All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg
I have a now brother.
He doesn’t look like me.
I’m too much fall–
wet brown leaves
under a darkening sky.
Tommy is summer–
sunlight, peaches,
wide, grinning sky.
Even Tommy’s hair is summer.
Curls cling to his scalp like
the yellow-and-white sweet corn
at McGreavy’s Market.
Only one straight tuft sticks up,
like a clump of sun-scorched hay.
(p 8 )
When he was ten years old (but looked six) Matt was given to American soldiers by his Vietnamese mother so that he could escape the war. Adopted by a loving American family, Matt carries the heaviness of a past defined by war and a secret shame.
All the Broken Pieces is like a short story by Hemingway. Told in verse, the words are short and the sentences terse but packed with meaning. The descriptions are tied to nature and lovely in a straightforward way that reminded me of Hemingway.
The days are getting
really warm.
Summer is sitting
on spring
and squeezing out
all the wetness.
(p 218)
There isn’t an extraneous line in the novel. It will take about two hours to read but you’ll find yourself reflecting on it long after you finish. Just beautifully written, the story unravels with polished eloquence. A definite contender for the Printz, in my estimation.
OCL’s 2010 Mock Printz List
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (review)
Going Bovine by Libba Bray
All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg (review)
North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley (review)
Everything is Fine by Ann Dee Ellis (review)
The Devil’s Paintbox by Victoria Mckernan (review)
SLOB by Ellen Potter (review)
Flygirl by Sherri Smith
When you Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (review)
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork (review)
We are meeting on January 3, 2010.
SLOB by Ellen Potter
SLOB is the story of twelve-year-old Owen Birnbaum, the fattest kid in school. The reasons behind Owen’s eating disorder are revealed as Owen: attempts to build Nemesis (a device that will capture the events of the past), suffers through humiliation after humiliation at the hands of a cruel gym teacher, and as Owen tracks down a thief who takes his lunch time Oreo snack.
The prose often struck me as insightful. This passage, on page 29, jolted me:
Everyone thinks they know the fat kid. We’re so obvious. Our embarrassing secret is out there for everyone to see, spilling over our belts, flapping under our chins, stretching the seams of our jeans.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have other secrets that you can’t see.
I also enjoyed the occasional clever metaphor: “She may not be supersmart, but if you stick her in a crowd of people, she just pops, like a zebra-stripped jeep in a shopping mall parking lot” (p 80).
The ending kept me guessing. It’s not often you read about a boy with an eating disorder but this is an exception read. I’m sure it will be in the run for a Printz (though I’m pulling for The Devil’s Paintbox). I believe it also qualifies for the Newbery.
Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin
Jason Blake is anything but typical. Mocked as retarded by his second grade classmates, diagnosed with ASD, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, by doctors in the third grade, and defined by his mother as NLD, nonverbal learning disordered, Jason is just Jason.
It surprised me that this book was just as much an exploration of the writing process (very post-modern) as it was a story about an autistic child who makes a friend online.
While reading, I found myself often wondering why Baskin didn’t apply the lessons her characters were learning to her own writing. More show, less tell (p 44). While School Library Journal called Jason “believable and empathetic,” I thought our narrator was rather dry and over explanatory, though his situation is pitiable and realistic. I couldn’t connect with Jason, while Stork’s Marcello is still milling about in my head.
School Library Journal also praised, “Baskin also does a superb job of developing his parents and younger brother as real people with real problems, bravely traversing their lives with a differently abled child without a road map, but with a great deal of love.” I can agree to this wholeheartedly.
It is clear that Jason’s mother has trouble understanding him as illustrated on page 68:
“Remember, Jason?” she is saying. “Remember those leggings?”
We were both remembering the same thing.
“Those leggings?” I repeat what she has said, so that she will know this.
“No?” my mother is saying. “You don’t? It’s okay. It was a long time ago.
And yet, his father gets him.
“It’s not meaningless to Jason,” my dad said. … “The words. And the letters. Just because you don’t understand their meaning doesn’t mean the don’t have one” (p 47).
This one has also been mentioned on mock Printz lists but it doesn’t top the likes of The Devil’s Paintbox or Along for the Ride in terms of writing excellence.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing (March 24, 2009)
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
“The closest description of what I have is probably Asperger’s syndrome. It falls on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum.” It is as good an answer as I can give (p 186).
Though many have commented on the slow-paced beginning, I was immediately hooked. Marcelo’s thought process is fascinating, as are people’s reactions to him. I am envious of many of his perceived faults: he thinks carefully before speaking, is guided by a clear sense of right and wrong, has an affinity for animals.
