The heroine's name is Jackie, of course; the youngest, the one no one takes seriously. Her family subsists on food stamps and is likely to be evicted.
Jackie shares her tortilla with a stray cat, though repeatedly told not to. El Gato is grateful and will help her find her fortune, but there's complications. Jackie's too young to buy a lottery ticket, and any treasure she digs up will belong to the property owner. Rewards come with strings attached. The grown-ups and older kids won't cooperate - they never do.
It's probable that Jackie and El Gato have different ideas about what constitutes an acceptable fortune.
Writing a book like this is following a well-trodden path; which means, if you want yours to stand out, you have to go head-to-head with some formidable competition. You'd better know your source material inside-out if you want to pull anything new out of it.
Can she kill seven giants at one time?
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Hmm.. I'm beginning to think El Gato is really a wizard in disguise...
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Bish - not in a contemporary setting, she can't! That's a hate crime against tall people. But this is the kind of suggestion that might seem viable to El Gato and not to Jackie.
ReplyDeleteNutschell - you may be right. Whether El Gato needs any kind of explanation depends on the story's tone. Sometimes a magical animal is just there; sometimes his identity lies at the heart of everything.