Back in 1992 my college professor Dr. Sheldon Brivic told our class that one of the greatest first lines in all of literature was from Hamlet: "Who's there?" What greater way to start and develop a story: Who's there? It makes the audience wonder right from the beginning--who the hell is there? And then you're hooked.
Rebecca Stead's Newberry winning When You Reach Me also had me asking throughout her novel, Who's there? Through efficient and short chapters and a plot which unravels and comes together simultaneously, the pacing of this book is upbeat and fun.
Raised by a single mother in New York City in the late 1970s, the narrator, twelve year old Miranda, is receiving curious and creepy notes. This latch-key kid doesn't know who they are from or how they are appearing...and it is a little creepy. The message contained in these notes from this mysterious person is that he/she is coming back to save Miranda's friend.
Which friend? Who are you? Where? When?
Stead hooked me.
Fortunately for the reader, Miranda discovers who, where, when...and why. Her journey is clever and entertaining...and fresh. It reads and feels like a fresh story; it isn't preachy or trying to teach a morality lesson. Nothing feels forced or out of place. Each character and event fits...makes sense...and is necessary. The architecture of the characters and their relationships is as impressive as anything in this novel.
In terms of style so much about this YA novel is sharp and on point. The characters speak to reveal information or develop character and plot; there are no wasted words or empty conversations. While the narrator is your protagonist and guide through her journey, the most appealing characters in the novel When You Reach Me turn out to be Marcus and the laughing man. It will be difficult to tell from my blog, but the Marcus and laughing man story is really sweet.
In addition to Miranda, Marcus and the laughing man each also have a journey central to the novel. Miranda herself even refers to each as the hero of the story. Stead so cleverly ties characters and circumstances together that you learn to pay attention to every page as you read. Not that you'd miss something, but in hopes that you would remember something which you'd need in an upcoming chapter. The characters are all active and the growth of each comes through discovery and decision. Without revealing anything critical in the novel I want to add that at least 7 characters (Miranda, her mother, Marcus, the laughing man, Jimmy, Annemarie, Julia) all make discoveries in this novel which causes each to make a decision which then determines the direction of the story.
Stead is a polished storyteller with a great command of the skills of this art. I will introduce this novel at start of my classes on Monday or Tuesday and welcome any young reader to borrow it and experience this brilliant work. This is a must-have for your classroom bookcase.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
YA Book Review: A Long Walk to Water
I suppose Linda Sue Park's A Long Walk to Water is considered a YA text because its protagonist is an adolescent and a teen throughout the bulk of the story. Realistically, this is a true story for everyone of every age. It speaks of perseverance as the reader experiences the remarkable life of Sudanese refugee Salva Dut who now spends half of the year raising money for his cause in the Sudan and the other half of the year supervising its implementation on site.
Torn from his family in 1985 during the civil war between the North and South, Salva walked thousands upon thousands of miles for the next eleven years. He, along with millions of others, endured dehydration, starvation, lion attacks, crocodile attacks, along with constantly being on the watch for enemy soldiers who might harm them. Salva spent these eleven years not knowing anything about any of the rest of his family; war had come to his life while he was at school. All of the students ran from the school into the bush, and not towards home.
The core of the story, however, is water.
Many in the Sudan have to walk mile upon mile to fetch muddy but drinkable water. Families in the Sudan move according to the dry and rainy seasons--they follow the water. Children are often forced to be the bearers of the water and make the journey several times a day...every day. Often, the water is not boiled to make it potable and the result is a digestive system overcome by worms. Children can not heave all that much water by themselves in one journey, yet this is the system which exists. Because the children spend their days fetching water, they often forgo an education.
A Long Walk to Water is Salva's journey from his village in the Southern Sudan all the way to Rochester, NY and back to the Southern Sudan...to bring them healthy water. Salva now raises money and builds freshwater wells all throughout the Sudan. Moving village by village, one day at a time, he brings water which also brings opportunity. His building of wells now allows the building of schools and medical clinics. His bringing water close to the villages also allows all children to go to school to learn. I give nothing away here; this is not a spoiler in the same way that everyone knows the end of Romeo & Juliet yet we still are willing to watch the play...because it is a remarkable story.
While it is true that all audiences will enjoy this story, I can anticipate the YA reader will certainly embrace this book. If you have an 11-13 year old at home or teach middle school aged children you know that kids of this age embrace causes. They become fascinated by fairness. They love to help...anyone. Whether it is by hosting bake sales or going on a fun-run or collecting canned goods, the YA crowd is curious about the vast differences, privileges, and plights which shape our world. I can guarantee that it will take less than a minute for one of my students to gobble this book from my desk once I tell them about the book.
