Ava was born with wings. No one called them that until she was two years old. She hides her wings under a special device her father made for her. She never takes off her backpack at school. No one knows her secret, not even her best friend Theo, who was born with two different-colored eyes. The doctor told Ava that she can choose to have the wings removed when she turns sixteen. The big day arrives, and she can't decide what to do. Without her wings, Ava thinks she can be like everybody else. But is that what she really wants? When Ava makes a new friend at school, she begins to see things--and herself--in new ways. Lucy offers her friendship and exquisite drawings of wings. Lucy makes Ava think. The Other asks us to consider what it means to be different and what it means to accept the unique parts of ourselves.



Laurie Foos is the author of Ex Utero, Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist, Twinship, Bingo Under the Crucifix, Before Elvis There was Nothing, and The Blue Girl. Her non-fiction has appeared in Brain, Child and in the anthology So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood. She teaches in the Bachelor of Fine Arts Program at Goddard College and in the Masters of Fine Arts Program at Lesley University. Laurie's first book in the Gemma Open Door series, The Giant Baby, was called "…utterly beautiful," by Christina Shea, author of Smuggled and Moira's Crossing. "Laurie Foos' writing imbues the salt of the earth with fabulous imagination."