45 pages • 1 hour read
Hummingbird
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Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Fragile as a Falling Star”
Hummingbird takes place in Wildwood, Tennessee. Olive Martin, an 11-year-old girl with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI or “brittle bone disease”) arrives at church with her Uncle Dash. Uncle Dash is experiencing one of his “flutters,” episodes of unease that he claims signify change. Olive hopes it signals a change in her life: Homeschooled due to her condition, she longs to attend Macklemore Middle School and find a friend. At church, a woman prevents her young son from hugging Olive because she “is as fragile as a falling star” (10). Olive reflects on the true reason why she wants to attend Macklemore: She wants to prove she is more than her brittle bones. She prays that God will let her attend Macklemore and feels something wonderful is about to begin.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Like a Skateboard with a Seat”
Another woman approaches Olive at church and loudly prays for God to “HEAL this little girl of the TERRIBLE disease that’s left her stuck in this CHAIR” (16), making Olive uncomfortable. She does not view her wheelchair—and by extension, her disability—as a “disease”; she sees her wheelchair as a mobility aid, a “skateboard with a seat” (15). As Mama whisks her out of church, Olive vows to show everyone that she is more than her bones.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Candy Bones”
In a free verse poem, Olive explains OI. Because of it, her bones break easily; even a hug with too much pressure can crack her ribs. To her, though “osteogenesis imperfecta” sounds like a spell, OI is more of a curse, because it causes everyone to see her as fragile.
Chapter 4 Summary: “The First Feathers Falling”
After church, Mama reminds Olive that there is nothing wrong with her; although she prays for Olive’s pain to be taken away, she has never wished for her to have “normal” bones. Olive argues that attending Macklemore would help others see her as more than her bones, but Mama is hesitant because a school environment increases the risk of breaks. Meanwhile, white feathers fall from the sky as if they were snow, indicating the magical hummingbird is coming.
Chapter 5 Summary: “My Pelican and Me”
Olive and Mama return to their cottage in Piney Woods, where they live with Mama’s second husband, Coach Malone, and his son Hatch. Grandpa Goad, Olive’s grandfather and the most famous birder in Tennessee, and Uncle Dash live next door. Olive’s father, Jupiter, is a spiritual man who lives in a yurt (a round tent or cabin) behind Olive and Mama’s house. Although Olive’s parents divorced when she was a baby, they have maintained a friendly relationship. Olive loses herself in her passion for writing as she composes a sermon arguing to attend Macklemore. When she finishes, she remembers bird-watching with Grandpa Goad; in one memory, he told her that she would accomplish great things.
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Best Magic Words”
Olive’s family gathers for their Sunday spaghetti lunch. Olive’s stepbrother, Hatch, is a star student who largely ignores her, despite her attempts to connect. He wears the same blue hoodie every day, the sleeves of which are frayed from him rubbing the edges, and always reads the same comic—The Adventures of Marvelo the Great and His Fine Dog, Hank. Over lunch, Olive gives her sermon, and after much debate and Hatch’s reluctant agreement to watch out for her at Macklemore, Mama and Jupiter agree to let her attend. Throughout the conversation, Hatch seems afraid of the possibility of her attending Macklemore. She wonders if he is embarrassed by the possibility of being seen with her. The hummingbird’s white feathers fall once more.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
Olive’s first-person perspective establishes her as the protagonist of Hummingbird. Her voice is upbeat, and her wonder at her surroundings reinforces the novel’s magical realism: “April had barely started, but summer was already close enough to send love notes across the mountain with its warm winds and scatters of wildflowers” (2). This personification of summer creates a subtly magical atmosphere, later reinforced by the titular hummingbird’s falling feathers. In keeping with magical realism, the novel’s setting of Wildwood, Tennessee conforms to conventional reality while incorporating magical elements like the feathers. While the hummingbird and its white feathers are treated as wondrous, they aren’t questioned by characters, indicating they are an accepted reality.
Hatch’s introduction via Olive’s first-person perspective creates some expectations surrounding his character that his on-page introduction in Chapter 6 rebuffs. Before Hatch is introduced on-page, Olive refers to him as “annoyingly perfect,” creating expectations that Hatch’s indifference toward Olive is due to his own attitude. However, Olive’s descriptions of Hatch’s “weird habits” in Chapter 6 suggest something deeper:
Hatch always wears the same blue hoodie, the one with bleach-freckles around the collar from the washing machine. It’s faded and frayed at the cuffs. I’m pretty sure the frays exist because he’s always rubbing the fabric between his fingers and thumbs. And he usually does this while reading the same tattered comic book: The Adventures of Marvelo the Great and His Fine Dog, Hank (39).
Hatch’s rigid habits suggest that he uses his behaviors as coping mechanisms. Although Olive perceives her stepbrother as the “perfect” kid he professes to be, readers can infer from Hatch’s description that he is struggling beneath the surface. This primes Hatch for his character development and establishes the idea that even seemingly perfect people hide their own fragile places, an idea central to developing the Fragility, Vulnerability, and Strength theme.
Olive’s parents and other family members frame Friends and Family as the Most Important Magic, as their accommodation of her osteogenesis imperfecta and support of her dream to attend Macklemore Middle School are what make her so confident. Mama’s eyes in particular are “fully kind” and “starry-focused” on Olive, qualities Olive hopes to mirror (23). Later, Olive says “Mama loves it when I affirm my toughness and smartness” (34), suggesting Mama lauds strength of character over physical strength.
Natalie Lloyd introduces free verse in Chapter 1, a poetic device meant to create a connection with Olive. The verse sections evoke the novel-in-verse genre, popular among middle-grade and young adult readers for exploring heavy topics and emotions. Lloyd employs this device for the first time at the end of Chapter 1 when Olive reflects on a churchgoer’s comment on her fragility; meanwhile, Chapter 3 is written entirely in verse. Both sections offer “breaks” from the exterior to focus on Olive’s interior, with free verse allowing for greater freedom of thought. Because the novel is driven by her experiences and explores what Existing with Limitations means, the verse sections offer direct insights that build reader understanding.
Chapter 1 also introduces change as a motif, while Chapter 4 builds on it by introducing the hummingbird’s falling feathers as a symbol of change. The novel opens on a tense note as Uncle Dash declares “change is on the wind” (3), and Chapter 4 validates his prediction with white feathers. The feathers return at the end of Chapter 6 for a similar purpose: Following Mama and Jupiter’s approval of Olive’s request to attend school, the feathers suggest the auspiciousness of their decision and the transformation it will bring Olive. Her description of the feathers as “sparkly and icy-white, delicate as butterfly bones on the glass” likens them to her bones (52). This simile (“delicate as butterfly bones”) claims there is beauty in fragility, furthering the theme of Fragility, Vulnerability, and Strength.
Overall, the feathers herald the coming of the hummingbird—and with it, change and growth. The hummingbird is the most important symbol in the novel, and while Olive has yet to learn of it, its mention at the end of Chapter 4 creates anticipation and foreshadows its significance: “Change was on the wind, and it was bigger than any of us knew. Because the hummingbird was coming” (31).
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