Skellig door David Almond

The 10 year old Michael just moved with his family into a new house which is quite old and renovation is therefore needed.  He and his parents are anxious as his baby sister is born prematurely and suffers from a heart disease. Every time he sees or holds her, he realizes that she’s special.  It doesn’t take long before they get a special bond. He feels her heart beating next to his and her breathing in his ears, even when they’re miles apart.  Due to all the stress, Michael’s father decides that Michael doesn’t have to go to school but to make himself useful he’ll be cleaning the garage next to their house. When Michael goes into the garage, amid all the boxes, debris and dead insects he finds a homeless strange emaciated man. The man is pale, stinks and cantankerous but Michael decides to help him by bringing his favorite Chinese food number 27 and 53, brown ale, aspirin, some drinks and keeping him company once at a time. He soon discovers that the man has two projections at the place where his shoulder blades should be. He assumes it’s nothing serious but the thoughts that they might be wings kept floating through his head.  Not long after he meets a girl named Mina from across the road. He tells her about his sister, the man in the garage, everything.  Over the course of the story they become very close friends while his friends at school become more and more distant. Mina is home schooled and is interested in nature, birds, drawing and poems by William Blake to which her parents introduced her. She takes care of some baby birds who live in her garden and teaches Michael to hear their tiny sounds.  When Michael was in the hospital, where his sister is being treated, he went to another department asking about “arthritis” (what the man in the garage might had) and how to cure it, talking to doctors and patients in the hospital they find some good resources for this disease. The man who Michael had moved from the garage, revealing a pair of wings at his shoulders, now introduced himself as "Skellig" to Michael and Mina.  When Michaels sister debilitates and slightly getting closer to death, the docters decide that she’ll need a heart surgery. Michael’s mother stays in the hospital that night with the baby and she dreams or sees Skellig coming in, picking the baby up and holding her high in the air, saving Michael's little sister. He subsequently moves on from the garage after saying goodbye to Michael and Mina, answering their questions about his nature by saying that he is 'something', combining aspects of human, bird, beast and angel. Michael’s sister now seem to make it and Skellig disappeared flying away but he first let Michael and mina know what he was, he was 'something' like an angel..