A person who expects the worst from people and doubts that good things or happy endings are real

📝 Ever the cynic, he was sure the surprise party was just a trick to make him tidy up.

📖 Flora Belle Buckman proudly calls herself a cynic — she expects disappointment and has decided that hoping for good things is foolish.

To bring someone back to life or consciousness

📝 The lifeguard worked quickly to revive the swimmer who had stopped breathing.

📖 When the vacuum spits out the half-dead squirrel, Flora kneels down and manages to revive him — against all her cynical expectations.

So remarkable that it seems like a miracle; almost impossible to believe

📝 Her recovery was so swift that the doctors called it miraculous.

📖 The squirrel's survival is the first miraculous event in a story full of them — an ordinary creature pulled back from death and changed forever.

Very thin and bony; underfed-looking

📝 The scrawny stray cat looked as though it had not eaten in days.

📖 Half-bald and scrawny after his trip through the vacuum, the squirrel looks nothing like the hero he is about to become.

Without firmness or strength; drooping and floppy

📝 The flowers had gone limp in the heat, drooping over the edge of the vase.

📖 At first the squirrel hangs limp in Flora's hands, and she fears she has found him too late.

To spread out loosely; to lie stretched out with arms and legs flung wide

📝 After the race, the runners sprawled across the grass to catch their breath.

📖 The little squirrel lies sprawled on the lawn where the vacuum dropped him, utterly still.

Done in a hesitant, uncertain way; not yet confident

📝 She took a tentative step onto the icy path, unsure it would hold her weight.

📖 Ulysses's first movements are tentative — a weak twitch, a shaky lift of the head — before his astonishing new strength reveals itself.

Wildly unreasonable or silly; ridiculous

📝 The idea of a cat flying an aeroplane is completely absurd.

📖 To a cynic like Flora, the notion of a superhero squirrel is absurd — and yet the absurd is exactly what is unfolding before her eyes.

Completely unaware of what is happening around you

📝 Lost in her book, she was oblivious to the bell ringing for break.

📖 Mrs. Tickham is at first oblivious to what her runaway vacuum has done, while Flora alone senses that something extraordinary has occurred.

Soaked and soft; unpleasantly wet

📝 By the time we got home, our shoes were soggy from the puddles.

📖 Dazed and soggy from the vacuum's insides, the squirrel hardly seems capable of the marvels he will soon perform.

Shocked into stillness; dazed and unable to react

📝 She stood stunned for a moment after hearing the surprising news.

📖 The squirrel is stunned and still when Flora reaches him, knocked senseless by his violent ride through the machine.

Very unusual or remarkable; far beyond the ordinary

📝 The young pianist had an extraordinary talent for someone her age.

📖 What begins as an ordinary squirrel becomes something extraordinary — strong enough to lift a vacuum cleaner clean over his head.

A person who is present at an event but does not take part in it

📝 A quick-thinking bystander called for help when the cyclist fell.

📖 Flora refuses to be a mere bystander — rather than watch the squirrel die, she rushes in to save him.

A small, unsteady movement or light that comes and goes

📝 A flicker of candlelight danced on the wall.

📖 A faint flicker of life in the squirrel's eyes is the first sign that Flora's rescue has worked.

To surprise someone very greatly; to amaze

📝 The magician's final trick astonished the entire audience.

📖 The revived squirrel astonishes Flora by lifting the heavy vacuum cleaner off the ground — the first proof of his new superpowers.