Character Spotlight: Flora

By Chloe Grant, Read to Them staff

Hey everyone! Welcome to your reading of Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo with Read to Them. We can’t wait for you to dive into these unforgettable adventures, and to get to know this endearing cast of characters. To kick us off we’ll help you get to know our main character, Flora, a little bit better.

Flora

Name: Flora Buckman

Age: 10 years old

Friends and Family: Flora lives with her mother, Phyllis. Her parents are divorced but she visits her father, George, frequently. Throughout the course of the story she’ll develop relationships with both of her parents, neighbors, including Tootie, Dr. Meescham, and the not so friendly apartment cat Klaus. She’ll also get to know a new addition to the neighborhood, William Spiver. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the unassuming squirrel who drives our story is Flora’s good friend, Ulysses.

Personality: Flora is a natural-born cynic. To be specific she’s “a natural-born cynic who lives in defiance of contracts!” (pp. 6) She doesn’t hope, just observes, and lives life with a very realistic point of view. It could even be argued that she is a ‘glass half empty’ sort of person.

Likes: Flora loves comics, and this is something her and her father bonded over. She’s read every issue of The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! And the bonus comic Terrible Things Can Happen to You! that comes with it. She even brings the speech bubbles and magic of these comic strips into her own internal dialogue.

Dislikes: Flora hates romance, which ironically is the genre of novel her mother writes. She also hates her mother’s most prized possession, Mary Ann, a shepherdess lamp.

Notable Quote: “Holy Bagumba.”

We hope we’ve been able to provide you with a proper introduction to Flora without giving too much away! We’ll leave you now so you can dive into the pages of Flora & Ulysses and our other digital resources to get to know this story more. Be sure to check out our next post featuring an interview with the author, Kate DiCamillo, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for more content. Happy reading!