A Wish With Wings

Guillory, Sarah. A Wish With Wings
May 19, 2026 by Roaring Brook Press

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Evan (don't call her Evelyn!) lives with her younger brother Ollie and parents who work for the Eastern Mining Company salt mine in Little John Island, Louisiana. She loves to be outside, and often comes back to the house covered in mud, with her father's Aunt Tildy does NOT like. Evan doesn't see any reason that she should "grow up" and not get into so much trouble, since no one ever tells her best friend Ford to do that. When she is out in a marshy area, she sees water bubbling up through the ground, and sees two eggs. When her father and many of the other miners are trapped after a collapse, she worries that she should have told her father about the odd water. She also takes one of the eggs and tries to raze it after finding out that it is a whooping crane egg, and the species is threatened. Her mother is understandably worried, especially after all but three of them men are brought to the surface, but Evan's father Will and two other men are not. Eventually, the three are rescued. One man is dead, and Will is so badly injured that he is put into a medically induced coma. The more Evan struggles with this, the more she is determined to hatch the egg. She finds information online, e mails an expert for the correct temperature, asks classmate Sofia for help, and even gets old school equipment from a teacher. When Evan talks to the other miner who survived, she finds that the company was not entirely truthful in television interviews, even though the mine supervisor is Ford's father. She gives the information she has to the widow of the man who perished, and she in turn goes to the news media. People in town are angry that the mine might be closed, and even Evan's mother is worried about losing her job. Can Evan hold onto the hope that her father will recover as she struggles against the odds to hatch the crane egg?

Strengths: My favorite character was probably Aunt Tildy, who gave Evan a hard time about coming home covered in mud, but really stepped up to take care of the family when it was needed. When I was reading this book, I thought about what it would have been like to be living in East Palestine, Ohio when the Norfolk Southern Railway train derailment in 2023 spilled vinyl chloride and caused such devastation. My mother taught in the East Palestine district, and I wondered how she and her students would have coped. Evan and Ford do mention the Lake Peigneur disaster, which was so brilliantly depicted in the graphic novel The Vanishing of Lake Peigneur by Wolf and Pimienta, which was an interesting real life tie in. The community surrounding the salt mine is close knit, and it was fascinating to know where the salt for our roads in the north comes from! The author does have a note that it's not a good idea to take eggs from the wild, but Evan's care of the egg is very informed, and at the end, she does turn the fledgling over to a reputable rescue group. 
Weaknesses: Any time a story is described as "tender", I know that it will appeal to teachers and librarians a lot more than it will appeal to students. I can see this title being used in literature circles and class discussions. 

What I really think: This is a good choice for readers who reader who like books that use nature to help process family trauma, like Shepherd's The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins, Lewis' Scarlet Ibis, Miller's Rare Birds, or  Culley's The Natural Genius of Ants.