King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender

The sudden death of his older brother forces an African American boy to confront his loneliness, grief, and shame, but to ultimately own his truth and find self-acceptance.

When Khalid James, 16, overhears his younger brother Kington's white best friend Sandy Sanders secretly telling him he's gay, he tells King not to hang out with Sandy anymore. After all, King doesn't want people to think he's gay, too, does he? And King, because he loves and looks up to his brother, stops being friends with Sandy, even though he didn't want to. But King has a secret, too. Would Khalid stop loving him if he knew King's secret?

Shortly after that, Khalid suddenly dies while playing basketball. With unresolved issues, King can't let go of his brother. At the funeral, when a dragonfly suddenly flies into the church and lands on Khalid's casket. King takes it as a sign that his brother isn't really gone, he's just become a dragonfly.

And so everyday, King walks to the bayou in his Louisiana town where the dragonflies are, looking for Khalid, desperate to keep a connection with him. Later, at night, he reads the journal he had kept of the things Khalid said in his sleep, describing his vivid dreams about the different worlds he visited at night. And King takes comfort in his own dreams about Khalid.

And it's at the bayou, that he runs into Sandy Sanders, who offers to listen if King needs to talk, an offer King rejects. That night at dinner, however, King learns that Sandy Sanders has gone missing, and even though King knows he's probably the last person to see Sandy, he doesn't say anything about it - not to his parents, not even to his friends at school.

But then King discovers Sandy hiding in his backyard tent, and once again, secrets are revealed when Sandy confirms King's suspicions that his father Sheriff Sanders, whom King knows is a scary racist, is also cruel and abusive at home and Sandy is his prime target. Despite Khalid's warning not to hang out with Sandy, the two former best friends begin to talk again. When it becomes dangerous for Sandy to live in the tent, they move him into an empty, rundown fishing shack not far from where King watches the dragonflies.

There, they reignite their friendship, but when Sandy is discovered sleeping in the shack, he decides it's time to run away and wants King to come with him, King finds himself even more conflicted. To begin with, his parents, so grief stricken by Khalid's death, are beginning to move on with life and want King to do the same, but he just can't do that yet. And more and more, King is admitting to himself that he doesn't like girls the same way he likes boys. But his brother's words keep coming back to him and King knows that in a small, southern homophobic town, being gay and black isn't going to be easy. Maybe he should run away, too.

King is a 12-year-old with a lot on his plate and no one to talk to now that Khalid is gone. Kacen Callender has caught King's anger about Khalid's death, his unresolved issue of whether or not Khalid would still love him knowing King's secret, and his confusion about his sexuality so realistically it's hard to remember King is a fictional character. The family dynamics are also spot on, giving the reader just enough of a glimpse to see what a happy family the James' were before losing Khalid, and contrasting it to who they became as they processed their grief and bereavement, his mother's retreat into her grief, his father trying to hold it together and finally breaking down.

And as if Callender's well-drawn character's aren't enough, he throws in one more - a small town in Louisiana, complete with the humidity, the heat, sweaty clothes, insects, racists, and rumors. The nuanced setting added so much ambiance of King's world.

King and the Dragonflies is a thought provoking coming of age/coming out novel. King's conflicts and his confusion about how to define himself without Khalid are palpable, emotional, and moving. This is a novel not to be missed.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an ARC provided by the publisher, Scholastic Press

MMGM: My Jasper June by Laurel Snyder

When I was young, my best friend and I found a secret place inside the dense bushes that grew outside the Prospect Park police station. It was a glorious open space where we would spend summer afternoons eating a picnic lunch we'd packed in a shoebox, reading books, drawing, or just talking. It was a place that got us away from parents and siblings and any problems at home.

Naturally, as soon as I began reading My Jasper June, I found my empathy level increasing for the protagonist, Leah Davidson, 13, from the start. Summer vacation has just begun in Ormewood Park, Atlanta, a place seeped in community traditions, all of which the Davidson family used to happily participate in. But now, a long empty summer looms for Leah. It's only been a year since younger brother Sam died as a result of a drowning accident, and since then, her parents, consumed by overwhelming grief, has been shadows of their former happy, vivacious selves. This summer, her mother forgot to make arrangements for Leah to go to camp, and though her dad suggests she take a class, nothing comes of it. Which is fine by Leah.

After spending the first days of vacation hanging around the house, Leah decides to go for a walk, following a path leading to Red's Farm, a place where she and her family used have picnics. It's there, lying on a rock in the nearby creek, that Leah first sees Jasper. The two girls chat a bit, exchange names, and Leah heads home.

Feeling a strange connection to her, Leah returns to the creek every day, hoping to see Jasper again, and finally she does, running into her while washing her clothes in the creek and wearing a nightgown. Leah invites Jasper home to use their washing machine, and a real friendship begins to form. But when Jasper finally takes Leah to her home, it is nothing like she had expected. Jasper lives alone, in a tiny abandoned house with no electricity or running water, hidden behind vines, shrubs, pines and a veil of morning glories. Jasper's hideaway from the world feels magical to Leah, a adventure right out of the books she loves, but Jasper is quick to let her know there is nothing fantastical about her situation, her homelessness is the stuff of the real world and a painful home situation.

