What Katy Did

What Katy Did


By Susan Coolidge

Summary:


Katy is a lively twelve year old girl, growing up in a big house in the countryside with her six brothers and sisters. She is a very tall, carefree girl who is always untidy, with a tear in her dress and her hair forever in a tangle. She wants to be good, but she just never seems to be able to get out of her untidy ways. She has never cared about what other people think of her and wants to be 'something big' when she grows up. She is always up to some mischief or of on a so-called 'big' adventure with her best friend Cecy Hall. Katy has always been happy girl, just playing outside, inventing a story or doing something, that, in the end, will get her into trouble.

But one dramatic day, Katy has a terrible accident, one which would change her life forever...

She is forced to remember her old ways and all of her happy memories again, when she is told that she may never walk again.

Katy is completely devastated, but knows that she must find the courage to continue living a normal life and remember how happy she used to be...


Review:  


When I first picked up What Katy Did I was awaiting a story about some girl while she goes through some tough period in her life, but, What Katy Did is a feel-good book, full of tension and courage and is beautifully written.

Katy is such a wonderful character and she is very interesting to watch as she changes and adapts to her new life after her accident. At the beginning of the book, I didn't like her so much, though. I found that she was very bossy with her younger siblings and that she was not a character in a book that anybody would want to be like. But as the story progressed, I grew to like her more and more. She started to really reflect on what life was really about, and what she had been doing with her life and how selfish she had been.
I think that Susan Coolidge (author) does a wonderful job of portraying Katy as she changed, learned to accept and understand how she was going to continue living her newly changed life. Coolidge also did a superb job of weaving the lives of Katy's siblings with hers.

Katy's Cousin Helen, a character who appears at the end of the book, and who has a big impact on Katy's life was very, very well, (maybe even better than the other characters) described and I think that she was the character who I could picture the most, because she seemed very real and life like and she seemed to bring the book alive somehow. Her presence in the book made the story feel very alive and true, and I thank Coolidge for putter Helen in the book as she changed it so much!

I think that this is a book that could make teens all around the world laugh, cry and help them to accept who they are and why the are here, in the world.
What a wonderful read written by one of the only authors who can really make a character leap off of the page and any moment in the story....

An absolute must read!

Recommended for ages 14+