'Missing May' by Cynthia Rylant

 From the BLURB:

When May dies suddenly while gardening, Summer assumes she'll never see her beloved aunt again. But then Summer's Uncle Ob claims that May is on her way back--she has sent a sign from the spirit world.

Summer isn't sure she believes in the spirit world, but her quirky classmate Cletus Underwood--who befriends Ob during his time of mourning--does. So at Cletus' suggestion, Ob and Summer (with Cletus in tow) set off in search of Miriam B. Young, Small Medium at Large, whom they hope will explain May's departure and confirm her possible return.

It seems to Summer that everybody in her life leaves too soon. Her mother died when she was young, and after that she was passed around to live with relatives, to be “treated like a homework assignment somebody was always having to do,” and never staying with any relative for very long. And then Ob and May came along when Summer was six. Her aunt and uncle were elderly by the time Summer went to live with them in their Deep Water trailer, but she didn’t mind. For the first time since her mother’s death, Summer felt loved and safe. She had found a home with Ob and May, and not a moment too soon; their trailer was filled to the brim with love – May cooked big breakfasts and used to tell Summer she was the best little girl she ever did know. Ob makes whirligigs – but not the typical cartoon ones most people stick in their gardens to frighten away birds. Ob’s whirligigs are works of art – he makes fire whirligigs and storm whirligigs, and spirit ones too.

But if there’s one thing Summer knows, it’s that everything good will eventually come to an end.

May has just died – keeled over while tending to her beloved garden. Now there’s just Ob and Summer left behind, and Summer can already feel her uncle pulling away . . . he doesn’t wait with her for the bus anymore, doesn’t cook big breakfasts like May used to and he has gotten to sitting around in his pajamas all day long.

In the midst of their grief, Summer’s classmate (and resident oddball) Cletus takes to popping round for a visit. Cletus used to collect chip wrappers, now he is obsessed with photos. He and Ob get along like a house on fire; Summer just wishes she wasn’t so jealous about seeing Ob light up when Cletus comes round with his suitcase of pictures, like he’s helping to ease Ob’s grief when Summer can’t seem to do anything.

And then Ob gets a visit from May’s spirit, and Summer knows what she must do to keep Ob here with the living, where she needs him.

‘Missing May’ was the 1992 highly-acclaimed middle-grade novel from Cynthia Rylant. The book won the coveted Newbery Medal and Boston Globe-Horn Book Award.

I've become a little bit obsessed with reading Newbery and Printz books. These are two of the biggest children’s book awards in the US, and lately I have been gorging on winning and honour books recognized by these prestigious organizations. It started with ‘Vera Dietz’, progressed with ‘Frankie Landau-Banks’ and hit a high-point with ‘The First Part Last’. I especially love perusing past and recent nominee lists because I find they are full of books I would have otherwise never heard of. Take Cynthia Rylant’s incredible ‘Missing May’, for example. An old book, first published in 1992, and very short (89 pages). But ‘Missing May’ caught my eye when I perused an old list of Newberry winners, and I am so glad I went hunting for a copy to purchase online. . .  because in just 89-pages, Rylant has written a heartbreakingly beautiful book that is exquisite for its honesty and simplicity.

‘Missing May’ is a book about grief. We meet Summer shortly after her aunt May has died, leaving behind Summer and her old uncle Ob in their trailer on a hill which now feels filled to the brim with grief. As Ob sinks further and further into his grief and loneliness, Summer becomes concerned that she won’t be enough to keep Ob on this earth. Summer becomes particularly worried when Ob claims to have received a visit from May’s spirit, and becomes hell-bent on tracking down her wayward soul. Helping in the spiritual mission is Summer’s classmate Cletus; a strange young boy who touts around a suitcase full of photos, and does not find Ob’s obsession with May’s spirit the least bit strange;

Cletus never once asked why I wasn’t at school that day. Never once commented on Ob being in his pajamas.
He sure had some gifts.
May would have liked him. She would have said he was “full of wonders”, same as Ob. May always liked the weird ones best, the ones you couldn’t peg right off. She must be loving it up in heaven, where I figure everybody must just let loose. That’s got to be at least one of the benefits of heaven – never having to act normal again.