The two girls find support and solace with each other, but Leah has promised Jasper not to reveal her secrets to anyone. A terrible storm that hits while she is visiting Jasper becomes a game change, however, when Leah's dad shows up in the middle of the night. Jasper and her circumstances become the catalyst for all the pain, the secrets, the guilt, and the grief to finally be brought out into the open, resulting in a much needed dialogue in the Davidson household. Jasper's homelessness pulls Leah's parents out of the grief-induced lethargy. Which is great, but what about Jasper? What will happen to her?

I have to admit, as I read, I thought this book would go in one of two directions, either it would be a coming out novel or maybe a story with roots in speculative fiction of the haunting variety. And it does have a feeling of fantasy about it, but without crossing that line. Reality always intrudes, as when Jasper reminds Leah that her life "...isn't a game. We aren't playing Narnia or Hogwarts. This is my real life." It doesn't go in either one of those directions, rather, it is reality fiction plain and simple and it deals with some pretty serious realities - death, grief, guilt, abuse, and homelessness. But it handles these in ways that are thoughtful and Snyder tempers these harsh realities with friendship, healing and hope.

Both Jasper and June are such well-defined, sympathetic, believable characters. Coming from very different backgrounds, each finds themselves in circumstances made difficult by the adults who should have been there for them, but weren't. Their friendship becomes a real godsend, providing them with a secret place to work through their feelings on their own.

Snyder draws wonderful characters, but she is also a master at setting. She has a way of taking her readers into her story and, though careful, vibrant description, makes them feel as if they were an invisible part of the story, watching the action unfold while sensory details wash over them. I know I could smell those morning glories outside Jasper's hideaway. I had the same sensation when I read Orphan Island.

My Jasper June is a satisfying story, and one that is sure to become a middle grade classic.

This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was an EARC received from Edelweiss+

Be sure to check out the other Marvelous Middle Grade Monday offerings, now being carried on by Greg at Always in the Middle. 

The Afterwards by A.F. Harrold, illustrated by Emily Gravett

December, nicknamed Ember, and Happiness, called Ness, live next door to each other and have been best friends for three years now. They did everything together, walking to and from school, playing in the schoolyard, and having lots of laughs and fun with each other. So Ember is pretty surprised one day when she calls for Ness to walk to school and no one answers the door.

At school, it's announced that one of the students has died after an accident, and to Ember's surprise and distress it turns out to be Ness. This is hard news to take, and Ember is understandably distracted, so when her creepy Uncle Graham picks her up from school one day, she unquestioningly goes to his house with him. When evening comes, he says he is taking Ember home, but instead they end up in a place that is black, white, and grey. There, Uncle Graham finds his recently deceased dog, and Ember find Ness sitting on the steps in front of her now grey empty house. Ember is excited to see Ness, but Ness is quite lackluster and grey.

When Ember discovers that Uncle Graham brought her to this place called the afterwards, where people go to forget their lives and are only echoes of their living selves, in order to swap her living self for his dog's dead self and bring the dog back home - alive and well. Luckily, there's a mangy, but wise cat who takes an interest in Ember, and a mysterious lady named Ms. Todd who gets Ember back among the living.

But...now Ember knows that there is a way to bring back the dead and that is just what she intends to do for Ness. After all, isn't that just what best friends would do? But when Ember finds herself stuck in the afterwards is there really no way out?

The Afterwards is a very dark, surreal fantasy told in the third person from Ember's point of view so the reader is privy to her feelings, thoughts and plans. The writing is simple, straightforward, so matter-of-fact that it makes the uncanny feel almost real. Harrold has imbued Ember with qualities of courage, loyalty, and vulnerability. She never tries to understand what has happened, only focusing on rescuing Ness from death, despite being told over and over by the cat and Ms. Todd that that can't be done. Ember never questions where Uncle Graham got his directions to the afterward, simply accepting that he did. She simply focuses on the task she's set for herself. In this way Harrold effectively deals with themes of loss, grieving,  and then being about to move on and live life.

Gravett's illustrations, often fusing color and grey to distinguish between the living and the deceased add to the sinister feeling of the story, and there were certainly times when I felt like something really ominous what going to happen, but the illustrations brought the story back to where it belonged - disturbing but not horror.

The Afterwards is definitely not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if you like stories that are dark yet poignant this is a really good choice. In fact, if you loved Neil Gaiman's Coraline, then The Afterwards is definitely a book for you. The writing creates that same haunting feeling of entering an in-between world that exists but doesn't exist, that's familiar but not familiar and it is all deliciously creepy.

