Twelve-year old Ivy Mae Bloom wants a real home and, since her Mama can give wishes, she doesn't think it should be such a tough request. The Stars of Whistling Ridge is the inventive, magical tale of three sisters--and three more sisters--whose lives are run by the power of wishes.
Ivy's Mama is a "fallen star-woman," duty-bound to "tend to the magic that wove underneath the world." Mama and her sisters, Agatha and Ruth, keep the magic going in the U.S., while other star-women protect elsewhere. Ivy and Mama, together with Ivy's father and her two younger sisters, Elena and Sophie, travel the country in an old Winnebago (named Martha) while Mama barters wishes and heals places where magic is weak. When the family finds themselves stranded with Mama's star-sisters in Whistling Ridge, N.C. (the place they had "first fallen to earth"), Ivy hopes her wish for an actual home is coming true. But something is seeping the magic out of Whistling Ridge, endangering the town and all the world around it.
The Stars of Whistling Ridge, the third middle-grade novel by Cindy Baldwin (Where the Watermelons Grow), is a refreshing breath of familiar magic. Baldwin has created a fantastic mythology around fallen stars, fireflies and the stardust of which we are all made, all of it growing from the idea that wishing on stars may have been happening "for as long as anybody could remember." By weaving together magic and science, Baldwin dares to ask how certain we are that magic isn't real. Complex issues of family, impending puberty and what home really means are handled deftly in thought-provoking ways. The Stars of Whistling Ridge inspires readers to see the extraordinary in everyday life. --Kyla Paterno, freelance reviewer