But while Summer tries to help Ob find May’s spirit, and gets to know Cletus better, she seems to be forgetting about her own grief. . .

Rylant’s novel is beautiful. I read this on the train, and I got a few odd looks from people when they saw how thin the book was (with clearly a children’s front cover). I bet those same commuters found it especially odd when tears welled up in my eyes and I quietly sniffled through the last pages. That’s the thing about ‘Missing May’ – it may be only 89-pages, but Rylant has filled her book with such achingly precise observations of grief and missing, that 89 pages is all she needed to move me. I felt the same way about Angela Johnson’s (Printz-winning) novel ‘The First Part Last’ – “it takes a true maestro to move a reader to tears with a word-count that some authors spend on first chapters alone.”

Summer’s story is told with the utmost patience and care by Rylant, who has written a wise young narrator in Summer. She is a young girl who has had more than her fair share of heartache – from losing her mother to feeling rejected by nearly all her relatives . . .  all, except Ob and May. Summer’s aunt and uncle were the best kind of people – they didn’t have much, but what they did have they gave to Summer – all their love, care and attention was heaped on her, until it almost felt like all the pain she had previously gone through was worth it, to end up in that trailer on the hill with May’s big hugs and Ob’s whirligigs.

Everybody should read Cynthia Rylant’s ‘Missing May’ – it doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, this is a book which beautifully and painfully communicates the ache of missing and the hopelessness of grief. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

5/5

'The First Part Last' Heaven #2 by Angela Johnson

From the BLURB:

Bobby's a classic urban teenager. He's restless. He's impulsive. But the thing that makes him different is this: He's going to be a father. His girlfriend, Nia, is pregnant, and their lives are about to change forever. Instead of spending time with friends, they'll be spending time with doctors, and next, diapers. They have options: keeping the baby, adoption. They want to do the right thing.

If only it was clear what the right thing was.

Bobby has Feather and Feather means everything to him. Even if she wasn’t planned. Even if the plan was for him and Nia to give Feather up for adoption. Even if Bobby was just sixteen when Nia handed him a balloon and changed his whole life. None of that matters, because either way you cut it – between now and then – Feather means everything to her daddy.

‘The First Part Last’ was the 2003 Printz-winning book from Angela Johnson.

It took me a one-way train trip to read this 131-page book. One train trip to read the book, but the story is staying with me for a lot longer than that.

Angela Johnson writes first chapters better than some authors write entire novels;

I've been thinking about it. Everything. And when Feather opens her eyes and looks up at me, I already know there’s change. But I figure if the world were really right, humans would live life backward and do the first part last. They’d be all knowing in the beginning and innocent in the end.
Then everybody could end their life on their momma or daddy’s stomach in a warm room, waiting for the soft morning light.

So begins Bobby’s first person narrative, between ‘now’ and ‘then’.

Now, Bobby is tired and worrying – he has little Feather depending on him, but some nights he just feels like curling up in his mother’s bed and being the kid taken care of, instead of daddy to his baby girl. He loves Feather – her sweet smell and pudgy baby hands. But sometimes he misses who he was before she was born.

Then, Nia and Bobby had to sit down with their parents and feel the burden of their mistake. Bobby had to watch Mrs Wilkins smile because she couldn’t deal. He had to watch his own mother bite her lip so hard that blood ran down. And Bobby has to get used to the idea of being a father – no shooting hoops with K-Boy and J.L. whenever he feels like it. No asking grandpa to babysit whenever he can’t deal. He has to start taking responsibility and getting ready for the baby. He has to get Nia tacos when she’s craving, and rub her feet when she’s aching.

Angela Johnson’s story is sublime. If you think she can’t pack a punch in 131-pages, you will be startlingly mistaken. Johnson’s novel is beautiful and thoughtful, gut-wrenching and eloquent. But what makes the story even better is that she does it all in so few pages. It takes a true maestro to move a reader to tears with a word-count that some authors spend on first chapters alone. It’s like fitting a symphony into a pop-song, and I am awed by her prowess.

