Make Lemonade July 15, 2009

By Virginia Euwer Wolff. Henry Holt and Company. 1993. 200p.

 Written in verse, the chapters of this spare and unassumingly honest story are numbered like sonnets and divided into parts, each marked by a baby’s dirty hand print.  These dirty hand prints represent more than just LaVaughn’s babysitting job for a single mother with two children, they also are a subtle clue to the underlying humanity of the story.  LaVaughn learns early on from her mother that she’s going to get out of the neighborhood that requires her mother to head the WATCH committee and that made her father the victim of a drive by shooting by going to COLLEGE.  She knows that she needs to keep up with her schoolwork but she also needs a way to make a little extra money.  She finds Jolly’s ad in the school office and soon falls into a routine of watching her two children, Jilly and Jeremy despite the squalor she finds them in. 

 Jolly is seventeen, working a factory job with no high school diploma and barely keeping a roof over the heads of her two children.  When she gets fired from her job for ratting on her boss (Mr. Fingers as LaVaughn calls him) after he molests her in a closet, she can’t afford to pay LaVaughn to sit for her anymore.  LaVaughn has developed a relationship with Jeremy especially, potty training him, helping him plant Lemon seeds and to shop for new shoes.  LaVaughn’s mother is not interested in hearing Jolly’s troubles, only that she seems to be taking advantage of LaVaughn’s kindness.  LaVaughn comes up with a plan to get Jolly in to the Moms Up program at her school where they help teenage mothers get their education so that they can get better jobs.  Jolly is resistant at first because she is opposed to anything that sounds like Welfare, afraid that the state will take away her children.  She eventually agrees and the program agrees to pay LaVaughn for one hour a day to help give Jolly time to do her school work.

Through the course of their relationship LaVaughn and Jolly learn things about each other amidst the dried food on the floor, the worry over the diapers running out and the constant parade of cockroaches.  Jolly used to have a Gram, as she called her who took care of her and other foster children, but when she died, she moved to the street and lived in a cardboard box.  There she used drugs that got her pregnant as she explains because it let guys do whatever they wanted.  LaVaughn tells Jolly about how her father managed to stay out of gangs his whole life only to be shot in a drive by in his own neighborhood.  Every time Jolly encounters an obstacle like having missed too many of her classes when Jeremy has the chicken pox she laments, “Well, nobody told me.”  She tells LaVaughn a story about how a group of boys tricked an blind mother after she drops an orange for her children by giving her a lemon.  She feels bad that she allowed herself to be tricked, but eventually makes lemonade, giving Jolly hope about her lot in life and also the book its title.

 Soon however, LaVaughn can’t quite describe how proud it makes her feel to see Jolly with her binder, doing her homework and taking swimming CPR classes with her baby Jilly.  She gets the feeling that even though someone on the outside wouldn’t think things looked any different, she can tell that beyond the grit on the floor or the dishes in the sink, there is some hope for Jolly.  One ordinary day, the baby, Jilly has been into everything, turning the stove on and making a mess.  Then Jolly turns around to find her choking on a toy spider.  Having learned CPR in her Moms Up class, she knows just what to do and begins frantically trying to help her baby.  She screams at LaVaughn to dial 911, and Jeremy himself presses the nine, having learned his numbers from LaVaughn.  LaVaughn is so proud of how Jolly didn’t give up on Jilly and ended up saving her life right there on that dirty apartment floor.  While they ride to the hospital, LaVaughn takes Jeremy to her house and her own mother tells him what a hero he is for helping to save his little sister.  Jolly keeps with her classes and soon doesn’t need LaVaughn to sit for her, but LaVaughn remembers her mother praising Jeremy and that his little lemon plant has started to grow.

 

This book is a gritty but gorgeous example of how not to loose a story in the words.  Wolff’s economy with words allows the veracity of Jolly’s situation to shine through and allows the reader to fully appreciate the lengths of LaVaughn’s kindness.  She uses simple words to tell a simple story about simple people, but her message is anything but simple.  She shows how hard it is sometimes to do the right thing without any hope of personal gain, but how an ordinary person can make an extraordinary difference in the life of anther.  Teens will instantly appreciate the author’s brevity and realism.  Appropriate for Junior through Senior High students, I would rate this novel in verse a 5Q and a 4P.  The format may be a hurdle for some, but a few pages into the book, a teen will find him/herself having forgotten that it looks more like a poem than a novel.  LaVaughn and Jolly’s story is one that will remain, like a tiny hand print, pressed on the heart of all who read it.

The Case of Madeleine Smith July 14, 2009

by Rick Geary. Comics Lit. 2006. Unpaginated.

Emile L’Anglier stumbles into his rented room one night to the surprise and worry of his landlady Mrs. Anne Jenkins.  He is violently ill for days and eventually dies.  This graphic novel traces the forbidden romance between working class nursery man, Emile and upper class Madeline Smith.  The design of the illustrated panels is black ink line drawings with horizontal hatching to show depth in the absence of color.  Set in the late nineteenth century, the art also shows period costumes of the couple in question and their surroundings in Glasgow, Scotland.

