Ava's Wonderfully Made
Ava needs a science fair topic. What she finds is herself: fingerprints that belong to no one else, a heartbeat that never stops and a hundred small proofs that she was made on purpose.
"I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." Psalm 139:14
A quiet kind of wonder, for readers just starting to notice the world.
A real chapter book
Ten short chapters written for readers 6 to 9. The kind of book that feels like a big step up, without losing an ounce of warmth.
Faith, woven in gently
No lecture, no tidy moral dropped in at the end. Just Ava working out what it means to be made.
Made to be read together
Written for homeschool shelves, Sunday afternoons, and bedtime. A story kids love and parents trust.
Coming soon
We're finishing the manuscript and the illustrations. Every page gets the same care, so we're taking the time it deserves.
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Enjoy Chapter One
Meet Ava before the book arrives.
Chapter One: Just Regular Old Ava
Ava woke up slowly, the way she usually did on school days, not all at once, but in small pieces. First the light came from behind her curtains, pale and gray. Then the smell of something warm drifted up from the kitchen. Then the sound of a bird outside her window, started singing to itself in the early quiet.
She lay still under her covers and listened.
The bird could only manage three notes, and it got them all wrong every time. Tweet. Tweet. Tw, and then a squeak.
Ava smiled a little at the ceiling.
She knew how that felt.
"You and me both," she said.
Suddenly she felt something warm shifting against her feet. It was Sox, Ava's small white cat with one black paw, who had decided sometime in the night that Ava's bed belonged to her. She opened one eye, found nothing worth waking up to, and closed it again.
Ava sat up, yawned, and padded over to her standing mirror.
Today's Ava looked exactly like yesterday's Ava.
Same black hair, cut in a bob that brushed her cheeks. Same freckles across her face, scattered in no particular pattern, something she had never been able to make sense of. Same dark eyes looking back at her.
She looked at herself for a moment.
"Just regular old Ava," she said.
She pulled on her yellow dungarees over her red shirt, found one red sneaker under the bed and the other inside the closet, and went downstairs.
Red clearly is Ava's favorite color.
The kitchen smelled like toast and cinnamon. It was, Ava thought, just about the best smell in the world. It almost made up for the fact that today was a school day, a Friday. How she wished it were the weekend. But today was the day Mr. Ellis needed everyone's science fair topic, and Ava did not have one.
Not a single one.
"Morning, sleepyhead," said Mom, packing sandwiches.
At the table, Ava's little brother Sam was not eating his cereal. He was building with it, stacking the little rings into a tower, one by one, his tongue pressed to his lip in concentration.
"It's an experiment," he said, before anyone asked. "I want to see how tall it gets before it falls."
"It's going to fall when you," Ava started.
The tower fell. Cereal scattered across the table. Sox appeared from nowhere and batted a piece across the floor.
"Now I know," Sam said cheerfully, surveying the wreckage.
Ava almost smiled. Then she remembered the science fair.
"Mom," she said, sitting down. "What am I good at?"
Mom set a plate of toast in front of her. "Lots of things."
"Name one."
Mom didn't hesitate. "You notice things. Things other people walk straight past."
Ava chewed her toast and thought about it. Noticing things did not sound like something you could put on a poster board. Lily was making a volcano that erupted with real lava, or at least red food coloring, but it looked real. Caleb was building a robot arm from cardboard. An actual robot arm that could pick up a marshmallow.
And I notice things? she thought.
"Watch this," said Sam, who had been quietly rebuilding while nobody was looking. "Tower Number Two. Bigger pieces on the bottom this time. For stability."
"Sam, please just eat."
Tower Number Two fell faster than the first one.
"Engineering is hard," Sam said sadly.
"It is," Ava agreed.
She bowed her head for a quick prayer.
Dear God, please help me think of something. Something good for the science fair. Amen.
She grabbed her backpack and headed for the door.
She had no idea, walking out into the cool morning air, that in the end the answer would be her.
❥
Hidden surprises!
Tucked into the final pages every book there will be a secret only readers get to find.
Read the book, and you'll find the hidden door.