Anne Louise MacDonald
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Seeing Red
Kids Can Press, 2009
Read Chapter One

Frankie Uccello seems like just another fourteen-year-old boy — Ace of Average, King of Common, Master of Middle. Everything he does has a tendency to turn out average. Even when Frankie dreams recurrently of flying, his father tells him that at least one in three people does this. He’s perfectly normal, normal, normal.

Or is he? When Frankie discovers something ominous about his dreams — that he can dream the future, especially when something bad is about to happen — he realizes that he might be talented, after all. But seeing the future was only cool in movies and TV. In real life, you’re just a whacko.

Besides, the future doesn’t look good. One night Frankie dreams his best friend, Tim, falls from a horse. Is Tim going to be killed? Can Frankie save him? Something about the dream doesn’t fit, and that something is Weird Maura-Lee, one of three people Frankie avoids like the plague. Maura-Lee can read minds, and she seems to be reading his.


"Evocatively written ... deftly mixes a touch of the
supernatural into a realistic narrative.”
                              — Kirkus Reviews, February, 2009
[Click here to read more reviews and comments]


The 'seed' of the story: When I was young, the most beautiful and mesmerizing things were horses galloping and birds soaring. In my favorite dreams I could fly. I learned a lot about birds and when I was given an injured storm petrel in 1987, I struggled for 2 weeks to find the right food for it and to bring it back to health. What happened to that bird made a huge impression on me and in 1989 I wrote it into a short story called The Wind's Gift. In 2002 I tried to make it into a novel but ended up writing The Ghost Horse of Meadow Green instead. That was supposed to be an easier book ... yeah ...right. I finally got back to work on the original project, now called Seeing Red, in 2006. Two years to write and 6 months to edit and finally it is here for you to enjoy ... thanks to a small damaged grey bird.




Seeing Red has been published in English, Norweigan and Swedish.

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