After depicting the arrest of Madeleine Smith, investigators having found the love letters between she and Emile, Geary offers a flash back to her privileged upbringing.  She was the oldest of five children and traveled to London in her adolescent years to a finishing school.  Upon returning a lady, she waited for a suitable marriage proposal attending social events like balls and parties.  Back-story on Emile is explained early on as well.   As their love affair Emile, having grown up in France, was also one of five children and the son of a successful seed merchant and nurseryman.  He moved around France, England and Scotland working in nurseries and beginning and “pursued intense and doomed romances” that often led him to contemplate ending his life to alleviate his broken heart.  Upon moving to Edinburgh, he dressed in the highest fashions and walked the streets hoping to meet beautiful ladies.

A chance encounter between these two and a subsequent introduction from a mutual friend began their affair of letters.  They wrote shyly at first and walked the streets respectably with her sister.  They then began to meet in secret in the garden at night, or for a cup of hot chocolate at the back kitchen door.  Letters between them get more personal and their written dialogue is identified in the angular artwork by caption boxes with cut off corners.  They consummate their love and Madeleine signs her love letters to him as Mimi and as his wife.  Her family finds out and forbids her to see a man of such low birth in this inappropriate way.  For all their knowledge she breaks off the affair but soon begins again in secret while they accompany her to balls looking for a respectable suitor.

William Minoch soon becomes a regular visitor in the Smith household, even living on the floor above them in their prominent new house.  He courts Madeleine while she writes letters to Emile that become increasingly cool and ultimately write that their engagement must be broken off.  Emile begins to keep a diary and notes times that he and Madeleine meet during this period.  He also has increasing bouts of illness.  Emile is devastated and confides in his dear friend Miss Mary Perry that even if Madeleine was poisoning him, he would still love her.  During this time, Madeleine moves forward with her engagement to Minoch and makes several purchases of Arsenic, the very drug that chemists determined caused Emile’s death.  She writes in the merchant’s log book that the poison will be used for purposes like ridding her family’s summer home of vermin, killing rats in their city home and in a diluted form as a beauty treatment.

Madeleine stands trial with these arsenic purchases, their love letters, and Emile’s journal as evidence.  The latter is ultimately thrown out because of its unconfirmed origin.  The details of the trial soon become the topic of local newspapers and gossip.  Many people believed Madeleine’s innocence due to her status as a lady and her composure during her trial.  Others thought the very same details were evidence of her guilt.  Ultimately she is acquitted of the charges, though her fiance breaks off their engagement and her parents are disgraced.  She takes the name Lena and moves to London to live with her brother, Jack.  She soon meets George Wardel, a teacher from whom she is taking watercolor classes.  They marry, have two children and become active in London’s political and cultural avant garde scene.  After the abrupt and unexplained departure of her husband, Lena sails to New York to live with her son at the age of eighty.  There she attracts another suitor much younger than herself whom she marries and even outlives.  She dies in New York and is buried there under her shortened name and the name of her last husband: Lena Sheehy.

The tone of this graphic novel is done in a type of “who done it” masterpiece theater.  The crime is laid out, main players are revealed along with their histories and relationships to the suspect in question.  This narrative style is appealing despite the dry historical setting.  Geary makes an effort to infuse the story with both artistic and narrative elements of the time period that are less known.  For example, when Lena is part of the London socialist movement, she commits the outrage of doing away with her table cloth in favor of place mats.  According to Victorian tradition, all legs, even those of tables had to be covered.  Teens will find this true historical narrative more attractive than reading about this time period in a textbook.  It may also be an interesting companion to the history of law and how legal processes have developed since the time period in which this took place.  The book’s strengths would be as part of a lesson plan for either of these two subjects, but as a pleasure read, it may fall short due to the lack of color and the historical nature of the story.  For this reason a VOYA rating of 3Q and 2P is appropriate and it would be developmentally appropriate for all young adult grade levels.  The Case of Madeleine Smith is a unique artistic example of how to incorporate history into a graphic novel, and may be useful in bridging the gap for graphic novel readers to historical fiction and other novels.

How to Ruin a Summer Vacation July 12, 2009

by Simone Elkeles. Flux. 2006. 233p.

Amy Nelson doesn’t really have a father.  She has what she calls a Sperm Donor named Ron.  Ron, an Israeli ex-commando, and her mother mother had an affair in college, and, according to Amy never even considered trying to make it work.  Ron never fought to be in her life as a father figure and only came around once a year on birthdays.  She and her mother live in Chicago where Amy plans to spend the summer going to tennis camp and hanging out with her new boyfriend Mitch and BFF Jessica.  That is until the SD decides that because her Israeli grandmother is sick, Amy should spend the summer in Israel with him.  To her horror, her mother agrees.

Amy is a bit of a loud mouth who is proud that she speaks her mind, gives withering looks with attitude and is a wiz with make-up and clothes.  She lets Ron know right away that this war-zone trip idea is going to ruin her life and that he shouldn’t think, even for a second that she regards him as a father figure.  When the get to Israel, she is surprised to see the armed guards and also that the country is modern, the traffic jams look just like Chicago ones.  When she and the SD get to the Moshav to meet her family he admits that they don’t even know she exists.  She is sure that her trip is shaping up to be one of the most embarrassing and boring experiences of her life.  Her one solace is the instant connection she makes with her Safta, her grandmother.  Amy’s eyes are exactly like hers, and she gives quiet humorous advice that comforts Amy.  She also explains to her that even though she isn’t religious she is still Jewish.  Amy cherishes the tiny gold star of david necklace that her Safta gives her, hoping it will protect her and bring her luck.