This book is recommended for readers age 11+
This book was bought for my personal library

2016 Cybils MG Finalist: Ms. Bixby's Last Day by John David Anderson

There are six kinds of teachers in the world, according to sixth-graders Topher and his friends Steve and Brand. The sixth kind is the ones they call the Good Ones. And this year they finally have a Good One - Ms. Bixby. So when she sits her class down to tell them that she has been diagnosed with cancer, ductal adenocarcinoma to be exact, and will be leaving soon, the three boys decide to give her the exact last day she had described in class during an assignment: Imagine you had only one day left on the earth. What would you do with it?

As the three boys prepare for Ms. Bixby's last day of school, they discover that her cancer treatments aren't working and that she is now in the hospital. Not quite ready to give up the idea of giving her a good last day, the boys decide that if Ms. Bixby can't be in school for it, they will take it to her in the hospital, even if it means skipping school for part of the day to do it.

But gathering the three things that Ms. Bixby said she would want on her last day isn't easy. The price of the white chocolate raspberry supreme cheesecake from Michelle's Bakery is way beyond any amount the boys had imagined; the bottle of wine has to be bought for them and they couldn't pick a worse person to do that; but the McDonald's french fries works out without a problem.

Over the course of their preparations, each boy narrates his individual story and we discover why Ms. Bixby is so important to each one, since their feelings go much deeper than just a schoolboy crush. Each boy feels isolated, alone, and unimportant for their own reasons, and those feelings are just what Ms. Bixby taps into. For all her coolness and pink striped hair, I couldn't help but wonder if she shared those same feelings in her personal life.

Steve Sakata's helicopter parents are accomplishment and recognition oriented and to make matters more complicated for him, he has a sister who fulfills his parents dreams with trophies and ribbons. B's are not acceptable and honorable mentions, Steve believes, only serve to remind him of who actually won. Always feeling like he is falling short in his parents eyes, it is Ms. Bixby who tells Steve that to be ones self in a world that wants make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Topher (short for Christopher) Renn's parents couldn't be more different from Steve's. They are too busy with their jobs to care much about what he is up to, flitting from one thing to another, assuming everything in Topher's life is okay. Topher is an accomplished artist, and while his drawing were once a big deal with his parents, now they barely look at them. But Ms. Bixby does, much to his surprise.

Brand Walker's mother is dead and his father is on disability after falling three stories from a scaffold. Confined to a wheelchair, he chooses to spend all his time in the house watching television, which means that Brand has had to learn how to run the house and manage what little money comes in. And if they want to eat, Brand has to walk to and from the grocery store two miles away. As he finally tells his friends, it is an eternity when you are carrying a gallon of milk, a bag of potatoes, and six family-sized boxes of mac and cheese, and torture in freezing cold rain. But, it is Ms. Bixby who saves him, in more ways than just a four mile walk for groceries.

While their adventures between leaving school and arriving back there at the end of the day are sometimes humorous, something poignant, and sometimes dangerous, their adventure are merely the vehicle that carries their stories and Ms. Bixby's part in them. In a world where they feel like they are not good enough, Ms. Bixby's message to each of them is that there is someone who really thinks they are just great just the way they are.

Steve, Topher, and Brand are typical middle school boys. Their thinking is so spot on, and their friendship reflects the kinds of up and downs you would expect from that age. As an adult with a Kiddo, I did have trouble with the wine buying episode and its aftermath, yet it was also so typical of that age to do what they did.

There is no doubt, given the name of the novel, that this is going to be a real tearjerker of a story. Being a teacher, I love a good teacher story and Ms. Bixby definitely belongs to that small but esteemed club of favorite teachers in literature.

Ms. Bixby's Last Day made me laugh and cry. I know my middle school self would have loved every word of this book.  It has just the right amount of poignance without slipping into maudlin and I think what makes it bearable and not just a dead teacher story is that, for the most part, it focuses on Ms. Bixby when she is alive and vibrant.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was purchased for my personal library

Blog Tour: Matylda, Bright & Tender by Holly McGhee

Sussy (short for Susquehanna) Reed and Guy Hose have been inseparable best friends since that day in Kindergarten when he showed her how to make a never-ending Mr. Potato Head. The two friends have done everything together ever since - with one exception. They have never been allowed to have a pet.

Now in fourth grade, Sussy and Guy manage to talk Mr. Reed into letting them get Guy's choice of a leopard gecko. They find the perfect one at Total Pets, a gecko that seems to have been as immediately attracted to Guy as he was to her. And he thinks she should be called Matylda "of the Ancient Face and Starfish Toes."

Although Matylda lives in a tank on top of Sussy's dresser, she seems to like Guy so much more than Sussy, much to Sussy's dismay. The friends even give Matylda a warrior history, in which she is victorious in battle and her master grants her one wish -  to be loved, a wish that is granted when Sussy and Guy find her in Total Pets.

