FF Friday: In Which I Learn The Unimportance Of Anatomy

Feature & Follow is a weekly blog hop hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.

This week’s question: Have you ever been inspired by a book character to do something? Who was the character and what was it?

Answer: I can’t remember ever being inspired by a book character to do something, but there have been a lot of characters who have inspired me to think differently about something.

One of the first characters who did this was Lani Garver in Carol Plum-Ucci’s What Happened to Lani Garver.

What Happened to Lani Garver - Carol Plum-Ucci 

The close-knit residents of Hackett Island have never seen anyone quite like Lani Garver. Everything about this new kid is a mystery: Where does Lani come from? How old is Lani? And most disturbing of all, is Lani a boy or a girl? 

Claire McKenzie isn't up to tormenting Lani with the rest of the high school elite. Instead, she befriends the intriguing outcast. But within days of Lani's arrival, tragedy strikes and Claire must deal with shattered friendships and personal demons—and the possibility that angels may exist on Earth.

I read this book when I was 13 or 14, and it made me think about how we judge and value other people. The kids at the fictional high school get so caught up in the superficial details of Lani’s life that they miss the opportunity to know a really interesting person (or a really interesting angel). Lani Garver helped teenage me understand that a person’s gender/sexual orientation/age/fashion sense is not as important as society makes it seem.

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The follow part: If you are a book blogger and you leave a link to your blog in the comments below, I will follow you on Bloglovin’. I’d love it if you also followed me. If you want to be friends on Goodreads, Twitter, or G+, that would be awesome, too.