The Israeli names sound foreign to her and she keeps calling her stand-offish girl cousin (whith whom she must share a room!) O’snot or Snotty instead of Osnat.  Other humorous adaptations include Moron for Maran, and Doo-Doo for David.  The only regular name belongs to a six foot tall brooding Abercrombie-esque model named Avi.  From the beginning he and Amy are like oil and water, every time they are together they pick a fight with each other.  Avi thinks she’s a "spoiled American bitch" and she thinks he’s an arrogant ass.  Even the densest of readers will see where this is going.

The younger crowd decides to embark on a camping trip to the south and Amy reluctantly agrees rather than looking foolish or scared.  The group pairs off and she suddenly finds herself in a kayak with Avi facing down rapids in the distance.  He gives her a tender lingering kiss which she describes in detail, characteristic for a teenage girl, but also a device Elkeles employs to satisfy her readers.  The relationship grows between Amy and Avi when she finds out his brother was killed in a bombing and encourages Avi to talk about it.  Having shared this earth shaking emotional connection they decide that they will try to keep their relationship just a summer fling though they both know it isn’t.  They make a pilgrimage to Mount Masada where two thousand years ago the Jews committed suicide rather than surrender to be the slaves of the Romans.  Amy begins to realize what her heritage as a Jew really means.

They return to find out that Tel Aviv has been bombed and that Ron and Amy’s uncle were there delivering sheep.  Amy panics, thinking she has lost her Aba before she can explain to him how much she’s grown to care about him over their stay in the Moshav.  Luckily he is alright, and they have a heart ot heart about why he hasn’t been involved in her life and how much he loves her.  Given the recent development that her mother has accepted a proposal from her dorky boyfriend Marc, Amy considers herself lucky to have reconciled with her real father and has hopes of living with him back in Chicago.

She and Avi part promising to keep in touch while she is back in America and he begins his mandatory stint in the Israeli army.  Amy ends up explaining Avi to her BFF and now ex-boyfriend who have coincidentally gotten together while Amy was away.  She begins learning Hebrew and taking assimilation classes at a temple while getting to know her dad better.  They are going back to Israel next summer where Avi will be on leave and she can’t wait to see him and all of the people she’s come to realize are her true family.

Amy’s character is one that is full of stereotypes.  She is a rich American with no appreciation for how other people in the world live and she is loud and impolite to boot.  It seems that if Elkeles were trying to help show teens that all nationalities have stereotypes and that many of them are untrue she would have given Amy at least a few positive characteristics.  She breaks down stereotypes about Israeli teens by conveniently writing a Palestinian friend for Avi, but leaves Amy underdeveloped.  She ultimately realizes how much she cares for her family, and even though her ability to “speak her mind” or be “passionate”  is is admired by Avi, she still sounds like an tantrum throwing snob.  While teens may identify with the terminology and phrases she uses, it would be surprisings if they weren’t offended by the protagonists behavior.  Some of the situations seem contrived, like they were written in to fill in a didactic point rather than as a necessary part of the narrative.  Teens should take the shot on the cover of the backside of a girl with her shoulders back with a perky tush in pink pants as a signal of what is to come.  VOYA rating for this fluff comes in at a 2Q and a 3P.  Junior, Middle and Senior High teens may enjoy this as an easy read, but anyone with depth, teenager or not will be irritated quickly with Amy’s selfish banter and feel a little cheated at the end when everything wraps up neatly in a big pink bow.

What I saw and How I Lied July 11, 2009

by Judy Blundell. Scholastic Press. 2008. 281p.

This novel, unlike others set around World War II, is about what happens after.  After the men get home, after the victory gardens are turned back into lawns, after you can have as much sugar in your coffee as you like, what are the things that really matter?  Evie Spooner and her mother Beverly managed on their own after her father left, that is until Joe Spooner swept them off their feet.  Bev and Joe married quickly and he shipped out leaving his new family to live with his grumpy mother, Gladys.  When he returned he purchased an appliance store, then another with what he told his family was GI Bill money.

One day, after a few mysterious phone calls from a fellow soldier, Joe announces that they’re going to take a holiday in Palm Beach, Florida.  Evie is excited about the possibility of a high style getaway with her fashionable mother and successful step father.  She’s desperate to be treated more like a grown up and she idolizes her mother for her beauty and charm.  Once in Palm Beach, they discover that most of the town is boarded up for the fall hurricane season.  Eventually they find one, Le Mirage, that is open for business and has a handful of guests.  There they meet Mr. and Mrs. Grayson, a stylish couple also from New York who are in the hotel business.  They and Evie’s parents become friendly, having cocktails, shopping together and discussing business ventures.  Joe and Mr. Grayson soon decide to go into business together and buy Le Mirage which is up for sale.

Soon after they begin moving  forward on this business deal, a call from Mr. Grayson’s mother confirms what the hotel manager has long suspected, they are Jewish.  They must not only leave the hotel, but the business deal is off.  Evie is outraged at this injustice and wonders what the war was for if the same type of predjudices still exist.  She begun to be distracted by the recent appearance of a handsome new guest, Peter Coleridge, who seems to know her stepfather.  Evie is soon head over heals for Peter and though he twenty three to her fifteen years, they steal an occasional moment together.  His presence seems to unsettle Joe who even punches him one night after too much scotch.  It isn’t until Peter tells Evie the real reason Joe was able to buy his appliance stores in New York that things begin to take a turn for the worse.  Peter explains that after the war he and Joe had taken gold and jewelry from a German warehouse and agreed to split it upon returning to the states.  Joe spent it instead, and Peter was just looking for his fair share.

