The Science of Breakable Things by Tae Keller

The Science of Breakable Things by Tae Keller is a magnificent book about a girl named Natalie Napoli. Natalie’s mom, a biologist, suffers from depression and Natalie is doing everything she can to try and bring her back from her hole of despair. When Mr. Neely, her science teacher, suggests that she enter an egg drop competition, she is hesitant to accept. However, when she sees the prize money she realizes that she might be able to take her mom to see the magical Cobalt Blue Orchids that survived toxic pollution and revive her from her sad, deep, slumber she agrees and teams up with her two friends, Dari, a genius, and Twig, her best friend.

When Natalie’s grandma visits them her mom comes out for a short period of time and seems to be herself for a few hours, laughing and talking, however, when her grandma leaves, she retreats back into her shell. This makes Natalie especially mad because she feels like her mom doesn’t love her anymore. However, it also empowers her to win the egg drop competition because of her desperation and love for her mom.

Natalie spends days with Dari and Twig designing and tweaking the egg until they come up with a strategy that they deem the S’megg. Made of marshmallows, sticks, and graham crackers they test and test until they think they’ve got the perfect model.

If this should fail, they have another plan. They will sneak away and break into her mom’s laboratory to find the seeds for the Cobalt Blue Orchid and take it back to her mother and hope that it can snap her back from her illness.

One reason I liked this book was that almost everything Natalie did, including herself was a metaphor for somehting in life. The eggs symbolized her mom, who Natalie thought was breakable and fragile because of her depression. Along with that, the Cobalt Blue Orchid signified Natalie and hope, pushing through her sadness to help rescue her mom from her deep well of sadness.