Elvis Babbitt

Elvis Babbitt is a precocious twelve-year-old living in Freedom, Alabama. She narrates the novel in first person. The novel documents her grieving process following the death of her mother, who drowned six months after Elvis’s tenth birthday. Elvis has a scientifically oriented mind. She likes to learn facts, and she has a good memory to store them. Recalling how her mother burned her birthday cake six months before she drowned, Elvis shares, “Romans thought owls were evil, that they drank the blood of babies… they would have called the burnt cake a bad omen” (4). No matter the situation, Elvis has a fact or experience stored to inform her thinking and reaction.

The topic that Elvis knows the most about is animals. She spends hours watching the Animal Network. When she gets a volunteer position at the local zoo to help keep her busy after her mother...