Joe becomes increasingly suspicious of Peter and of his wife, all while Evie has stopped dressing like a child and started acting like an adult.  Joe decides that before they leave, they should all go fishing.  They rent a boat from the father of a boy that works at the hotel (and who has a crush on Evie) and sail out into an oncoming storm, promising to come in before it gets too bad.  They never return and the storm turns into a hurricane.  Evie seeks solace in the hotel boy and even kisses him for practice, and he takes it a little too far, ripping her skirt.  The entire hotel is soon evacuated and her family is missing.  After the storm, Bev and Joe return with the explanation that Peter was knocked in the head while trying to fix the boat’s engine and fell overboard. 

Evie is devastated, and despite Joe’s desire to get back to New York in a hurry, they are detained because of the suspicious circumstances surrounding Peter’s death.  They are forced to undergoe a legal inquiry in a trial-like setting where the situation is splashed about in the newspapaer and Grandma Gladys travels down with eight thousand dollars cash to hire them a lawyer.  As more of the story comes out, Evie begins to put the devastating pieces of the puzzle that point to Peter and her mother’s affair.  the hotel boy, Wally confirms that he saw the two of them kissing under a palm tree.  Joe’s statements make him look guilty and Evie has no idea what really happened out there, but decides to do everything in  her power to make it go away.  She testifies that it was she and Peter who were in love, not her mother and that it was she under the tree, dressed up in her mother’s dress, not her mother that Wally had seen.  These lies are enough to get her parents cleared and send them packing back to New York.

Once there she finds Mrs. Grayson and confesses that Joe’s money came not from the GI Bill, but from a warehouse of Jewish property.  She gives the eight thousand dollars to her and begs her to help others with it.  She knows she’ll be in trouble, but that her parents owe her too much already.  She vows never yearn to be exactly like her mother again, and never to lie.

Blundell’s story is one that many young people can identify with.  Evie wants to be treated like an adult, but she discovers that the adults in her life aren’t what they seem.  She learns that they aren’t glamorous, just adept at keeping up appearances.  Even the font face in this novel and the retro beauty on the cover work together to set the stage for this post WWII story.  Female readers will easily identify with Evie whether they are used to reading historical fiction or not.  Though the story isn’t astonishing or particularly exceptional, it is just simply a good read.  For that reason, a VOYA rating of 3Q and 3P is appropriate.  It’s age appeal is wide and probably best for Junior and Middle high grades, but will most likely be read exclusively by girls.  Evie is an “everywoman,” trying to grow up quickly only to discover that high heels and lipstick come at a high price.

Leaving Dirty Jersey a Crystal Meth Memoir July 9, 2009

by James Salant. Simon Spotlight Entertainment. 2007. 341p.

If the cover of an arm with the tattoo “Dirty Jersey” in Old English font splayed across what looks like a filthy bathroom floor is any indication, this memoir is not for the faint of heart.  James relates the story of his life, most specifically a year he spent in southern California getting high and try to convince everyone he met how tough he was.  Jimmy, as he calls himself in his memoir, came from a normal upper middle class household in Princeton, New Jersey.  His parents were well educated, affirming and supportive.  His older brother Joe was jealous of his intelligence and from an early age begain cruelly teasing Jimmy and getting into drugs.  Jimmy soon followed, was picked up for running from the cops, and sent to a rehab facility called GSL.

After meeting a few good friends in rehab, Jimmy gets out and stays in California rather than moving back to New Jersey or going on to a more extensive treatment facility.  He and his friend Wendy are soon back to using and meeting the junkie network of Riverside, CA.  Wendy gets sent to prison and Jimmy “takes care of her” while she’s there which impresses some of his ex-con connections, but consists mostly of him trying to send her packages, but either spending the money on drugs or getting distracted and forgetting.  He crashes at the houses of junkies and ex-cons, and finds a good drug connection in a lady named Patti, who lives in a trailer crammed with junk she hordes.  He soon starts selling and trying to establish his reputation by making up stories about his ‘hood in Jersey.  He has a variety of transient associates, including former GSL clients who are using again, a large Mexican named Manny who is his bodyguard/partner for a time and a string of girls who trade sex for drugs.

Jimmy’s parents continue to call him and he lies about his activities always convincing them to give him money for rent and food which they oblige though they beg him to get clean and go back to GSL.  By this point, he’s doing an overwhelming amount of meth and heroin, shooting up and wandering for days without sleep.  He reaches a low point where he’s been up for an entire week straight and can’t find sixty dollars to pay back a low-life he owes.  He ”sketches” imagining voices, people conspiring against him, and thinking that every rock on the ground could be a quarter of heroin.  After seeing a man named “Junkie Jack” get arrested, and sheer exhaustion having set in, Jimmy lays low, calls his parents and goes back to GSL.

He still admits that even at this point, he wasn’t committed to recovery and staying clean.  He expresses gratitude for having been at GSL at the same time as a group of men who made it clear that his posing and tough guy talk didn’t impress them.  After having spent so much time and effort trying to pretend to be hard, he was around individuals that didn’t value it at all.  He soon returned to New Jersey for a September court date that had been looming over him where he was sentenced to more rehab and probation.  He eventually gets a job counseling at his own high school about staying away from the drug scene and credits his parents and and a supportive network of friends and editors who believed in him enough to write this  book.