Then one morning, Guy decides Matylda needs some vitamin D3. The two friends hop on their bikes and start riding, when a dog runs out and goes after Sussy on her bike. Guy gets off his bike to yell at the dog just as a car is coming down the street. Next thing Sussy knows is that her best friend is dead.

After the funeral, Sussy suddenly finds herself alone for the first time since Kindergarten. She begins to obsessively focus on Matylda, trying to figure out how to love Matylda the way Guy had, believing that if she does everything right, she could hold on to Guy.

When summer comes, Sussy isolates in her bedroom, every day dressing in the same red capri pants and sunflower shirt she wore the day of the accident, reliving it over and over and over. The only time she leaves the house is to go to Total Pets to buy something for Matylda, something that she hopes will convince Matylda that she loves her just like Guy had, and that will make Matylda love Sussy just as she had loved Guy, enabling Sussy to continue to hold on to him.

At Total Pets, she finds herself stealing food and toys for Matylda, egged on by the stealing girl's voice in her head. As each thing fails to do what she wants, Sussy returns to the store more frequently, until she realizes the store clerk, who had always been so friendly and helpful, is on to her and Sussy's world, as carefully constructed as the never-ending Potato Heads, comes flying apart. But it was a world constructed by Guy, and now, Sussy must find a way to construct her own world without him.

Sussy and Matylda are the central characters here, and both are believable. Sussy's first person narrative feels natural and realistic as she tries to navigate her new life without Guy while still not letting go of him. Her story is interspersed with memories of the two friends, giving the reader a real sense of what their friendship was like. As Sussy recalls more and more about Guy, the reader begins to realize that this was an uneven though dear relationship, with Sussy frequently letting Guy take the lead and acquiescing to his ideas - like insisting that they must get the vitamin D3 for Matylda.

The other characters, including Sussy's parents, Guy's mother, Mike from Total Pets are satellite characters, secondary to Sussy's struggle, much of which is experienced in her thoughts. These other characters don't need to be fleshed out, but they are needed to be there for support and love, which they all do well.

McGhee has written Sussy's grieving process with a mixture of anger, confusion, guilt, and magic thinking. Sussy begins to find herself so very tired from have to go on without Guy, suddenly not really knowing how to do things by herself. The world has lost all its color, and Sussy experiences everything around her as grey. It doesn't take long for her to endow Matylda with thoughts and feelings that a gecko is just not capable of having. The fact that Matylda would rest on the back of Guy's neck probably has more to do with hiding and warmth than with the love Sussy thinks the gecko has for him.

Matylda, Bright & Tender masterfully explores the very sad, very poignant grieving process of a child, and while Sussy's pain is palpable, McGhee has infused her story enough humor so that it doesn't overwhelm the reader. Sussy's story does end on a note of hope and new friends who will help her move on and discover who she is without Guy.

Matylda, Bright & Tender is a well-done, heartwarming, tender story, and one not to be missed.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was sent to me by the publisher, Candlewick Press

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay

***Contains Spoilers***

Set in a small English town, Conor O'Malley, 13, is a boy with a recurring nightmare. Each night, he dreams of trying to save his mother, he loses his grip and she slips away from him. The dream is a reflection of his waking life - his mother is ill with terminal cancer, and she is slipping away from Conor day by day. But Conor refuses to believe that she won't get better, no matter what is said to him or what he sees happening to his mum.

And it doesn't help that at school, ever since his mother's illness began, former friends avoid Conor, teachers overlook him and the school bully isolates him, leaving Conor to feel alienated, invisible and abandoned by everyone.

One night, as Conor wakes from his nightmare, at precisely 12:07, he hears someone calling his name outside. Getting up, Conor sees the giant Yew tree that has been overlooking the graves in the churchyard for hundreds of years, outside his window. Once outside, the monster-sized tree is surprised that Conor isn't afraid of him, but assures him that he will be. But how could this monster possibly scare a boy who knows worse monsters already?

The next day, convinced it was all a dream, Conor is surprised to find leaves and twigs on his bedroom floor. But that night, at exactly 12:07, the monster is once again outside Conor's window. Insisting that it was Conor calling him that made him go walking again, the monster also tells Conor that he will tell him three parables, and when he is finished, Conor will tell a fourth story, his own story, and that it must be the truth or he will eat Conor alive.

The very next day, Conor's cold, disagreeable, overbearing grandmother arrives at the house to take care of his mum. That night the monster returns, and tells Conor the first parable about a prince, the prince's love and the queen, his stepmother. Not liking the way the parable end, Conor discounts it. The next day, when he is bullied again, Conor turns on the girl who tries to help him, and lets her take the fall for trying to help him.

As his mother's cancer gets worse, and it becomes clear that the new round of chemotherapy isn't helping, she is hospitalized and Conor's grandmother insists he come live with her, since Conor's parents are divorced and his father is living in the United States with his new family.

