58 pages • 1 hour read
Erin Entrada KellyHello, Universe
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Grand Failure”
Virgil Salinas is an eleven-year-old boy who’s just finished sixth grade. He’s the only shy member of his boisterous Filipino family. Virgil describes his family this way: “Big personalities that bubbled over like pots of soup. Virgil felt like unbuttered toast standing next to them” (4). His parents and twin brothers, Joselito and Julius, all call him Turtle because he won’t come out of his shell.
Virgil’s only confidante is his grandmother, Lola, who secretly confesses that he’s her favorite. One day, she tells him about her recurring dream of the Stone Boy. A shy and lonely boy, much like Virgil, walks into the forest and begs a large stone to eat him. It does, and he’s never seen again.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Valencia”
A hearing-impaired eleven-year-old girl named Valencia is having trouble falling asleep. She isn’t afraid of the dark but has a recurring nightmare. She is standing on a hillside with a crowd of people watching a solar eclipse. After it ends, all the other people have vanished except her. Once she awakens, Valencia says, “I make a promise to myself: if I have another nightmare tonight, I’ll talk to someone and ask for help. I don’t know who. But someone” (14).
Chapter 3 Summary: “Help of a Different Nature”
The following morning, as Virgil feeds his guinea pig, Gulliver, he contemplates what he calls his Grand Failure. He needs help and texts a girl named Kaori for advice. She tells him to come to her house at noon. At breakfast, Virgil notices that his fingers are long and slender, unlike those of his brothers. Lola says that Virgil has the hands of a pianist and that he should take lessons. Virgil’s father says boys need sports, not music.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Bells of the Buddhist Monastery”
Kaori is a twelve-year-old Japanese American girl who runs a side business as a psychic advisor to kids in the neighborhood. Despite her mundane family background, Kaori tells everyone that her parents were born in a samurai village in the mountains: “Kaori knew in her bones that they were meant to be born in the mountains […] How else could she explain her powers of second sight, which could only come from someplace magical?” (26-27). After receiving Virgil’s early-morning text for an appointment, Kaori wakens her seven-year-old sister, Gen, to prepare the spirit chamber for their client.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Turtle”
As Virgil gets ready to go to Kaori’s house, he thinks about Gulliver. He’s just learned that guinea pigs are social animals and shouldn’t live alone. Feeling guilty, he puts Gulliver in his backpack to take him along for the day. He tries to sneak out of the house unnoticed, but his mother asks where he’s going. When she calls him Turtle, Virgil thinks, “It was like when Chet Bullens at school called him a retard. He knew his parents weren’t like Chet Bullens, but he also knew that they were poking fun at his shyness” (33).
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Tiger of Elm Street”
When Virgil leaves the house, he doesn’t go straight to Kaori’s because her house lies in the path of the school bully, Chet Bullens. Chet is a burly, mean child: “Virgil didn’t think of him as the Bull just because Chet’s last name was Bullens. The kid really was like a bull. Always ready to charge” (36). Despite his best efforts to avoid Chet, Chet discovers Virgil anyway. He follows Virgil and taunts him. Virgil doesn’t make eye contact or respond. Instead of chasing him, Bull just laughs and lets him go on his way.
Chapter 7 Summary: “A Peculiar Future”
At Kaori’s house, Virgil is led to the spirit room where incense is burning. Virgil notes, “Other than her bed and rug, there was a table for incense, an enormous, complicated poster of constellations tacked to one of the walls, and books shoved in corners” (41).
Kaori holds a bag of stones and asks Virgil to pick one at random. She interprets the rock to mean that Virgil will find himself in a dark place. Virgil is concerned at this prediction because he fears darkness. Kaori can’t be more specific, so Virgil asks her about another problem he’s having—his Grand Failure. He wants to let a girl at school know he likes her but can’t figure out the best way to go about it. He refuses to give Kaori her name, but she’s a Scorpio and her initials are V.S.
Since these are the same as Virgil’s initials, Kaori immediately declares that they are destined to meet. She agrees to help Virgil make contact if he can bring her five stones of various sizes on Saturday. Kaori also asks him to take her business card and post it at the grocery store because her own parents won’t let her advertise her psychic services publicly.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Drama in the Freezer Aisle”
On Friday, Virgil accompanies Lola to the Super Saver market. As he’s thinking about the crush that he has on a girl in his class named Valencia, Virgil sees her walking with her mother down the freezer aisle toward him. Ducking behind his grandmother, Virgil tries to work up the courage to say hello. Valencia turns away without seeing him. Virgil is about to follow, only to see Chet and his father coming his way. Virgil thinks, “It was as if there was a Boyd Middle School reunion at the Super Saver. The two people who ruled most of his thoughts were under this one industrial roof, right alongside two-for-one soda and bargain mangoes” (59).
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
In the initial segment, we see the world primarily from Virgil’s point of view, which is a bleak one. Communication problems, and resultant isolation and loneliness, are foregrounded immediately in a variety of contexts. Virgil can’t talk to his family because they don’t seem to understand him and affectionately mock his subdued nature. Virgil condemns himself for not being as effusive as the rest of his relatives but condemns himself even more for his inability to speak to a girl he admires. He refers to this weakness as his Grand Failure. As an eleven year old boy, he sees his future in developing the ability to reach out to people, girls in particular. Virgil’s quietness in school draws the unfortunate attention of Chet, who calls him “retardo.” Virgil’s inability to communicate not only isolates him but renders him unable to defend himself against attack from bullies.
To a lesser extent, communication challenges are introduced in Valencia’s chapter. While she is isolated in the narrative due to her disability, she is the only character in the book whose story is told using first-person. As a result, the reader develops an intimate understanding of what it feels like to be deaf and the sort of challenges that state entails, and in this way her character engenders a closeness with the reader in a way Virgil’s, told in third-person, cannot.
Aside from communication, the first segment keys heavily on the use of folk tales and dreams. Lola regales Virgil with a number of stories from the Philippines, most of which he finds alarming because they involve children being eaten by crocodiles. These seems to be warnings for Virgil that he will need to learn to reach out to people or risk existential harm. However, Lola also presents her recurring dream about a Stone Boy, which will have some bearing on Virgil’s future. Valencia, too, introduces her recurring dream of the solar eclipse, introducing the idea of darkness in her chapter and connecting it to Virgil’s fear of the dark in Chapter 7. She can’t figure out the meaning of the dream but resolves to consult with somebody who can. The dream will impel her to seek out Kaori in a later segment.
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