5/5

‘The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks’ by E. Lockhart

From the BLURB:

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:

Debate Club.
Her father's "bunny rabbit."
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:

A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Landau-Banks.

No longer the kind of girl to take "no" for an answer.
Especially when "no" means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society.
Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew's lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:

Possibly a criminal mastermind.
This is the story of how she got that way.

Frankie Landau-Banks grew up over the summer. Her frizzy hair smoothed, legs got long, bra filled out and now heads are turning, for a change.

To her family she was ‘bunny’, the last-ditch effort to save her parents flailing marriage, and her father’s last (shattered) dream to have a boy.

To her fellow pupils at the prestigious Alabaster Preparatory Academy, she was known as Zada’s little tag-along sister.

But now Frankie is sixteen, and by the end of the new school year she will have abducted a Guppy, campaigned for the rights of vegetables, created a subtle feminist rebellion and become the most despised student on campus.

This is her story, or at least, the prelude to her life’s story.

‘The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks’ was the 2009 Printz Honor contemporary young adult book by E. Lockhart. It was also a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

Wow. Just, ‘wow’. I adored this book. ‘The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks’ is exploring big ideas very subtly, and with a phenomenal narrative voice. This book covers a lot of teen dramas; dealing with social power-plays, sexism, feminism and inequality.

Frankie is starting at Alabaster boarding school afresh. She has gone up a cup-size over the summer, and now the popular senior boys are paying her attention. In particular, Matthew Livingston, heir to a newspaper empire and one of the Kings of Alabaster. But as Frankie and Matthew’s relationship gets serious, his friends start vying with Frankie for his attentions, in particular Alessandro ‘Alpha’ Tesorieri. When Frankie pieces together a curious puzzle concerning a secret all-male Alabaster society (so named the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds), Frankie concocts a plan to win her boyfriend’s affections (and attentions) and insert herself into the masculine exclusivity of the tempting Basset Hounds.

But as their pranks get wilder and more politically-minded, Frankie starts to really come to care for the floppy-eared rebellion. She starts questioning her place as a ‘little woman’ in a school of men.

The storyline could have deluged into so-so, mediocre territory if not for the utterly remarkable third-person narration that makes ‘Disreputable History’ a stand-out read. Our omniscient narrator feels more like a biographer. Someone who is picking apart Frankie Landau-Banks’ life history, and looking for the triggering moment that made her who she is today (as this God-like voice muses, she could have gone on to be a criminal mastermind, or president of the United States. At the very least.) We are given the impression that Frankie has become a person-of-interest, and now the time has come to sort through her sordid life history and look for contributing factors to her remarkable life;

How does a person become the person she is? What are the factors in her culture, her childhood, her education, her religion, her economic stature, her sexual orientation, her race, her everyday interactions – what stimuli lead her to make choices other people will despise her for?
This chronicle is an attempt to mark out the contributing elements in Frankie Landau-Banks’s character. What led her to do what she did: things she would later view with a curious mixture of hubris and regret.

The third-person narration is pure genius. It gives the novel a sense of foreboding, as we ponder Frankie’s brilliant scheming that will lead her to such infamy and memoir-exploration.

Frankie is a female protagonist unlike any other. She is clearly brilliant, but swamped by her feelings of female inferiority in a school previously overrun by men. Frankie is a planner and schemer, with a sharp mind and unlimited cunning. She is also a girl in love for the first time. It’s interesting to read and observe Frankie’s conflict, between her clear brilliance and her need to pander to Matthew’s affections. It’s clear early on in the story what Frankie’s journey will be. Lockhart is writing a girl’s first encounters with sexism and the antidote of feminism. But it never felt like these high-ideals were shoved down readers throats . . . I also appreciated the fact that themes of sexism and feminism aren’t exactly your run-of-the-mill YA explorations. Lockhart is offering up something different, but vital for young female readers. I tip my hat to her, I really do.

