Aven warms to Stagecoach Pass and helps organize an art festival to attract more visitors. They discover clues to the missing family that indicate a connection to Aven herself, including an old photograph that looks like Aven, but with arms. Together with Zion, a boy who is also isolated at school because of his obesity, the friends investigate the mystery of the Cavanaughs, the strangely absent owners of Stagecoach Pass. He thinks he is a freak and believes that his disorder caused his parents’ fighting and divorce. Unlike Aven, Connor has a more negative attitude about his life. Together, they attend a Tourette support group where they meet other kids who have different manifestations of the syndrome. Connor and Aven accept each other’s differences, becoming firm friends. He gets stared at like Aven, and people make fun of him. His disorder causes Connor to “tic,” or make involuntary barking sounds and involuntary motions like shrugging and blinking. There, she meets Connor, a boy with Tourette Syndrome. After several depressing days of eating in a bathroom stall, Aven skips lunch and visits the library. Aven navigates classes with aplomb but is too self-conscious to eat lunch in the cafeteria. The students at Desert Ridge Middle School are unwelcoming, and Aven endures lots of stares. Stagecoach Pass is filled with eccentric characters, like Henry, the old soda jerk with dementia Josephine, the eighty-year-old cook Bob, the grumpy gold mine attendant and Spaghetti, the llama with a tumor on his head. Aven leaves behind her friends and comfort zone. Throughout her upbeat narration, Aven blogs lightheartedly about her lack of arms.Įverything changes for Aven when her dad accepts a job as manager of Stagecoach Pass, a run-down theme park in Arizona. Aven has a puckish sense of humor and enjoys pranking people and making up wild stories about how she lost her arms. At school, Aven has many friends and is a star soccer player. She uses her feet and toes as skillfully as people with arms use their hands. Thanks to their loving support and their insistence that Aven learn to do everything for herself, Aven is independent and proud of it.

When her mom and dad saw Aven’s picture on an adoption website, they knew immediately that Aven was their daughter.

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus is followed by Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus (2019), and a forthcoming chapter book series beginning with Aven Green Sleuthing Machine (expected 2021).Īdopted at age two, Aven Green has lived most of her life in Kansas with her adoptive parents. The novel was chosen as a Junior Library Guild selection and appeared on the 2018 Library of Congress 52 Great Reads list.

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus received starred reviews from School Library Journal and Booklist.

Life of a cactus