Savvy

Savvy, by Ingrid Law, is a fantasy-adventure novel for middle-grade readers about a girl from a psychic family who discovers her mental superpower and tries to master it quickly to use it to save her comatose father. First published in 2008, Savvy was a New York Times bestseller; it won a Newbery Honor and has appeared on more than 30 best book lists. The novel has two sequels, Scumble and Switch. Law’s books have been translated into 20 languages.

The 2018 Puffin Books 10th Anniversary Edition contains a two-chapter update on one of the characters; the e-book version of that edition forms the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

Mibs Beaumont is about to turn 13. She lives in a family whose members, when they reach that age, suddenly acquire a unique superpower, which they call a “savvy.” Her brother Fish, 14, can cause minor hurricanes, so the family moved to the Kansas-Nebraska borderlands, far from bodies of water. Her 17-year-old brother, Rocket, controls electricity and sometimes causes power outages. Younger brother Samson, seven, and toddler Gypsy are years from their own savvies.

Two days before Mibs’s 13th birthday, her father, Poppa, gets into a car crash and lapses into a coma. Momma drives to the hospital with Rocket while Mibs and the other children stay home, watched over by Miss Rosemary, the prissy, officious wife of Pastor Meeks. Rosemary’s children, Bobbi, a rebellious 16-year-old, and 14-year-old Will Junior, also visit. Bobbi is bored and rude, but Will likes Mibs and is nice to her. Rosemary decides that Mibs will have a birthday party at the church. The Beaumont kids squirm because their powers are a secret, and it’s an especially bad idea to be out in public on a 13th birthday.

On her birthday, Mibs reckons that her savvy is to wake people up—her kid sister got up with her, which she never does, and Samson’s dead turtle suddenly is alive again. She decides that her task is to awaken her father from his coma.

At the party, Will Junior keeps an affectionate watch over Mibs, who’s uncomfortable with the realization that maybe she likes him back. In the church kitchen, Bobbi treats Mibs dismissively. Mibs hears a singsong voice: It’s an angel tattoo on the back of Bobbi, which informs Mibs that Bobbi is very lonely. Stunned by the sight of a talking tattoo, Mibs faints.

She awakens in the church office, where Pastor Meeks is yelling at a delivery man for bringing pink Bibles, and Fish struggles to wrest a telephone from Miss Rosemary, who wants to call a doctor for Mibs. Mibs hears more voices, two women arguing about the delivery man’s mistake, and she escapes from the office with Will in tow.

She heads for the highway but stops at the Bible delivery truck, a converted bus with a home address painted on the side—Salina, where Poppa is hospitalized. She climbs aboard; Bobbi sees this and follows her, and Will and Fish join them. Everyone argues over who gets to come along. Lester, the delivery driver, approaches, and they hide in the rear of the bus. The vehicle heads not south toward Salina but north.

For some hours, the kids hide quietly in the back. Mibs continues to hear the voices of two women, Rhonda and Carlene. Finally, a bored Bobbi kicks at Fish, who causes a mini-storm inside the bus. The driver halts the bus and discovers the stowaway children. They beg him to take them to Salina; he relents but says they won’t arrive until the next day. Mibs notices that Lester’s arm tattoos are the sources of the voices of Rhonda and Carlene.

They stop at a small village to deliver Bibles to a church. It’s closed, and there’s a delay. Will gives Mibs a birthday present, a lovely pen set. With it, she draws a smiling sun on Will’s palm. The sun opens its eyes and clears its throat. Terrified, Mibs runs back to the bus. Will follows, and the sun drawing talks to Mibs. She tells Will to get away, and Fish slugs him. Bobbi attacks Fish and scratches his face. A Fish-inspired storm breaks out, and several bus windows shatter. Mibs shouts at Will to wash off his hand; Fish realizes what’s happening, grabs Will’s hand, spits on it, and smears off the drawing. The voice inside Mibs’s head fades away.

As night falls, they continue the drive. Lester stops at a stalled car and offers a ride to a waitress named Lill. She boards the bus and quickly wins over the kids, chatting happily and attending to the boys’ injuries.

They arrive at the truck stop where she works. Near the diner, asleep in an alley, lies an old man who is an alcoholic. Mibs tries to use her savvy to wake him, but his tattoo screams to leave him alone, that he’s seen too much and wants to die. She realizes that waking people isn’t her power after all. Instead, she must listen to people’s woes through the ink on their skin.

For Mibs, the diner is filled with the voices of dozens of tattoos. She explains her ability to Fish; Bobbi overhears and tells Will. Lill tries to get some food for the kids, but the manager arrives and angrily fires her for tardiness. Samson bites the manager in the leg, the others knock him down, and they all escape to the bus. There, Bobbi taunts Mibs about reading her mind; Fish hurls a storm at her and then calms down. Strangely, Bobbi and Will are impressed.

They find a motel for the night. Lill wants them to call their parents, but Mibs knows this will merely bring the police. Bobbi pretends to call her mom but instead calls Fish across the hall and then hands the phone to Mibs, who also pretends to talk to Miss Rosemary. Bobbi leaves as if to check on the boys; she picks up Fish’s phone and pretends to be her own mother while lecturing Lill and making her promise to deliver the children to Poppa’s hospital in Salina.

Lill falls for the ruse. She visits a nearby market and returns with food, toiletries, and swimming suits. The kids visit the indoor pool, where Will briefly kisses Mibs.

The next morning, they drive to Lester’s last stop, the home of his ex-girlfriend Carlene, one of the women in his tattoos and the person who got Lester his delivery job. Lester gives her some cash, but she insists angrily that he owes her twice as much. Lester, emboldened by his budding relationship with the supportive Lill, tells her it’s all he can give her and that he’ll do without the delivery job if he has to. Carlene recognizes the kids from the TV alerts and phones the police. The group escapes to the bus and rides away.

Mibs realizes that Samson is still back at Carlene’s, so they turn back and search for him, but Carlene has hidden him away. The kids wrestle her down and Mibs draws a smiley face on her foot, which promptly tells her that Samson is locked behind a panel. Mibs hears Samson’s thoughts and follows them to a hidden wall cabinet, where she finds her brother, his arms covered in ink scribbles from a pen he found inside the storage space.

The police arrive, and it takes some time to untangle the story. State Trooper Bill Meeks—Pastor and Rosemary Meeks’s son and Will’s real father—arrives and arranges to escort the kids and their bus to the Salina hospital.

At the hospital, Mibs talks to her comatose father, who answers her through his tattoo and wakes up. Poppa begins a long, slow recovery. He moves back home, where he and the kids build a long-promised porch swing. On her 14th birthday, Mibs and Poppa rock on the swing, enjoying a perfect spring day with Momma, Rocket, Fish, Samson, and Gypsy as they await the arrival of Will and Bobbi for the party. Mibs learns that her mother might be pregnant again; it’s a secret, but on her birthday, she’s happy to keep that secret safe.