I don’t know why I’m constantly surprised into liking Printz Honor books. It happened with ‘Please Ignore Vera Dietz’ too, when I was completely caught off-guard by my absolute love of a prestigious book. ‘The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks’ is more Printz brilliance. E. Lockhart is writing a memoir-esque encounter of a girl’s grassroots rise to infamy (starting at high-school level, but no doubt rising to world domination in a few years). Our protagonist is cunningly wonderful as she navigates a man’s world but finds a way to manipulate it from within. I absolutely loved E. Lockhart’s inspired narration, and the vital theme of feminism in this young adult novel. A definite must-read.

5/5

'On the Jellicoe Road' by Melina Marchetta

My name is Taylor Markham. I live on the Jellicoe Road.

There are the Townies who think they own the place, and the Cadets who come once a year. Then there’s the Jellicoe School – a collection of abandoned and troubled teenagers who have all congregated at this bushland boarding academy.

And every year, there’s the territory war.

For as long as anyone can remember the boarders, cadets and townies battle it out for territory around Jellicoe – from the prayer tree to the club house, bike tracks and river walks. Jellicoe is a puzzle, and whoever gathers the most pieces, wins.

This year Taylor Markham has been voted leader of the school. Santangelo is the Townie boss, and Jonah Griggs the Cadet commander. Between the three of them they’ll wage war … but when the battle gets underway, the fight takes a turn none of them saw coming.

Taylor and Jonah have a history. They ran away together when they were fourteen years old. Taylor was running to her mother, the one who abandoned her on the Jellicoe road when she was eleven-years-old. And Jonah was just running.

When the war gets underway Taylor’s house mentor, her beloved Hannah, leaves unexpectedly with no word of when she’ll return. Taylor travels down to Hannah’s half-finished house everyday, searching for clues… like Hannah’s manuscript. The novel-in-progress tells tale of five Jellicoe children; Narnie, Jude, Tate, Webb and Fitz. The plot is out of order and mired in tragedy, but the more Taylor reads the more she’s convinced that there’s truth to the story. And maybe, just maybe, Hannah’s story will fill the gaps in Taylor’s own memory.

First published in 2006, ‘On the Jellicoe Road’ is Melina Marchetta’s standing ovation. Winner of the 2009 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, ‘Jellicoe’ put Marchetta on the world stage and for many young readers it is the Marchetta book of their generation.

‘On the Jellicoe Road’ was a real departure for Ms Marchetta, and as a result the book seems to have a polarizing love/hate effect on audiences. Both ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ and ‘Saving Francesca’, Marchetta’s first two novels, were told in linear. But ‘Jellicoe’ is not that easy. Narrated by Taylor Markham, readers are subjected to her fragmented mind – we are privy to the holes in her memory where something from her childhood is simply too awful to recount, but little pieces come floating out of the ether. Taylor’s memory is jogged by the sudden disappearance of her beloved Hannah, the woman who found her abandoned on the Jellicoe road all those years ago … with Hannah’s disappearance Taylor is forced to link the tragedies of the past with the events in her life today.


Aided by Hannah’s unfinished manuscript, Taylor delves into the tales of five Jellicoe teenagers; reading about their antics and friendship, the sadness that bought them all together and the tragedy that tore them apart. The tale of the Jellicoe five becomes the parallel story to Taylor’s, told in fragments as Taylor reads various pages of the manuscript and pieces the plotline together…

This, I think, is the biggest hurdle for readers to overcome. The backwards and forwards momentum of the novel and the duel stories, coupled with Taylor’s determined forgetfulness around the events of her childhood … it means that the novel comes to us in drips and drabs, the story leaking out like a dripping tap. But, therein lies the beauty of ‘Jellicoe’. This is a tough novel, to be sure, but it’s also one of Marchetta’s most rewarding and heart wrenching. ‘On the Jellicoe Road’ is a novel that stays with you long after you’ve read the last line. Taylor Markham leaves an impression, and if you persevere with the novel (despite lingering doubts) you’ll never regret having met her.