Salant’s writing is descriptive, gritty and real.  His voice makes the reader feel as if they are struggling through a tangled web to understand the lies and paranoia of Jimmy’s year in California.  He is able to describe in horrifying detail what it means to be unable to stop doing something that is ruining your life and how a drug addict loose hours, even days of his life obsessing about finding something he believes is lost.  Most of what he describes, understandably is violent, illicit and sexual, which is why this book would appeal to teen readers.  It cleverly shows how ridiculous Jimmy’s desire to seem cool by using drugs is through showing the reader how disgusting and pathetic that life really is.  I would rate this a 4Q and 4P because of the brutal honesty of the writing and the appeal to teens.  I would probably recommend this to Senior High teens, due to the overwhelmingly graphic nature of the book, but both sexes would definitely benefit from reading Jimmy’s story.  The shocking scenes of shooting up in bathrooms and wandering the streets for days, dirty and disoriented make Salant’s memoir terrifyingly unforgettable.

The Rag and Bone Shop July 6, 2009

by Robert Cormier. Delacorte Press. 2001. 154p.

This short novel opens with a scene from an investigation where a seventeen year old shot and killed three people.  Trent, an expert in coercing confessions has succeeded in getting the suspect to admit guilt.  Trent is weighed down by the job he does every day, listening to confessions, but unlike a priest, not giving absolution.

The second part finds Jason, an average but shy twelve year old on his first day of summer vacation.  Jason prefers the company of his younger sister and occasionally visits Alicia Bartlett, the younger sister of his classmate Brad.  He explains that they don’t make fun of him, or make him nervous and he finds it easier than hanging around with guys his own age who are always trying to prove how tough they are.  Once, Jason stood up to a bully who had pushed him from behind.  Jason shoved and punched him because he had seen the bully hurt other people who hadn”t had the courage to stand up to him.  Jason got in trouble for “unprovoked” violence but he decided he would never cry over being bullied again.

After Alicia Bartlett, characterized by Jason as a quirky old soul of a girl who loved jigsaw puzzles and dresses, is found dead Jason and the rest of the community are stunned.  Jason had just been to visit the Bartletts and had helped Alicia with her puzzle while her boisterous brother, Brad horsed around with his friends and tormented his sister.  Soon, the police arrive at Jason’s house because he was one of the last people to see her alive.  Lt. Braxton is in charge of the investigation and under the pressure of Senator Harold Gibbons, he tries to narrow his search to find the murderer quickly.  This involves calling in a specialist at interrogation, Trent,  to question his prime suspect: Jason.  Trent is interested in furthering his career and a connection to solving a case that was a personal project of a senator like Harold Gibbons would be his ticket.  An assistant named Sarah Downes briefs him on the case and admits her doubt of Jason’s guilt.  The title is revealed as a verse from Yeats that reads, “I must lie down where all the ladders start, / In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”  The sinister portion of the verse is used as Cormier’s title along with an innocent looking boy with his eyes obscurred.  Both send a chilling symbol to the reader.

Jason believes he is being called in to help with the investigation and at first he is excited to be of use in helping the police find whoever has done this to his friend.  He worries that he didn’t give enough detail, or remember enough to make them proud of him.  He eventually remembers the more than normal hostility between Brad and Alicia that day and a few cryptic things they said to each other.  Other than that, he witnesses no suspicious people coming or going from the Bartlett house before or after he leaves.  Trent expertly sets up his interrogation in a small hot room with Jason sitting in a low chair, himself in a taller one.   The interplay between Jason’s inner monologue and Trent’s attempts to tease information out of him takes a chilling turn. 

Despite realizing that Jason is innocent because of clues gathered from his body language and responses, Trent pushes, coerces and tricks Jason into feeling like the only way out of the tiny stiffeling room is to confess to something he didn’t do.  Jason’s will is broken and his confession is recorded on a cassette tape.  Trent leaves the room and tells Sarah that he’s gotten a confession, only to find out that Jason’s story about Brad had some merit.  Alicia’s brother has just confessed and his friends have corroberated. 

The fallout of having his mind twisted by Trent has caused Jason to hole up in his house for the rest of the summer wondering how he could have admitted to something he didn’t do.  Does being able to say he did it, mean that he was capable of it?  If so, who would he hurt?  The bully at school.  The novel ends with Jason grabbing a knife from the kitchen.

Until the very last paragraph, this book seemed like an interesting perspective of how interrogators aren’t always the good guys.  It took a sinister turn when Jason becomes a victim as well in believing that he really is what Trent made him believe.  Because of this dark ending, I’m not sure it would be a pleasure read for teens, and they may be left feeling, as I did, that justice may have been served in the murder case, but another crime went unpunished.  That crime is the one committed against Jason that causes him to (maybe?) actually hurt someone.  It seems like the book could be used in conjunction with school discussions of truth and justice, both because of the situations and the short length.  While happy endings aren’t necessary for a book to succeed in making its readers think, the ending seems to altogether hopeless.  I would give it a 3Q and a 2P on the VOYA scale and agree with the publisher’s note that it would be appropriate for Jason’s age (12) and up.  The reader will remember long after this book is closed, the chilling moment when Jason decides to grab a knife, wondering forever if he actually becomes what he confessed to.

