Willodeen

Willodeen by Katherine Applegate is a middle-grade fantasy novel about the roles that all species, including humans, play in preserving the world we share. Applegate is a New York Times bestselling author of numerous books for young readers. After getting her start ghostwriting for the popular Sweet Valley Twins book series, she began writing her own middle-grade books, mainly in the science fiction and fantasy genres. She co-wrote the best-selling Animorphs series with her husband, Michael Grant. Applegate won the Newbery Medal for her 2012 book, The One and Only Ivan, and she has won many other awards including the Christopher Medal, the Golden Kite Award, and the Bank Street Josette Frank Award.

This guide references the 2021 Feiwel & Friends eBook edition of Willodeen.

Plot Summary

Willodeen takes place in the fictional town of Perchance and follows the 11-year-old titular character, her friend Connor Burke, and her two caretakers. Together, they grapple with the mystery surrounding the disappearance of hummingbears while trying to care for a baby screecher—a species wanted dead because of its terrible odor. The book is told in five parts, and the first four contain sections from the screecher’s perspective. It is never made clear if these excerpts are narrated by Quinby, the screecher Willodeen’s group cares for, or if they are a story Connor is writing about Quinby.

Four years before the story’s opening, Willodeen lost her family to a fire. Two women in the village took her in, but despite how much they care for her, Willodeen struggles to consider them family. Before Willodeen’s pa died, he taught her to respect all creatures, a lesson Willodeen carries forward. She is the only person in her village who cares about screechers. The rest of the village wants them gone because their smell drives away tourists during the fall fair, the major event that brings in most of the village’s revenue.

Each fall, hummingbears (a creature that appears to be part hummingbird, part bear) migrate to Perchance, where they make nests of glowing bubbles in the blue willow trees. In the last few years, though, there have been fewer and fewer hummingbears; in the year the story takes place, none have arrived yet, and the entire village is worried. In addition, the weather has gotten drier, and more disasters, such as fires and mudslides, happened in the last few years. Willodeen spends her days alone, roaming the woods and looking for screechers. They, too, have vanished in recent years, likely due to the bounty the villagers put on them, which caused hunters to pursue the creatures more actively.

After watching a hunter kill the last screecher Willodeen saw in a long time, she goes to a council meeting to protest what’s being done to the screechers. Connor, who was also in the woods when the screecher was killed, makes a screecher likeness out of grass and mud, which he gives to Willodeen as a reminder of the screechers. With the creation firmly tucked in her pocket, Willodeen finds the courage to speak up at the meeting, only to have the adults laugh her out of the room. Embarrassed and heartbroken, Willodeen hugs the screecher creation to her chest and cries before setting the creation down and heading home. Later, she realizes she forgot the creation, but when she returns to where she left it, the creation is gone, and there’s a live screecher that looks just like it in its place.

Willodeen doesn’t want to believe her tears brought Connor’s creation to life, but after consulting with Connor and her caretakers, it seems like the most likely explanation. The next few days are a flurry of research and trial-and-error as Willodeen tries to figure out how to care for the screecher, which Connor names Quinby. After stumbling across the peacock snails that Quinby likes to eat, Connor and Willodeen take Quinby to the blue willow trees where the snails tend to live. Quinby digs beneath two of the trees, rapidly unearthing and eating snails. The next day, hummingbears are nesting in the trees Quinby ate snails beneath.

Amazed at the hummingbears’ return, Willodeen sets out to learn why the creatures only nested in trees where Quinby dug. An experiment with leaves from different trees shows that the hummingbear bubbles only stick to the leaves where Quinby ate, suggesting a relationship between the number of peacock snails and the ability of bubbles to adhere to the leaves. Willodeen runs to town to tell Connor about her discovery, but before she can find him, a fire starts on a nearby ridge.

Willodeen and the villagers work late into the night to put out the flames and finally succeed with only minimal damage to the village. In the confusion the night before, Quinby escaped Willodeen’s house, and after searching, Willodeen and Connor can’t find the screecher. At an emergency council meeting the next day, Willodeen presents her findings about the hummingbears, using the connection between the hummingbears and screechers as a broader message about how people must help uphold the balance of nature. The next year is spent reworking village policies to rebuild the blue willow ecosystem. Hunters are rewarded for bringing screechers to the village rather than killing them, and by the time the next fall fair comes around, hummingbears have returned to at least some of the blue willows. Between the fire and losing Quinby, Willodeen gains an appreciation for the people in her life. At the end of the book, she finally feels like her caretakers are family, and she counts Connor as a close friend.