Fleabrain Loves Franny

Spider Charlotte's web dedicated to her Wilbur, her pig friend.

Fleabrain Loves Franny is a book wrote by Joanne Rocklin, it's about a girl named Franny Katzenback who lives in Pittsburgh and has Polio, in 1952. She starts receiving notes from a flea that lives in Alf's tail (Alf is Franny's dog) named Fleabrain, he is like her Charlotte from Charlotte's Web (Franny's favorite book). Franny returned to her house after being in treatment for her illness and when she finally meets Fleabrain, they go on  marvelous adventures together. Nurse Olivegarten was Franny's nurse who was sure that her treatment will make Franny walk again and get rid of her wheelchair but Franny thinks that the treatment is painful and she doesn't like to do it. The first adventure Franny and Fleabrain had was when Fleabrain took Franny in a magical horse ride because Franny had never tried a ride in a horse before, and she couldn't try it now because of Polio but Fleabrain used his FB Saliva #1 to make Franny able to ride a horse in the middle of a night through the sky. Nurse Olivegarten always wanted Franny to show everyone her progress but franny wasn't comfortable with that, at least not under that kind of pressure, but she did insist her sister Min to let her walk a bit, even though she couldn't do it.

"Franny's heart ached. Loneliness hurt." (Rocklin 77)

 The previous quote shows a moment when Franny is feeling sad. 'Loneliness hurt', that's what Franny felt, loneliness, before she had Polio she had many friends, and they played with her outside and they were kind. Everything changed when she went back home, they didn't played with her anymore, she couldn't play the things they played, she was in a wheelchair now and she was far from walking and running. Some of her old friends said that she was contagious so if they touched her, they would have Polio too. Fleabrain wanted to end that loneliness and that's why he used magic to make Franny happy, but he didn't realized that that's not the only thing she needed to reencounter the joy in her life. Franny also felt bad because of her sister, who had always been the "saint" one, but Franny knew that she was no saint and that she was just pretending to be good to Franny because she was sick. But later she discovers that Min really cared about her and although she wasn't saint she still cared a lot about her younger sister. Sister Ed, she was what Franny missed the most from the Children's Hospital. She was a kind nurse that motivated Franny and she helped her through hard times during her recovery, it was hard for both them having to say goodbye after such memorable days at the hospital. Now, Franny's motivation was Fleabrain, he was her friend and he was the one who will help her cure.

"She'd wiggled one left toe, but in real life! She was looking right at it, wiggling away. Her toe bobbed above the water, then under, then up again, like a dancing toe-fish. Or a puppet. And she, Franny, was the puppeteer!" (Rocklin 79)

Yay! Franny moved all by herself, just a toe, but something is better than nothing. This event happened when Franny was in the bathtub and she was taking a normal bath with the help of her nurse until she got a call and left Franny in the water. She started to imagine how would it be if she could actually move her legs by herself without braces and without supporters. She tried calling Nurse Olivegarten but she couldn't hear over her phone call. This was a moment that brought hope to Franny. Hope that she would finally be able to walk, run and play just like old times, when nobody thought she was contagious and her friends played with her. This was hope that one day soon, she would be a normal girl. A toe, such a little part of our body, and yet, moving it means a lot. "Enjoy the little things in life for one day you'll look back and realize they were big things" (Unknown), moving a toe may sound insignificance to the majority of us, but what we don't realize is that when you lose the ability to control your body, moving a toe, that insignificant toe, will be the best thing ever because you are controlling it, you are moving it with your brain, the same brain that couldn't move anything before, it moved a toe, your toe. Imagine how joyful Franny was when this happened, she will appreciate this moment forever, it was the start of something big, it was the start of recovery.

I can't wait to keep reading! I really want Franny to be able to play again and go back to her school, I hope that she recovers soon. Fleabrain has been a great friend to Franny and she has really gotten better since she met him, but he really needs to see that Franny doesn't need fantasies, she needs her old reality back. I think that Franny is soon going to be able to do the things she did before and I think that Fleabrain will still be her friend but they won't spend as much time together anymore because Franny will have other things to do now that she is back to normal. I think that her friends who treated her badly will apologize to her, but that isn't so easy to forgive, specially when it was about something as serious as Polio. But Franny is a good friend so she will forgive them and they will go back to what was like before and now everyone will appreciate what they have. But, I can't fill my head with expectations about what's going to happen, the only way of knowing for sure what comes next is to keep reading the book until I'm done with it.