Speak July 6, 2009

by Laurie Halse Anderson. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1999. 198p.

As the reader is introduced to Melinda, she’s starting her first year of high school.  Her middle school friends now look at her with loathing and refuse to acknowledge her.  Before school started, she and her best friend Rachel were at a senior party and Melinda called the cops.  Now she must learn how to face a school full of hostile students without being able to tell anyone the real reason she called.

The reader is left in the dark with the rest of Melinda’s friends an classmates for a large portion of the narrative as she meets a new girl named Heather who will do anything to fit in.  Melinda’s grades begin to slip and every moment in school feels like torture except art class with Mr. Freeman.  Her assignment for the year is to explore the tree as an object and to make it come to life.  Melinda feels dark and dead inside, and wonders how on earth she’ll be able to breathe life into an inanimate drawing.

Her parents seem disinterested in Melinda’s evident pain except to harass her about not communicating and about slacking off in school.  Her mother works endlessly at the department store she manages, and her father is a business man.  Melinda is alone a lot and doesn’t feel comfortable even in her own home so she creates a tiny sanctuary in an abandoned janitor’s closet at school, decorating it with her art projects.  Slowly, clues to Melinda’s secret begin to emerge as she thinks back to that night and after she encounters IT at school.  IT happens to be Andy Beast, a last name that is surely fitting, given his crime.  In flashback, Anderson details Melinda’s rape and her guilt over having been drunk and unable to fight him off.  It isn’t until Andy begins pursuing her former best friend Rachel that Melinda feels the need to tell what happened to her.

She begins small, by writing on the bathroom stall wall: “Guys to stay away from: Andy Beast.”  She is encouraged later when she sees that others have agreed and started a dialogue about his many mal-doings.  When she confesses the truth to Rachel through notes passed in the library, Rachel yells and assumes she must be jealous of a freshman getting to go to the prom with such a hot senior.  Meanwhile, Melinda has begun to thaw with the Syracuse spring, planting marigolds and thinking about redecorating her room to feel more like home.  After prom, Melinda hears that Rachel confronted Andy and ditched him for someone else. 

Near the end of school, Melinda is cleaning out her janitor closet sanctuary when Andy confronts her about telling everyone.  He locks the closet door and attacks her.  Melinda fights back this time, pressing a shard of broken glass to Andy’s neck.  After the girl’s lacrosse team witnesses this, Melinda’s story is soon all over school, and this time people are giving her the thumbs up.   Melinda finally finishes her tree project by drawing a tree that is like her, damaged in some places, but real and continuing to grow.  She finally confides the whole story in her sympathetic and supportive art teacher.

Anderson’s narrative style excels at the difficult task of giving Melinda a voice for the reader without giving her one in the life of the story.  She relates the storyline through Melinda’s thoughts and the action around her, with almost no dialogue.  Her sentence structure is sometimes long and cumbersome like the stream of adolescent thoughts, or choppy to relate emotion.  These devices, along with the striking cover of a face behind a branch with the mouth covered serve to give the reader insight into the mind of someone who has been hurt and has bottled up those emotions.  The reader feels her frustration and teens may identify with her desperation to remain silent or wonder why on earth her parents didn’t notice and try to help her.  This is a powerful and unique perspective on the topic of rape but also one of strength and growth.  I would rank this a 5Q and a 4P on the VOYA scale and recommend it to Junior Middle and High school students.  Readers will not soon forget what it felt like to be silenced in Melinda’s story.

How I Live Now July 4, 2009

by Meg Rosoff. Wendy Lamb Books. 2004. 194p.

Rosoff has crafted a story from the point of view of Elizabeth, called Daisy about her journey to live with her cousins in England after her father and stepmother begin a new family.  Daisy’s unique style and voice is apparent from the first page.  It is frank, and observant, and conversations are relayed without the use of quotations as if it would slow down her narrative.  On the graphic novel-esque cover there is a quote from Mark Haddon that explains, “After five pages I knew that she could persuade me to believe almost anything.”  This is especially true as Daisy relates the first days in the English home of cousins she has just met for the first time in her sixteen year old life. 

Osbert, Edmond, Issac and Piper soon lead a lost boys like existence shortly after Daisy joins them because their mother Penn has to go away on business.  Osbert, the oldest ignores them for the most part and Issac almost entirely silent except for his way with animals.  Piper and Edmond take an instant liking to Daisy but in different ways.  Piper has an almost ethereal quality about her that suspiciously skinny Daisy is drawn to.  Edmond has the uncanny ability to make Daisy feel as though he is hearing her every thought.  They are free to roam and fend for themselves which they relish until the outbreak of the war they have been hearing rumblings in the village about. 

Rosoff creates a wartime situation that is both realistic from the point of view of a teenager and frighteningly believable given recent real world events.  At first, the new family of five is sheltered from an violence or effects of the escalating occupation, but as food grows scarce and reports filter through to their village, their world shrinks.  Edmond and Daisy are unable to deny the electric current that runs between them and despite their familial connection they begin an intense love affair.  Soon, soldiers separate Piper and Daisy from Edmond and Issac and take them to separate farms to supervise them.

