YA Book Review: Crossing the Stones

A colleague laughed at me yesterday when I referenced Crossing the Stones by Helen Frost as beautiful...so beautiful I wanted to read it a second time just as I finished it the first time.  And I did.

Part journey, part love story Crossing the Stones (in its own way) balances Aristotle's pathos--ethos--logos.  While this novel is not a persuasive essay per se, it does stir up several topics that would serve as wonderful starters for persuasive essays in the middle school classroom.  The appeals of logic, emotion, and character stand firm and clear--no one apologizes for their thoughts or who they are--these are fictional characters built on the real emotion and reality of a volatile moment of American history.

Our nation changed not only on the surface, but also down to the core of families--families were torn apart by death and growth.  While the looming threat of death exists, this novel presents so much more than death.  True, one could argue that the death of the traditional American family plays out here as well--yet this story emerges as so much more than that.  Beauty is born out of these circumstances, and Frost takes the reader on that journey.

Written in a combination of free-verse verse and cupped-hand sonnets, Crossing the Stones is a coming-of-age novel set in 1917.  Every significant character in this novel goes on a journey of some type--some return, some do not.  All are changed by their individual journeys as well as by the journeys of loved ones around them.

Each page or so is a different poem (a vignette) told from the point-of-view of any one of five characters: Muriel, Frank, Emma, Ollie, Grace.  While this is eighteen year-old Muriel's story, all of the characters play significant roles in the plot and each connects with the reader in some way--they each have striking moments in which you can not help but like them and root for them.

The conflicts in this story are built around family and the obstacles or challenges each must overcome as they face World War I and the emerging Suffragist Movement.  As Frank and Ollie hurtle on the path to manhood (walking into the teeth of war) many at home are criticized for not blindly supporting the war.  Muriel questions it much to the dismay of her teacher--why does everyone just listen and go to war?

Muriel is the perfect vehicle to connect with her Aunt Vera marching with the other Suffragists in front of the White House in support of women's rights--which in the end is really about a woman's voice.  I really liked that Muriel wrestles with her own voice at home.  She questions her voice, yet late in the novel it is her voice which serves as a healing balm and soothes her sister back to health--almost falling to the deadly influenza outbreaks soldiers unintentionally brought home from the front.

As the reader concludes the book a note from the author brings the form together--this note moved me to reread the book immediately.  Frost explains the poetic form and offers a few insights that definitely enhanced the reading of the novel.  However, I think the book is best enjoyed naturally--just read it for enjoyment.  And then consider Frost's notes.

Crossing the Stones is beautiful--I stand by my statement no matter who laughs at me.  Any story taking the reader on a journey where families are torn apart by death and by the growth and expansion of the world echoes a line from Wallace Stevens: Death is the mother of beauty.

National Writing Project Day 3: Exploring Modes

Our core exercise in the morning began with our reading through our journal/daybook and highlighting similar topics with one color.  I ended up using three colors and found family, nature, and art to be my recurring themes.

Afterwards we were asked to take one of these ideas, not necessarily a large theme but something smaller within that theme, and turn it into a narrative piece, and informational piece, and a persuasive piece.

The experience affected my tone and my voice as I wrote.  Taking an idea (a deer approaching me) which I anticipated being best suited for narrative proved to be equally satisfying to writing and more complex to explore as both informational and persuasive essays.

What I learned is that there is still narrative within the information and persuasive essay, but each of those essay forms lended themselves to my experience being about something else.  Something bigger than simply a deer approaching me in the Berkshires back in July of 1995.

I was more tempted to look back what I had previously highlighted to search for similarities and connections.  One jumped out at me.  Highlighted in the same orange ink were brief entries about a bird's nest which I had unwittingly destroyed; a starving dog yapping at me in Seville, Spain; a peacock chasing me on the grounds of a castle in England; and an interactive map demonstrating the ongoing devastation and disappearance of bees worldwide.  Other observations in my daybook included regional/personal gardens, plants, and vegetables.

My writing explored both personal and common public experiences when human beings intersect with nature--both intentionally and unintentionally.  We are a part of nature yet we've seemed to do a pretty thorough job of almost extracting ourselves from it and with it--responsibility.

With each new neighborhood carved out of our communities we push wildlife into the crowded recesses of what is left.  Along with the loss of natural habitat, some of the insecticides we spray kills the bees.

And as is often attributed to Albert Einstein, if the bees go, so do we.

My homework is to continue to draft one of these pieces tonight--and, as our group reflected after we wrote, many of us are tempted to research and read up on the topics which have emerged from us.

Granted, we are adults, and no longer adolescents or teenagers.  Our interest and fascination with exploring a thread of thought through several modes generated from process writing may not mirror that of a 14-year-old.  However, our generational differences do not counter the fact this is just too powerful a tool dismiss.

I'm immersed within the process and I'm looking forward to bringing it to my classes in the fall.