by Patricia Garfield (Author)
Delfine the Dream Girl is the story of an eleven-year-old super-heroine discovering her power and learning to harness it. As she falls asleep, Delfine undergoes a transformation: her straight hair turns curly. This "curl power" lifts Delfine out of bed and sends her flying through the open window to land in the midst of a child's nightmare. Inside the nightmare Delfine helps dreamers save themselves using secret techniques she learns from the journals written by her missing parents. Her mother, an anthropologist, and her father, an archeologist, have disappeared on a "dig." Delfine is trying to rescue them. Delfine's quests take her inside typical dreams of sleepers in different countries, cultures, and times (a kind of Tin-Tin meets The Magic Tree House and The Wizard of Oz). Delfine reveals how young readers become creative dreamers: she presents useful methods for coping with dark dreams; she shows how to use dream imagery for creative projects (art, poetry, songs).