Not happy at his grandmother's, Conor arrives home from school angry and destroys his grandmother's clock, a family heirloom, and everything else in the room. That night at 12:07, the monster appears in his grandmother's backyard and tells Conor his second parable about an apothecary who refuses to help save a parson's daughters who are ill. Not liking the ending, Conor again discounts the parable. When his grandmother sees the ruined room, instead of punishing him, she stops speaking to Conor, rendering him invisible.

The next night the monster returns at 12:07 and tells Conor his third parable, about a man who was invisible because people refused to see him. At school the next day, Conor confronts to boy who has been bullying him and beats him up.

In fact, each time the monster tells a parable, Conor disagrees with the ending, and yet, he acts them out the next day. And it is only after he has caused pain and destruction, that he realizes what he has done. And true to his promise, the monster returns for the fourth story, Conor's truth. And, as difficult as his truth is for Conor to speak, it will no doubt surprise you.

Patrick Ness has done something really different in A Monster Calls; in the parables, he has the monster tell them in such a way, that the characters aren't either good or bad, but a combination of both, just as what Conor is struggling with in his nightmare is a combination of grief and guilt.

A Monster Calls is one of the most honest books I have ever read. It is difficult to recognize Conor's pain, but it soon becomes obvious that no one, not even his mother, wants Conor to know how bad things are. What is really sad, is that the well-intentioned people around Conor are the ones who created the nightmare but not addressing his mother's illness honestly. Only his assertive grandmother is willing to address what will happen to him when his mother is gone (not a spoiler, it's clear from the start mom is dying). And it is the job of the monster to help Conor find and admit his truth, so that the business of healing can begin, allowing the story to end on a hopeful note.

A word about the exquisitely rendered illustrations by Jim Kay. They are as dark as any nightmare, yet if you look at the closely and carefully they reveal more that you might realize. If ever there were illustrations that perfectly supported the text and themes of a story, this is definitely it. Though they were digitally rendered, the final illustrations were sketched over and over again before they were done.

My favorite

A Monster Calls is a powerful story about guilt, love, loss, and grief as only Patrick Ness could write.

This book is recommended for readers age 13+
This book was sent to me by the publisher, Candlewick Press

The yew tree/monster plays a big roll in A Monster Calls. A yew tree can live as long as 1,000 years and really are often found in church graveyards.  If you would like to know something more about them, including their mythological connections, you can find information on the website of the Ancient Yew Organization

Now that the movie is out, I was tempted to include the trailer for it, but instead I decided to include the original book trailer, after all, that's what I reviewed here:

The Remarkable Journey of Charlie Price by Jennifer Maschari

Things haven't been very good in the Price home since Charlie, 12, and younger sister Imogen's mother passed away. There are piles of laundry to be done, dad keeps working later and later, and no one knows how to cook anything worth eating, especially not their mother's special spaghetti.

For Imogen's birthday, Charlie tries to make the good smelling, great tasting remembered spaghetti, but it turns out to be inedible, upsetting Imogen who storms off to her room.  The next morning, looking uncharacteristically disheveled, Imogen tells Charlie she spent the night with their Mom.

Sure enough, Charlie discovers a hatch under Imogen's bed that leads to a parallel world, exactly like the one they live in, except here Mom is alive, the laundry is done, the food smells and tastes good, and she has all the time in the world to spend with her children.  But soon, Charlie notices that Imogen's eyes have a vacant glassy look, exactly like his friend Frank had shortly after his beloved grandmother died and Frank disappeared.  And Imogen is beginning to fade out of family photographs.

But none of this makes any sense to star Mathlete Charlie, who consoles himself with the fact the no matter what else happens, 2 + 2 will always equal 4.  Still, he also finds the pull of spending time with this living Mom sometimes too strong to overcome, despite his misgivings about her.  And to make matters confusing, every time Charlie and Imogen do something with Mom, it's the first time - first spaghetti meal, first scavenger hunt, first scrabble game.  Noticing that he is also fading from family photos, Charlie begins to suspect his real world memories are fading or getting lost, which is confirmed when his friend Elliott reminds him about having eaten his mother's delicious spaghetti.  But why is he forgetting such pleasant memories.

Finally, when Imogen gives up everything in the real world in favor of staying with Mom, Charlie knows it's time to enlist the Elliott's help to get her back.  But can they succeed or will the power of Mom be too strong?

The Remarkable Journey of Charlie Price  is a sinister page-turner in the same vein as Neil Gaimen's Coraline.  It is written from the third person and told by a narrator with a point of view limited to Charlie.  Most of the story takes place in the two places children are supposed to feel safest in - home and school.  But home is not safe because of a distant father and no mother, so the temptation to spend time with the Mom in the parallel world is great, especially for the more vulnerable Imogen. School seems to be a place where people are feeling sorry for the Price kids, but don't really look too closely to notice their unusual behavior.
 