There is an element of mystery in the style of “Erin Brockovich.”
There is romance but nothing like the sappy, love-struck or overwhelming romance saturating contemporary YA literature.
The supporting characters ellicit many emotional reactions from readers: anger, frustration, disgust, compassion.
It is a well structured, intricate story that I hope is a front runner for the Printz!
Read more at: TeenReads, Crazy Quilts
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books (March 1, 2009) Read comments by the editor at Brooklyn Arden.
Locomotion and Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson
Lonnie C. Motion, aka Locomotion, became an orphan when his parents perished in a house fire. Lonnie and his younger sister survived but were separated into different homes afterward. Told through a series of Lonnie’s poems assigned by his teacher, we learn all about the tender-hearted Lonnie and his sweet sister in Locomotion.
Through Lonnie’s optimistic and honest perspective, we glimpse the heart of an honest child making his way through a world that seems set against him, not in obvious or purposeful ways, but in all the subtle ways that can tear a child apart. And Lonnie knows what he’s up against, “…alotta those people are white. Maybe it’s that if you’re white you can’t see all the whiteness around you” (p13). But Lonnie is strong. He affects those who would wish him absent (his sister’s new ‘mother’) or silent (his ‘mother,’ Miss Edna), changing them for the better, and sees straight through those with evil intent (the drug store guards who are suspicious of him because he is black, p 7). He clings to those who build him up: his sister and his teacher. Locomotion was a National Book Award Finalist and a Coretta Scott King Honor winner.
In Peace, Locomotion, Lonnie writes to his sister. He doesn’t send the letters, but writes them “because I love writing and I love you and when me and you are together again, I’m gonna want us to remember everything that happened when we were living apart” (p 8). Just wonderful writing. Genuine, insightful, and beautifully optimistic even when dealing with the horrors of war, loss, and separation. A Printz Award nominee that could go the distance.
Read more at: BCCLS
The Devil’s Paintbox by Victoria McKernan
When I was a child, my friends and I would huddle around a computer (I’m dating myself; computers were rare way back then) and play a game called The Oregon Trail. It was all the rage. (My goodness, how things have really changed!) I never thought about what it might have been like to actually traverse that path. McKernan’s novel brings it home, makes it personal.
This book is getting some Printz Award buzz. Here is a sample of the beautiful prose:
Aiden had somehow expected to wake up one day and just see the mountains there, tall and snowy and stabbing at the sky like the picture of the Alps in The Atlas of the World. But the horizon crept up so slowly that they appeared at first only as a faint rise on the far edge of the earth, like a line of baby teeth (p 61-62).
It is the spring of 1865. Having just survived a bitter winter, Aiden and his sister, Maddy, are the lone survivors on their family’s draught-ravaged farm in Kansas. Mr. Jefferson J. Jackson is a trader looking for able men to work as loggers in Washington.
“Timber company outside of Seattle will pay me one hundred dollars for every man I bring in.” He looked the skinny boy over again and hoped he wasn’t going to regret this. “Once there, you’re bound to work it off. It’s hard work. Rough living. Plus costs of your passage owed to me. That’s another hundred dollars. Each. It takes most men a year to work it off and you got her to keep, so figure two.”
Maddy and Aiden go along with Jackson’s wagon train, ending their starvation but opening the way for new dangers. The caravan is full of different people heading west for different reasons, but Aiden and Maddy are the main focus of the narrative. While the others are well described and interesting, we never feel too attached to them. Some will surely die. Their deaths are swift and unexpected but bring home the reality of the dangers each travelers faces. When a group of Indians crosses path with the train, the story widens its scope and never looks back, extending in length even after the wagon train disperses.
The whole story was fascinating and multifaceted. Aiden and Maddy’s development was brilliantly told, the plight of the Indians was not simplified nor their characters stereotypical. I was wondering where the story was going as it dragged a little after Aiden broke off from the group, but I should have had more faith. McKernan showed her readers the rough logging community, the treacherous city and the peaceful calm of Jackson’s trading post and brought it all together with the sly and calculating puppet-master, Napolean Gilivrey, timber company owner. Magnificent.
Read another review at: BCCLS, Plymouth Staff Choices
Vocabulary:
scurvy (p 31), gregarious (p 35), taciturn (p 129), ague (p 135), desultory (p 251), totemic (p 260)
Discussion Questions:
- Read the Recent Trends in Infant Mortality Rate in the United States (published by the National Center for Health Statistics). How does this information compare to the infant mortality rate as painted by Aiden (p 38)?