Piper is useful to the new farm she and Daisy are taken to because alongside their herd dog Jet, she is able to help the soldiers round up cows to continue to supply the community with food.  Soon however, their hideout is attacked and Piper and Daisy are forced to flee into the woods and find their own way home.  All Daisy can think of is being reunited with Edmond and protecting Piper.  After weeks of walking,hiding and nearly starving they come across the farm Edmond and Issac were sent to and find a massacre.  Sickened they flee to a secret barn on their own property, hoping to find the boys there.  They are no where to be found and one day while Daisy and Piper venture to the main house to gather supplies something happens that startles them: the telephone rings.

Daisy is flown back to the U.S. where the war is similar, disorganized and full of terrorist cells.  She is treated and the doctors that found her unwillingness to eat before, are now baffled by her desire to eat anything put in front of her.  She remains disturbed and survives only by thinking of how she can return to her English family, especially Edmond.  After six years of living and working in her own war zone, the borders open to allow tourist travel and she return  Edmond is alive but scarred physically and emotionally after having been captured by the enemy and believing that Daisy abandoned him.  The curtains close on Daisy’s explanation of the slow return to normalcy and routine with Edmond that is where she belongs.

Daisy’s story is engrossing and unique.  The issues she deals with including anorexia, incest and death are related in in a way that makes them mere details rather than the purpose of the story.  The themes of love, loss and identity are much more powerfully woven through Daisy’s journey.  Rosoff writes Daisy in such a way that the reader is desperate for her to be reunited with Edmond, despite their relation.  While teens may not relate to the details they can certainly identify with the themes Daisy embodies.  The consuming passion of young love and the desire to find a place in the world that feels like home will draw in teen readers and keep them from setting down this story.  On the VOYA scale, this book rates a 5Q and a 4P because it may appeal more to female readers than male.  It would be appropriate for Middle and Senior high grades because of the violence and sex that mostly occurs off stage.  Daisy’s voice will remain with a reader long after the book is finished, begging contemplation about what a global war could do and what it means to love someone.

The White Darkness July 3, 2009

by Geraldine McCaughrean. Harper Tempest. 2007. 369p.

Sym is fourteen, and has many of the same issues that other teenage girls grapple with: belonging, boys and being teased at school.  That said, she is also radically different than other girls, and maybe everyone else on the planet.  She has an obsession with the Arctic, especially one explorer, Titus who has been dead ninety years, but who she has developed a friendhsip with in her mind.  Sym’s father has recently passed away and her mother struggles to pay bills and keep them afloat.  They have help from Sym’s “uncle” who isn’t actually related, but a former business partner of ther father’s.  He has moved in to help take care of the family and make sure Sym is getting the type of education he deems appropriate. 

Victor’s idiosyncrasies only compound as the story progresses.  The reader learns that he believes cell phone signals can give you brain cancer, he sleeps upright in a strange contraption of a chair, and is fascinated by home remedies and home schooling.  Most importantly to Sym, he is also obsessed with the Arctic.  He decides to take both she and her mother to Paris one weekend for a little fun.  What begins as a weekend getaway unravels into a globe-spanning, death defying journey.

Sym finds out after they’ve arrived in Paris without her mother who couldn’t seem to locate her passport at the last minute that Victor has actually been hiding that very passport in his coat.  He then announces that they’ve got bigger plans than just Paris and they hop a plane to South America.  Sym is concerned about notifying her mother but Victor assures her he’s got it taken care of.  Once they land, they go about preparing for their real destination: Antarctica!  Sym is excited to finally be visiting the place she has been fascinated with for so long and the place that her beloved companion, Titus lost his life.  She spends most of her time in her own mind discussing things with him and as her journey becomes stranger she retreats even further into her imagination.  This is made easier by the fact that she has a condition that requires her to wear hearing aids and sometimes causes the rest of the world to fade to white noise.

Victor and Sym join a tour group made up of other adventurers and they join up with a father and son team from Norway named Mansfred and Sigurd.  Sym is transfixed by the intense experience of twenty four hour sunshine and the frozen tundra.  When the rest of their tour group becomes mysteriously ill with some sort of stomach bug, people start to talk about catching the next supply plane home.  When the plane that they hope will rescue them from their illnesses and the brutal cold explodes leaving them stranded, Sym wonders why they all soon crawl into their tents and fall into an exhausted sleep.  Victor takes this opportunity with Mansfred to steal a gigantic Hagglund for making off across the tundra. 

Sym soon finds out that Victor and Mansfred know each other and are planning together to find a hole in the ice crust called Symme’s Hole that Victor believes is the portal to another world inside the earth’s crust.  Only after they’ve gone a fair distance toward this outrageous goal does Sym begin to suspect that her uncle is not quite the genius she’s always imagined him.  Their harrowing journey is characterized by dangerous temperatures and cracks in the ice that cause them to nearly plummet to their death.  This event causes Manfred to break character and admit that he’s conned Victor by posing as a film director who believes in Victor’s “discovery.”  Victor leaves him to die.  He also eventually admits to drugging the rest of the camp so that they could make their getaway, killing her father for not believing in his dream of finding Symme’s Hole, and finally giving Sym antibiotics as a child that ruined her hearing. 