When a parent dies, kids no longer have that feeling of safety that comes with attentive parents. There's no one there to support and to admire their achievements, which we see with how easily Imogen gives up her Wizard of Oz school play, even though she's Dorothy, and how Charlie jeopardizes his place on Mathletes because of spending time with a Mom that makes they feel loved.
I thought the characters of Charlie and Imogen were well developed and fully realized.  Maschari takes them through the whole range of emotions that a young person would feel after the loss of a beloved parent.   And oddly enough, the memory-stealing Mom, even though she is no more than a phantom, was also fully realized.

But beyond the creepy mother and other fantastic elements to this novel are some pretty serious themes of loss, grief, friendship, and the power of sibling relationships.  The ease with which one can get mired in grief and the difficulty of moving on after a loss are both vividly depicted, as it the support siblings can give to each other at times like that.  And the limits of school and even a school-supported grief groups are sadly also realistically portrayed.  Still, this is a novel that ends on a hopeful note as the Price siblings learn the ways in which their mother will always be with them.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee

Sylvie Sherman, 12, was a fast runner.  In fact, she was the fastest runner in Hobbsnon School, so fast she needed to grab hold of something to slow herself down.  So one frosty morning, after building a snow family that included a fox Sylvie took off running, but not before sister Jules, 11, grabbed hold of blue mitten, accidentally pulling it off.  Jules never sees her sister again.  Sylvie seems to just vanish.  Though she has most probably fallen into the river and drowned, no body is recovered.

Just as Sylvie disappears, a fox gives birth to three kits, two males and one female.  The female, called Senna, is born kennen.  Kennen links an animal to a spirit, to help them or to finish something left unfinished, to settled the unsettled.

Devastated by her sister's death, Jules stays home from school for weeks, unable to face the empty space on the school bus next to their best friend Sam, comforting herself by organizing and reorganizing her rock collection, and afraid she will loose the connection to the mother she never really knew except through Sylvie and her dad's memories of her.  And of course, there is the guilt that what happened to Sylvie is somehow her fault for not stopping her.

Jules and Sylvie, along with Sam, had always defied their father's Do Not rules - do not get out of earshot of the house, do not mess with wild animals, do not miss the bus, do not, under any circumstances, go near the Slip, where the rushing water would suck a body down.  But the three kids liked to toss "wish rocks," rocks upon which they wrote their burning wishes, into that part of the river.   Sam had two wishes - that his older brother Elk would come home from Afghanistan and that he would see the catamount rumored to be in the area.  Elk came home but a changed man, a veteran who has lost his best friend Zeke in combat, is probably suffering from PTSD, and who now roams the Vermont woods that surrounds their homes.  Elk seems to understand who Jules is and what she is going through.  Can he help her? And can she help him?

Jules has never had a burning wish until Sylvie's disappearance.  Sylvie's wish is always to run faster, but why is a mystery that Jules would like to solve and has become her burning wish.

When Senna hears the crying of an unknown creature, she leaves her sleeping family lair, lured by the cry to where she and Jules come face to face, wondering why the smell of the crier is so familiar to her.

Are Jules and Senna linked?  Can Senna help Jules solve the mystery of her sister's death?

Maybe a Fox is an amazing book, not just amazingly sad, but it is also a multilayered, richly textured story about love, family (human and fox), loss, mourning, and courage...and hope.  The characters are all well realized and the setting, the beautiful rural Vermont woods in early spring, is easy to visualize based on the descriptions the authors use.  At first, I did have a little trouble picturing the Slip but as I read, it became a better image in my mind.

The book is divided into three parts.  Part One focuses primarily on Jules's story; Part Two concentrates on Senna and Part Three brings them together, yet the third person point of view alternates between that of Jules and that of the fox throughout.  And there are elements of magical realism, which takes the story out of realistic fiction and helps to disperse the overwhelming grief, guilt, and loneliness that Jules carries within.    

This book really hit home for me. I lost a sister that I played with all the time when I was 6 years old, and I think that Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee did a spot on job of capturing that pervasive sense of emptiness that you never stop feeling once someone close to you has died.  I think sibling loss is something that lots of kids must deal with nowadays and, despite all the heartbreak and the pervasive sadness of Jules's story, it ends on a note of hope and the sense of the future.

The publisher has provided a discussion guide for Maybe a Fox your use.  You can find it HERE

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

A Song for Ella Grey by David Almond

A group of teens living in Tyneside in northern England, tired of winter's cold and wanting some freedom, decide to spend their upcoming Easter holiday camping on Bamburgh Beach in Northumberland.  Best friends Claire and Ella have been inseparable since they first met at age 5, but Ella was adopted and her parents think she spends too much time with Claire.  As the time comes closer to leave for Bamburgh Beach, Ella's parents forbid her to go, citing falling grades blamed on Claire and their friends.