- After speaking with Marguerite about Doc Carlos, Maddy reflects silently, “It seemed there was no end to the complexities of hurting” (p 58). What does she mean by this? Do you find this to be true as it relates to your life? How are the surviving characters hurting at the novel’s conclusion (consider Aiden, Doc Carlos, Tupic, Annie and Polly, even Napolean Gilivrey)?
- The Nez Perce Indians have a different view of religion, nature, man, and the world: “Too much Bible” (p 99), Aesop’s Fables (p 110-12), “Sand Creek changes the way the heart beats in a man.” (p 125), and prayer versus action (p 144-45). What do you think of their views and their different positions on how to deal with white men? How does Aiden react to them?
- The Nez Perce Indians are also confused by Aiden’s description of an orphan (p 148). How are orphans treated today and is it a good system?
- When Tupic and Aiden part ways, Tupic says, “In a different world, I would keep you as my friend.” Why couldn’t the two remain friends and how is the world different now? How is it the same?
- How does Aiden react to those who insult himself or his sister (p 17,77-78, 233-35)? How does his reaction reflect his physical/mental state, his development, his character/personality? How would you have reacted?
- When the army soldiers appear, the Indians are skittish and Aiden becomes suspicious and asks, “Have you done something?” “Yes, we have dome something,” Tupic said sharply. “We were born Indians” (p 115). What does he mean by this? Are there ethnic groups today that might say the same thing about their existance and why? How can we change how they are treated?
- Woud you have traveled the Oregon Trail, knowing its dangers and what awaited you at the end? Why do you think people did it?
When you Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
It has been said this book “has a darkness and a depth that pulls you in” (Fuse #8), a subtly ominous mood and perfect pacing (100 Scope Notes). It has been called LOST for the middle grade set (The Reading Zone).
SPOILER ALERT
However, I am reading this on the heels of The Time Traveler’s Wife, so I saw immediate comparisons between that and When You Reach me, not only in plot, but also in the philosophy and the theory of time travel. It is as if Stead read The Time Traveler’s Wife and decided to make a spin off story for middle schoolers.
When Henry (Time Traveler’s Wife) time travels, he arrives naked. So does Marcus. There is no machine à la H. G. Wells. Both Henry and Marcus arrive at a place that was important in their pasts (for Marcus, a place where he often walked and would have chased a boy to his death, had his older self not stepped in). Both books mention other works of literature. When You Reach Me leans heavily on A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle. Sure, we can all remember reading one particular chapter book over and over again (for me, it was Matilda), but Stead invokes A Winkle in Time close to the point of annoyance.
So, was I blown away by this book as I thought I would be? No. Not at all. Maybe if I had read it prior to The Time Traveler’s Wife. Can I appreciate that is praise-worthy and all those things mentioned above: well-written, engaging, humorous, truthful with three dimensional characters? Absolutely.
This book stacks up with a book like Neil Armstong in My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me. Great characterization, solid story, but not quite award-worthy. It just doesn’t seem to stand up to the likes of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, which takes previously published stories and stereotypes (like vampires) used millions of time, and yet pulls it all together to make a fabulous story so deliciously all his own. Definitely booktalk worthy, despite its unfortunate cover.
Nominated for the Printz and surrounded by Newbery buzz, I’m sure this one will have some hardware come 2010… then again, I was sure Graceling would too and I was wrong. Hum.
Wings by Aprilynne Pike
What to say about Wings? I’m not motivated to write a summary so you can get the low down at Miss Print. I picked this book up because Meyer promoted it… so it will get into the hands of teens just as The Girl Who Could Fly did. The difference between these two books is that I enjoyed The Girl Who Could Fly while Wings was absolutely ordinary and suffered from the same poor writing as Meyer’s Twilight series. From the opening page (“If she had to be indoors, she wanted at least to see outside.”) to “Tamani’s eyes a deep well of something she couldn’t quite place (p 282), this novel suffered from the same poor sentence structure and daffy descriptions that constricted Meyer’s series.
The cover art is beautiful and the story unfolds like a slow-blooming flower (this is a plus) but the ending was remarkably predictable. And what’s up with every teen Googling to find answers? It’s like they’ve never heard of books, archives or databases. Google has all the answers apparently. Ug. This also mirrored Bella’s actions.
This book has all the markings of a series in the making, except for a number on the book. Then again, the Twilight series has no number or series title. Which means it could go on and on and on and on…
Update: Also a Printz nominee. I hope it goes no further.