Kids will love this story where so much good is coming out of so much suffering. Yet, as Salva Dut writes at the end of the book:
Put the book on your desk or book shelf...or better yet, put it in any kid's hand. You can read more about Salva Dut's mission at his website at www.waterforsudan.org
Torn from his family in 1985 during the civil war between the North and South, Salva walked thousands upon thousands of miles for the next eleven years. He, along with millions of others, endured dehydration, starvation, lion attacks, crocodile attacks, along with constantly being on the watch for enemy soldiers who might harm them. Salva spent these eleven years not knowing anything about any of the rest of his family; war had come to his life while he was at school. All of the students ran from the school into the bush, and not towards home.
The core of the story, however, is water.
Many in the Sudan have to walk mile upon mile to fetch muddy but drinkable water. Families in the Sudan move according to the dry and rainy seasons--they follow the water. Children are often forced to be the bearers of the water and make the journey several times a day...every day. Often, the water is not boiled to make it potable and the result is a digestive system overcome by worms. Children can not heave all that much water by themselves in one journey, yet this is the system which exists. Because the children spend their days fetching water, they often forgo an education.
A Long Walk to Water is Salva's journey from his village in the Southern Sudan all the way to Rochester, NY and back to the Southern Sudan...to bring them healthy water. Salva now raises money and builds freshwater wells all throughout the Sudan. Moving village by village, one day at a time, he brings water which also brings opportunity. His building of wells now allows the building of schools and medical clinics. His bringing water close to the villages also allows all children to go to school to learn. I give nothing away here; this is not a spoiler in the same way that everyone knows the end of Romeo & Juliet yet we still are willing to watch the play...because it is a remarkable story.
While it is true that all audiences will enjoy this story, I can anticipate the YA reader will certainly embrace this book. If you have an 11-13 year old at home or teach middle school aged children you know that kids of this age embrace causes. They become fascinated by fairness. They love to help...anyone. Whether it is by hosting bake sales or going on a fun-run or collecting canned goods, the YA crowd is curious about the vast differences, privileges, and plights which shape our world. I can guarantee that it will take less than a minute for one of my students to gobble this book from my desk once I tell them about the book.
Kids will love this story where so much good is coming out of so much suffering. Yet, as Salva Dut writes at the end of the book:
To young people, I would like to say: Stay calm when things are hard or not going right with you. You will get through it when you persevere instead of quitting. Quitting leads to much less happiness than perseverance and hope.
Put the book on your desk or book shelf...or better yet, put it in any kid's hand. You can read more about Salva Dut's mission at his website at www.waterforsudan.org
Saturday, January 1, 2011
YA Book Review: The Red Umbrella
Christina Diaz Gonazalez's The Red Umbrella is based on Fidel Castro's rise to power and the impact his Communist government had on the family unit. We follow the uncertain path the fictional Alvarez family is forced to negotiate based on increasingly harsh dictates of the new Cuba. Children were to be the property of the state and as such were to be indoctrinated in government boarding schools or in the Soviet Union. The Red Umbrella tells the very real story of Operation Pedro Plan: the escape of Cuban children to the United States.
Mr. and Mrs. Alvarez do not want what Castro's Cuba is becoming and make the decision to send their two children, Lucia and Frankie, to be cared for and eventually placed into a foster home by the Catholic Welfare Bureau. Lucia is our tour guide on the Alvarez family journey through some of the early horrors and discomfort in Cuba, to her and Frankie's trip to their foster home in Nebraska, and to their eventual reunion with her mother and father.
Each chapter is labeled with a different headline from a newspaper relating various decisions and actions imposed in Cuba from May, 1961-April 2, 1962. While The Red Umbrella is historical fiction, important historical fiction at that, the history is written in a style accessible and interesting to middle school readers. Gonzalez offers a smart balance of family, friend, and society. We experience Lucia's struggles with many situations in her life: her best friend back in Cuba, Ivette, grows into a staunch Castro supporter; Frankie, her brother, is much younger and needs a lot of her care and attention; she witnessed the murder of an anti-revolutionary; Mr. and Mrs. Alvarez are being closely monitored by Castro's government and there is the very real fear that harm may come to them; her adjustment to life in America and life away from her mother and father; the adjustment to life with a foster mother and father; and there are a couple of cruel teen social experiences placed in for good measure.
