it in everything.
It says it's for ages 8-12, but I couldn't have loved it more.
So, buy it for your upper elementary or middle school student, but I suggest you preread before they do it. You know, just to make sure it's a good read for them. ;-)
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2024
Top reviews from other countries
This middle grade novel is about Lucy, a 12 year old girl who, when struck by lightning, develops an incredible ability in mathematics. After a period of home schooling, her grandmother/guardian decides that attending a regular school will help Lucy develop social skills.
I don’t think The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl is a good middle grade novel, I think it’s a good novel, which just happens to have children as its characters. The categorisation of novel by age group started developing in earnest in the 1960s, so that today there’s a feeling that people have to read novels featuring characters who are like themselves. That’s alright, except for the fact that novels are also useful in finding out about people who are not like themselves. I am not a 12 year old girl with social anxiety and incredible abilities in maths. I am a man in his fifties who has never felt much of an affinity with maths - but that doesn’t mean I can’t find The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl interesting.
One of the things that Lucy learns during her time at school is that although she might feel like the only freak in the world, other people have their own concerns and are not really taking much notice of you. That’s what books can provide - an insight into things other than ourselves.
So maths - I have enough ability to muddle along, but have never been something very comfortable with. The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl was an education for me, a window into the world of maths. I was good at English at school, a subject which I believed was an altogether vaguer affair. But what did I know. Lucy loves the constant known as pi - a number which you get in dividing a circle’s circumference by its diameter. This simple calculation comes out as a number that goes on forever, beginning 3.14159…. with as many numbers after that as you want. Pi is constant, applying to any circle of any size. But you can never say precisely what pi is, because you can never get to the end of it. There is something fundamentally dependable about Lucy’s favourite bit of maths, something that always remains the same. But there is also an unknowable quality about it. I imagined there was a big difference between the precise world of maths and the uncertainties of life which people write about in stories. That, however is not really true. Maths and more artistic pursuits are not so far apart after all.
The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl is a good novel for school children. It will teach them about maths and show how it can be used to solve real world problems that will mean something to them - like boosting the chances of adoption of dogs at a dog shelter. There are also a few lessons about dealing with difficult social situations. Beyond that, The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl is, as I say, a good novel. It says something about life that is relevant generally.