Sym and Sigurd, who it turns out is a paid actor try to devise a plan with the silent assistance of Sym’s imaginary expert explorer, Titus.  Eventually Sigurd takes off with the Hagglund and leaves Sym and Victor to traipse toward their goal.  Titus finds a tall chimney like structure of ice, which he clambers up to look in, believing he has found his portal.  He maniacally jumps in, peeling off layers of clothes to fit and ultimately plummets into the darkness.  Sym is alone and petrified in this world of white, turning totally inward toward Titus’ voice.  He explains that his body isn’t here with her, having been taken by the ice and pushed out to sea long ago.  She is surprised because, as a figment of her imagination, how could he have told her something she truly didn’t know?  He helps her carry the pain that makes her feel like she can’t go on and eventually she is reunited with Sigurd and the Hagglund.  She hatches a plan to set it on fire both for the warmth and to signal to a possible passing plane.  They are eventually rescued hours before they would have frozen to death.  Sym has to come to grips with all that she has discovered about her former Uncle Victor and how his influence warped her life and sense of self.

The narrative devices used by McCaughrean like the inner dialogue between Sym and Titus were at first hard to get used to.  It was difficult to suspend disbelief that at fourteen she could have such intense feelings for an imaginary voice.  Their conversations, italicized in the text sometimes seemed to take away from the action of the story.  Others who have read this title have mentioned their inability to understand how she could have mistaken Victor for a genius instead of seeing him for the nutcase he really was.  After the revelations he made about her father and her hearing though, the reader really gets a sense of the extent of his manipulation.  If she had grown up her entire life with one picture of him, a few weeks, even ones that challenged her to the extreme would not have instantly made her suspect otherwise.  I think teens may find her imaginary friend ridiculous and put down the book for that reason alone.  Only a dedicated reader could plow through the agony of realizing what is happening before Sym does in the last 150 pages or so.  I would rate this a 3Q and  a 2P on the VOYA scale for these reasons.  The mysterious all white title with the washed out face on the cover may intrigue readers, but only the persistent will make it past that.  It would be appropriate for Middle and Senior High of both sexes.  Readers, if determined, should read Sym’s story in a warm place so as not to be dragged into the frigid arctic world with her.

Three Little Words June 30, 2009

by Ashley Rhodes-Courter.  Atheneum Books. 2008. 336p.

This true account of Ashley’s life in the Florida foster care system and is infused with horrifying accounts of abuse and neglect but also with a sense of hope.  On a trip to Florida with her mother, her step-brother and her mother’s volatile boyfriend, a cop pulls the make-shift family over and arrests her mother’s boyfriend.  This event sends Ashley and her brother Luke into a downward spiral ending in their placement in the Florida foster care system until her mother can care for them.  Ashley’s story relates the back and forth between foster families, as well as her placement out of state with her grandfather and his live-in companion Adele.  Ashley learns to expect to never finish a year at the same school, never get to keep her own toys and clothes from move to move and to suspect that the adults in charge of her aren’t interested in the least with how she feels or what she needs.

One particularly horrifying foster placement is with the Moss family where Ashley and her brother are beaten, forced to run laps in the hot sun and made to drink hot sauce as a punishment.  Despite Ashley’s complaints to authorities and the phone calls made to an abuse hotline by her teachers, the foster care system continues to give the Moss family more children and dismiss allegations of neglect and abuse.  Ashley’s stay at a children’s shelter is a welcome relief from the constant fear and misery of the Moss household, but feels like a holding pen for orphan children.

Ashley’s relationship with her mother is marked by a series of visits, presents and promises.  Her only wish is to be reunited with her mother and she sees this as a solution to all of her problems.  Lorraine, however can’t seem to get her act together.  A guardian appointed for Ashley and Luke named Mary Miller doesn’t trust Lorraine to do what is in the best interest of the children and she ultimately pushes for a legal termination of parental rights.  Ashley tries to help Luke stay out of trouble when they are placed together in homes like the Moss’s, but also resents his outbursts and wonders if they are the reason that no one has adopted her. 

Ashley’s good grades and charismatic personality eventually catch the attention of Gay and Phil, a couple looking to adopt a young girl.  Ashley struggles to believe that they truly want to keep her and expects at every misbehavior that they will send her back to the shelter, like all the other “boomerang” kids.  She gets used to her new family, traveling with them and beginning to speak out about the injustices of foster care to local groups.  When the Moss’s are arrested and tried for abuse, she gets involved with a lawsuit against them to protect other children and to make sure that they are punished for their actions.  As she becomes more vocal, and more groups associated with state guardians or the foster care system ask her to speak, she gains confidence and relaxes in the support of her new loving family.  It isn’t until she does the unthinkable at the prompting of a friend, attempting to drug her adoptive parents that she realizes that she loves them and that they will never give her up.

Her activism has served as floodlight to expose the injustices and neglect perpetrated by the very foster system that claimed to be protecting her.  Ashley’s many speaking engagements and her writing have won her national acclaim and made her a de facto spokesperson for foster children all over the country.  While her story is simply written, it is sure to evoke emotions of outrage, sympathy, desperation and joy in those who read it.  Teens will identify with her hardship, even those who may have had no prior knowledge or experience with the foster care system.  This memoir is a shining example of how non-fiction can captivate the mind of a reader just as easily as a fictional story can, often with more profound results.  I would rate this a VOYA 3Q and 5P because while the writing is not technically brilliant, the appeal of Ashley’s honesty and spirit will appeal to all who read it.  This novel appeals to a wide range of ages, from Junior to Senior high, guys and girls, and even adults.  Ashley inspires all who come in contact with her story and challenges a system that is desperately in need of reform.