A Parade Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2018 A YA Books Central Buzzworthy Books of Fall 2018 A Publishers Lunch Fall Buzz Book Don’t miss one of the most heartwarming young adult novels of the year. Perfect for fans of Water for Elephants, Wonder and All the Bright Places, When Elephants Fly shows that how we choose to live our lives matters, and that there are some battles worth fighting even if … shows that how we choose to live our lives matters, and that there are some battles worth fighting even if it means losing yourself. T. Lily Decker is a high school senior with a twelve-year plan: avoid stress, drugs, alcohol and boyfriends, and take regular psych quizzes administered by her best friend, Sawyer, to make sure she’s not developing schizophrenia.Genetics are not on Lily’s side. When she was seven, her mother, who had paranoid schizophrenia, tried to kill her. And a secret has revealed that Lily’s odds are even worse than she thought. Still, there’s a chance to avoid triggering the mental health condition, if Lily can live a careful life from ages eighteen to thirty, when schizophrenia most commonly manifests.But when a newspaper internship results in Lily witnessing a mother elephant try to kill her three-week-old calf, Swifty, Lily can’t abandon the story or the calf. With Swifty in danger of dying from grief, Lily must choose whether to risk everything, including her sanity and a first love, on a desperate road trip to save the calf’s life, perhaps finding her own version of freedom along the way.
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I wish I could express with words how much I truly loved this book but I don’t think I possibly could. Sawyer, Otis, and of course baby elephant Swifty cracked my heart wide open. Tiger Lily quickly became one of my favorite fictional characters of all time. I read this book through many laughs, quite a few tears, and very high anxiety trying to anticipate what was going to happen next. Between gasping out loud and raising my fist in solidarity or excitement, this book had everything you could want in a story. I didn’t expect to be completely immersed when I started reading it but that is exactly what happened. I thought Fischer’s writing was beautiful, captivating, and easy to connect with immediately. I was highly impressed with the amount of research she clearly did on Elephants in the wild and in any sort of captivity but also on schizophrenia and how that manifests differently for each person. When Elephants Fly was the first book I finished reading in 2019 and what a way to kick of the year. ALL THE STARS.
WOW this book!! Such an important read and so beautifully written. I’ve seen reviews written by psychologists about this book, I don’t know much about schizophrenia or the statistics,etc, but there is one thing this book is full of: empathy. Beautifully written; written in a way that the words jump from the page and to the readers heart (seriously this author’s writing is so good.) This book may not give very much education on schizophrenia itself, but it is very educational about how YA’s and adults who have a mental illness, family with loved ones who have schizophrenia or other mental illness, – how they feel. Everything that is going on in their hearts, and in their minds -from their hearts. Emotions is something everyone can relate too. Everyone gets nervous, sad, excited, anxious. Everyone wants to be joyful, feel peace, to love and be loved, to beam with gladness. None of those things change because of schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, bipolar, etc. Those feelings are real and deep for so so many, And those desires are real for so so many. Though I dont know what it’s like to have schizophrenia or have a family member with schizophrenia, those feelings and desires are all very, very relatable, and those feeling and desires are very, very relatable to so many others. Want to read about a character that will make your heart dive deep and reconsider you selfishness/selflessness and if how your living is truly living or just existing-if you havent been living and need to start living? Read this book. Read T. Lily’s story. And you might want a couple tissues for the emotional (good, important emotional ride) that is this book.
Content to know about:
1 start for very little, 5 for a lot
Language: ***, there wasnt a ton of language in this book. The words “h*ll and “sh*t” are thrown around. One f word that I can recall.
Violence: ** there isn’t any graphically written violence in this book, but violence has occured before present day of when the story takes place. The violence before the story takes places is of heavier and more mature content. Not graphically written though. 16+
Sexual content: ***
Some more mature content in this area. Not descriptive but still. There are a few pages with some steamy stuff, where Id say younger audience readership is not recommended. The few pages are not alot of pages in all, but isnt appropriate for younger readers. Because of some mature themes and those few pages, I’d say 16+ maybe? Or even 17+.
That being said, for readers 16/17+, I would very much so recommend this book. It wont disappoint!
I started out this one a little unsure how I would feel about it, but by the end of the book I was so glad I was able to just sit and read with no interruptions, because this was such a page-turner. There were so many different aspects to this story. So many things that tugged at my heart. Not only the big things talked about in the synopsis, the fact that Lily is worried about schizophrenia taking over her life and the baby elephant, Swift Jones – or Swifty, whose mom has rejected her, but also Lily’s best friend Sawyer who has a family that does not support him, even going so far as to forcing him to move out. And then there is the circus that takes ownership of the Swifty, and while there are the issues that you’d imagine with a circus and animals, there are even more things going on behind the scenes and between the family members that run it. Not to mention that Lily finds out things about her dad and mom’s relationship, and comes to realize just why her father was doing the things he was the way he did after her mom was gone.
I learned a lot about elephants, and a lot about schizophrenia as well. I knew that schizophrenia was a complicated and oftentimes scary mental illness, but didn’t realize all the types there were, and just all the ways it could manifest. I also didn’t know how much it could be overcome in some cases, and that it wasn’t a set cure of just taking medicine and being okay.
It was actually a little nice bit of a break to get a girl that was as innocent as Lily was, boyfriend-wise, sexually, etc., and to get a story that fit that type of a teenager perfectly. I feel like I’d been pretty close to that aspect in my teen years. So I enjoyed the way that was done in the book. By the end I was just so into the story I couldn’t put it down, and finished it really quickly, hoping that they’d be able to save Swifty, and that other things would resolve themselves as well.