Claire and the others head to the beach anyway, armed with tents, food and wine for a week.  It's there, after a few days, that a mysterious, rather otherworldly young man carrying a lyre suddenly shows up.  He says his name is Orpheus and he plays the most captivating music they have ever heard, so beautiful that even birds, seals, snakes and dolphins come near to listen to him play and sing his songs.  Wanting to share the experience with Ella, Claire calls her and holds out her phone for Ella to listen.  Orpheus and Ella speak and he ends the call by singing a song for he into the phone: "it was the song of everything, all life, all love, all creation. It was his song for my friend Ella Grey."   Though they haven't met, it is clear that Ella and Orpheus are in love with each other.

Back in school the next week, Ella is a changed person, much to Claire's unhappiness.  When Orpheus shows up outside the school, Claire leaves in the middle of class and goes out to him.  By half-term, they have decided to marry, on Bamburgh Beach, surrounded by Ella's friends.  Sadly,  two poisonous snakes are also there.

David Almond used the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as the basis for A Song for Ella Grey.  If you are familiar with this myth, you know the significance of the snakes; if you don't know this story from ancient Greece, it doesn't matter; either way you are in for a reading treat (and if you are really curious, don't skip Almond's letter to his readers for more information at the beginning of the book).

A Song for Ella Grey is narrated in the first person by Claire.  She is the one who's left behind, to tell the tale, really, to sing the tragic song of Ella Grey, to bring Ella "into the world for one last night, then let her go forever" (in ancient Greek drama, tragedy is a song).  To tell the tale of Ella, Claire makes and wears the mask of Orpheus, a device also used in Greek tragedy, in order to "let him sing his tale through me."

I read this as an ebook, so I wondered why I was seeing Chapter One, Chapter Two, etc. more than once throughout the book. When I looked at the Table of Contents, I noticed the story was divided up into 6 parts, just as Greek tragedy is.   In fact, Almond has included a number of conventions from Greek drama, including the structure of the book (there's a good paper topic for high school).
 
When I first began reading A Song for Ella Grey, I have to admit that I wasn't totally taken in as quickly as I have been with other David Almond books.  But now, having finished it and thought about it, I can honestly say, this is one of the best books I've read by him.  In fact, I think that Almond is one of today's most lyrical writers, and the story of Orpheus and Ella so beautifully told, the feelings of young love and yearnings is so palpable, it will perhaps remind you of your own first serious love.  And it is easy to understand why he was awarded the 2015 Guardian Children's Fiction prize.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin

Suzy Swanson and Franny Jackson first met in a swimming class at age five.  Franny was a girl who could already swim across the pool underwater; Suzy was the girl who  wanted to swim like Franny and be her friend.  And they were, doing everything together, happy in their own world, apart from the popular girls.  Until sixth grade…

Suddenly, Franny is hanging out with the popular girls and Suzy is left alone, still not wanting to be part of that clique.  Franny had made Suzy promise to send a strong message if she ever became like those other girls and at the end of the school year, Suzy leaves Franny an unusual message that totally backfires and the girls part  at the end of summer no longer friends.  That summer, while on vacation with her family, Franny drowns.

Unable to accept that Franny, the good swimmer, drowned, unable to accept her mother's explanation that "sometimes things just happen," Suzy wants a justifiable reason why Franny died swimming.  And she finds one that she believes is viable in the jellyfish exhibit while on a class trip to the local aquarium.

Assigned to do a research paper by her life science teacher, Mrs. Turton, Suzy begins to research jellyfish; at the same time she decides to no longer talk, effectively alienating herself from her divorced parents, her older brother and his partner, the psychologist she is taken to, the science teacher she actually likes and any new friend possibilities.   All she wants to do is prove her theory that Franny died after being fatally stung by the rare Irukandji jellyfish, found mostly in Australia, though some jellyfish researchers believe a small migration may have occurred as far away as the eastern seaboard of the United States.

It sounds like a pretty far-fetched explanation, but Suzy is determined to prove it, even if that entails lying, stealing from the people who love her, and the possibility of clandestine travel to Australia.

Since Suzy is required to do a lengthy research paper for science, The Thing About Jellyfish is framed by the seven steps of the scientific method - Purpose, Hypothesis, Background, Variables, Procedure, Results, Conclusion - according to Mrs. Turton.  At the beginning of each section, the reader is given Mrs. Turton's explanation of what each step involves, and the chapters that follow each step more or less follow it.  Sounds complicated and sometimes I felt a little overloaded with jellyfish information, but actually, it works in the story.

At the same time, the chapters within each section switch back and forth from present and how Suzy deals with her loss and her grief, to past (written in italics), so readers can see the evolution and dissolution of Suzy and Franny's friendship.  Sounds complicated, yet the switching is done seamlessly, occurring at just the right moment.

It seems that more and more young people must deal with the death of a friend in today's world and each responds to it in their own way.  What's important in books like The Thing About Jellyfish is seeing that a protagonist like Suzy may have a hard time with a death, but in the end there is the possibility of some kind of closure that enables them to go on.  And I know that sometimes kids will make up all kinds of stories about the person who has died, for whatever reason.  I was a kid when my dad suddenly passed away, and I remember that for a long time, I would tell people that he was sailing around the world on a fishing trip and wouldn't be back for a long, long time.  So Suzy's jellyfish sting hypothesis wasn't a far stretch for me to understand.

