It's the summer before seventh grade, and 12-year-olds Ofelia Castillo, Lane DiSanti, Aster Douglas and Cat Garcia have no plans to ruffle feathers in their small Florida town. In fact, they don't even know each other. Lane, visiting her wealthy grandmother, leaves the daughter of the woman who cleans her grandmother's house an anonymous invitation to a secret meeting. She leaves two more invitations in the girls' restroom of the public library, figuring that "kids who spent time in places she liked were more likely to be kids she could potentially hang out with."
All three invitees show up, and the Ostentation of Others and Outsiders convenes. The girls fashion themselves as a kind of anti-scout club in reaction to the Floras, a prestigious local girls' troop that focuses on social etiquette. The Ostentation quickly solidifies around an unusual passion project: Cat wants the Floras to discontinue their yearly tradition of crowning Miss Floras with a 100-year-old hat made of bird feathers. Though at first the girls seem to have little in common, they rally around this mission. Unfortunately, while their zeal and moral righteousness are laudable, their techniques are not always wise or safe.
All four girls narrate in alternating chapters, giving context and depth to their individual and collective stories. The age of 12 can be both magical and miserable. In Strange Birds, author Celia C. Pérez (The First Rule of Punk) gathers up all the messy, wild, confusing pieces of early adolescence and offers them back to the reader as a lovely mosaic made with sparkly bits of independence, tradition, principles and friendship. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor