Signal

Cynthia DeFelice

Sep 2009 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

About this ebook

After moving with his father to upstate New York, twelve-year-old Owen faces a lonely summer . . . until he meets a girl who may be a space alien.

One day while running on the trail near his house in upstate New York, Owen McGuire meets a girl with startling green eyes and bloody cuts all over her body who seems to be utterly alone. Her name is Campion, after the wildflower that is an alien species in the area—alien meaning "from someplace else"—and Campion claims to come from someplace else entirely, a planet called Home. She plans to signal her parents to come pick her up in their spaceship. Owen agrees to help, and as he does, he feels happier than he has in a long time: his mother died a year and a half ago, and now he and his workaholic father live together like two planets on separate orbits, in a new house far from his friends. What will he do when Campion asks him to come with her into outer space, away from his lonely life on Earth?

In this moving middle grade novel from Cynthia DeFelice, two friendless kids search the night sky for something to believe in—but discover that they've found what they need right here on Earth.

Ratings and reviews

I thought the book was excellent. It was very intriguing and kept me wanting the read more. The book had no boring parts and i would recommend this to a 5th or 6th grader. I just read this book as a seventh grader and i felt it was not ment for my age group. Otherwise, it was the best book i ever read!

Thi book was O.K. Most of the book was just explaining about his feelings which was kinda a sleeper.

Great novel tu shud reed it

About the author

Cynthia DeFelice was the author of many bestselling titles for young readers, including the novels Wild Life, The Ghost of Cutler Creek, Signal, and The Missing Manatee, as well as the picture books, One Potato, Two Potato, and Casey in the Bath. Her books were nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award and listed as American Library Association Notable Children's Books and Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, among numerous other honors. Cynthia was born in Philadelphia in 1951. As a child, she was always reading. Summer vacations began with a trip to the bookstore, where she and her sister and brothers were allowed to pick out books for their summer reading. “To me,” she said, “those trips to the bookstore were even better than the rare occasions when we were given a quarter and turned loose at the penny-candy store on the boardwalk.” Cynthia worked as a bookseller, a barn painter, a storyteller, and a school librarian. She and her husband lived in Geneva, New York. She died at age seventy-two in 2024.