That being said, I did have some trouble with Suzy's lying and stealing, even though one could easily justify it given her state of mind and her obsessive need to explain Franny's death and her own actions on the fateful day their friendship truly ended.

I finished reading The Thing About Jellyfish the day the National Book Award finalists came out and at first, I was surprised to see it there, but that only made me think for about this debut novel and realize just what an important message there is to Suzy's story.  We each grief in our own way and that is as important for kids to know as it is for adults.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an EARC received from NetGalley

Nest by Esther Ehrlich

It's the end of summer 1972 and, so far, life has been pretty good for 11 year old Naomi Orenstein, nicknamed Chirp because of her interest in birds.  And living on Cape Cod year round, with her psychiatrist father, her fun-loving mother who is a dancer, and  her older sister Rachel, affords Chirp lots of opportunity to bird watch in her favorite, special spot, the perfect nest for observing all kinds of birds.

But one day after school, Chirp arrives at her spot only to find an old woman there who drives her away with a stick.  A foreboding of things to come?

Not long after, Chirp's mother falls down the back steps and next thing the family knows, she has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.  Dad, Rachel and Chirp try to make the best of things while Mom is laid up, but soon all the order and fun are gone from the Orenstein home.

Mom falls into a serious depression, Rachel starts hanging out at a friends house where attitudes about pot and sex are rather loosey-goosey and Chirp tries to control her spinning out of control world by wavers between good-girl thinking (if I'm good than everything will be OK and a kind of wish fulfillment thinking (anticipating what other people will think and/or do based on past experiences).  

As her mother's depression get worse, Dad decides to admit her to a private mental hospital where she is give electroconvulsive therapy.  Meanwhile, Dad doesn't seem to be able to emotionally reach his daughters to help them through these difficult family times, Rachel's relationship with everyone goes downhill, and Chirp finds a quirky friendship with Joey, a neighbor who is also in her class.  Josey has his own misery to deal with in the form of an physically and verbally abusive, controlling father.

After Chirp's mother comes home from the hospital, things seem to be almost back to normal, until tragedy strikes again and she commits suicide.  Devastated, Chirp withdraws from everyone except Joey, who seems to be as empathic towards her as an 11 year old boy with his own problems can be.  The two decide to run away to Boston, where Chirp hopes to find the Swan Boat driver who took her and her mother for a ride in the spring and who, she is sure, will remember her mother.  But will this desperate act to regain the memory of the fun-loving mother Chirp once had actually help her work through her grief?

Nest is a powerful historical fiction debut novel for Esther Ehrlich and she has done a superb job of really capturing the Orenstein family dynamic in happy times, in sad times and in tragedy, and of drawing Chirp's character about as realistically as possible.  Chirp is an endearing character. whose vulnerability is really just so poignant throughout the story, but though I felt her character had such depth, I didn't feel that way about anyone else in the novel.

Perhaps writing from Chirp's point of view is a disadvantage for developing secondary characters, but it  is a great help for keeping the dark parts of the story from overwhelming the reader and keeps their interest.  This is a midde grade novel but I don't think this is really appropriate for  younger middle grade kids (but that decision s entirely up to the parents and/or teachers).  For myself, at 9 and 10 I wouldn't have liked this book, at 11, I would have loved it.  Setting the novel in 1972 will also help readers handle the difficult content - time distanced away from the present can make all the different with young sensitive readers.

I did like all the mentions of different middle grade favorite books like Harriet the Spy, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, A Little Princess and The Secret Garden.  And readers may remember the Swan Boats from reading Make Way for Ducklings when they were younger.

The Orenstein family is the only Jewish family in their small Cape Cod town (the name of which is never mentioned, but is near Hyannis Post).  Ehrlich portrays the dilemmas faced by Jewish school children living in a basically Christian setting, describing some Jewish traditions like sitting shiva when there is a death and some anti-Semitic sentiments from the other kids, like Joey when he gets mad at Chirp.  I thought these added to the story without overwhelming it and making it feel even more realistic.

I would have liked to learn more about Joey and his germ phobia, his mild OCD and his family dynamic, but Ehrlich gives us only what we need to understand how he could go from being a bully to being a such a good friend to Chirp.Our homes are our nests, in a way, and Ehrlich has given us food for thought as we watch Chirp's nest fall apart and her attempts to rebuild it.

Nest may sound like a difficult read, and it is to some degree, but it is also a story of hope, love, family, and friendship and like her predecessors,  Harriet Welsch, Claudia Kincaid, Mary Lenox and Sarah Crewe, Chirp Orenstein is a character you won't soon forget.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an EARC received from NetGalley

An Educator's Guide for Nest is available to download HERE