What the author does so well is allow Lucia to struggle with making sense of everything which is happening to her. This is a kid just starting ninth grade and she is living something few in our country currently experience or understand. I enjoyed the different types of interactions Lucia had with Americans: friendly, indifferent, patronizing, pandering...and how each of these interactions were read from her perspective. For instance, her foster father begins his relationship with saying little more than, "Hmmph" or similar grunts and groans. What we learn as we read onward is that this is Lucia's understanding of it; she had so much going on in her life that she couldn't read or possibly know that he was really taking to the foster kids. Lucia had to be told that Mr. Baxter really liked them. When she sat back and thought about it, she could name specific instances which verified that. The reader learns along with Lucia.
I do think that any kid who has ever moved to our country from abroad would find much to connect to in this YA novel. However, I do not mean to suggest that this is a novel just for a specified audience. I think there is a movie here which would appeal to a wide audience. Gonzalez tells this story with a personal investment: her parents and mother-in-law lived the experience her fictional Lucia and Frankie went through themselves.
I think anytime a story comes from both family and the heart there is the potential for something for audiences to connect with, but add to it the fact that it is based on true, incredulous (for us) historical events, and we have something valuable just beyond entertainment. We have a book here by an author who gets the fact that storytelling is an art which is powerful and influential. There is room on bookshelves for all types of books about twinkly vampires and teen werewolves in love (if it gets kids to read I'm in), but I am becoming increasingly fond of the current trend of some YA authors who are writing books with social impact and value: viva la revolucion! This is where the movie industry should peer when the vampire craze recedes back into the tide of recycled ideas.
This book will be on my desk when I return to school on Monday and it will be ready for whomever decides to pick it up and read it.
Mr. and Mrs. Alvarez do not want what Castro's Cuba is becoming and make the decision to send their two children, Lucia and Frankie, to be cared for and eventually placed into a foster home by the Catholic Welfare Bureau. Lucia is our tour guide on the Alvarez family journey through some of the early horrors and discomfort in Cuba, to her and Frankie's trip to their foster home in Nebraska, and to their eventual reunion with her mother and father.
Each chapter is labeled with a different headline from a newspaper relating various decisions and actions imposed in Cuba from May, 1961-April 2, 1962. While The Red Umbrella is historical fiction, important historical fiction at that, the history is written in a style accessible and interesting to middle school readers. Gonzalez offers a smart balance of family, friend, and society. We experience Lucia's struggles with many situations in her life: her best friend back in Cuba, Ivette, grows into a staunch Castro supporter; Frankie, her brother, is much younger and needs a lot of her care and attention; she witnessed the murder of an anti-revolutionary; Mr. and Mrs. Alvarez are being closely monitored by Castro's government and there is the very real fear that harm may come to them; her adjustment to life in America and life away from her mother and father; the adjustment to life with a foster mother and father; and there are a couple of cruel teen social experiences placed in for good measure.
What the author does so well is allow Lucia to struggle with making sense of everything which is happening to her. This is a kid just starting ninth grade and she is living something few in our country currently experience or understand. I enjoyed the different types of interactions Lucia had with Americans: friendly, indifferent, patronizing, pandering...and how each of these interactions were read from her perspective. For instance, her foster father begins his relationship with saying little more than, "Hmmph" or similar grunts and groans. What we learn as we read onward is that this is Lucia's understanding of it; she had so much going on in her life that she couldn't read or possibly know that he was really taking to the foster kids. Lucia had to be told that Mr. Baxter really liked them. When she sat back and thought about it, she could name specific instances which verified that. The reader learns along with Lucia.
I do think that any kid who has ever moved to our country from abroad would find much to connect to in this YA novel. However, I do not mean to suggest that this is a novel just for a specified audience. I think there is a movie here which would appeal to a wide audience. Gonzalez tells this story with a personal investment: her parents and mother-in-law lived the experience her fictional Lucia and Frankie went through themselves.
I think anytime a story comes from both family and the heart there is the potential for something for audiences to connect with, but add to it the fact that it is based on true, incredulous (for us) historical events, and we have something valuable just beyond entertainment. We have a book here by an author who gets the fact that storytelling is an art which is powerful and influential. There is room on bookshelves for all types of books about twinkly vampires and teen werewolves in love (if it gets kids to read I'm in), but I am becoming increasingly fond of the current trend of some YA authors who are writing books with social impact and value: viva la revolucion! This is where the movie industry should peer when the vampire craze recedes back into the tide of recycled ideas.
This book will be on my desk when I return to school on Monday and it will be ready for whomever decides to pick it up and read it.
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