Description: Katerina has a problem with S's. A s-stuttering problem. And now that she's in seventh grade, at a new school, she's become self-conscious about it -- so self-conscious she hardly speaks to her classmates. Which confirms their opinion that she's stuck-up. For Katerina's last name is Farnsworth, and in her part of Connecticut, Farnsworth means Farnsworth Aeronautics, the major aircraft manufacturer, founded by her grandfather.

But if school life is miserable for Katerina, after-school life is the opposite -- at least on the days when she gets to go bird-watching with her father. Heaven, for her, is sitting with him in a rowboat in the wetlands off Farnsworth Bay. Of all the wonderful shore-birds indigenous to the wetlands, their particular favorite is one that isn't in any of the bird books. In fact, Katerina names the species herself: s-silent s-spillbill. But these small birds, with their drab brown feathers and remarkable aerial acrobatics, aren't everyone's favorite. When they're implicated in the crash of a Farnsworth jet prototype, Katerina's fearful grandfather develops an intense grudge against them. And when they're implicated in a second crash, his animosity hardens into a desire to destroy them.

By turns dramatic and funny, The Silent Spillbills is the story of these odd little birds and the girl who learns, in facing up to their enemies, to face up to her own fears.

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