‘On the Jellicoe Road’ is especially beloved for having such a wonderful array of characters. From the Townies to Cadets, but especially the Jellicoe School, this is one novel that offers up a smorgasbord of secondary characters. There’s Townie leader, Santangelo, flanked by his Mullet Brothers (also affectionately called Heckle and Jeckle). His father is the resident Jellicoe cop, and Santangelo has a dubious and complicated past with Raffaela (a townie girl who attends the Jellicoe School). Ben and Raffaela are Taylor’s reluctant confidantes, the only two Jellicoe students who don’t immediately doubt Taylor’s capabilities as the new leader in their territory war.

Then there’s Jonah Griggs. Josie had bad-boy Jacob Coote, while Francesca pined for strong silent type, Will Trombal … but Jonah Griggs is in a league all his own amongst Marchetta’s men. Taylor first met him at a train platform when they were both fourteen years old and running away, now they are each leading their own factions and fraternizing with the enemy is strictly forbidden. There are rumours about Jonah. Rumours about what he did to his father when he couldn’t take one more beating. Rumours about what he does to those who trespass on Cadet territory. But the most persistent rumours concern him and Taylor … Jonah Griggs will break your heart, only to melt it again. I think he remains Marchetta’s most complex male lead (though Froi and Tom Mackee are giving him a run for his money). Jonah is beautiful for his complexities and many shades of grey. He has a violent past that continues to impact him today, but with Taylor he seems to find an inner peace that is born of their intense love. Taylor and Jonah are definitely a stand-out couple, especially for their proof that you can heal after tragedy, but not by yourself.

How does Jonah Griggs get to be a ten? He sits on a train with me when we’re fourteen and he weeps, tearing at his hair, bashing his head with the palm of his hand, self-hatred pouring out of him like blood from a gut wound in a war movie, and for the first time in my whole life I have a purpose. I am the holder of the grief and pain and guilt and passion of Jonah Griggs and as we sit huddled on the floor of the carriage, he allows me to hold him, to say, ‘Shhh, Jonah, it wasn’t your fault.’ While his body still shakes from the convulsions, he takes hold of my hand and links my fingers with his and I feel someone else’s pain for the first time that I can remember.

As I said, ‘On the Jellicoe Road’ is not an easy tale. It’s tough and bitter – Taylor’s past will haunt and anger you, Jonah’s confession will have you choking back tears and the unravelling tale of the Jellicoe Five will leave you a little bit heart-sick. But God, this book is beautiful.

Marchetta took a chance and wrote a complex backwards-and-forwards novel, based largely around the memory gaps of one girl’s delicate psyche. She writes about an ages-old territory war, which is intrinsically linked to a town’s history that has seen an abundance of sorrow.

This novel is filled with characters you’ll never forget, and two stories that will imprint on your heart and have you re-reading again and again and again. Not an easy read, but then again the best one’s never are. How to describe my adoration for this particular novel, when I love all of Melina Marchetta’s work so very much? Well, it’s probably best summarized by Taylor Markham herself;

I fall in love with these kids over and over again and my heart aches for their tragedies and marvels at their friendship.

'Please Ignore Vera Dietz' by A.S. King

From the BLURB:

Vera’s spent her whole life secretly in love with her best friend, Charlie Kahn. And over the years she’s kept a lot of his secrets. Even after he betrayed her. Even after he ruined everything.

So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone—the kids at school, his family, even the police. But will she emerge to clear his name? Does she even want to?

Charlie Kahn is dead, and Vera Dietz can’t decide if she still loves him or hates him irrevocably.

In the aftermath of death, Charlie has become a villainous cautionary tale for Vera’s classmates. The events surrounding his death are shady, horrendous and psychopathic.

But Vera knows the truth that could clear Chalie’s name. And Charlie wants to be proven innocent – he haunts Vera with his paper-cut-out ghosts who fold like an accordion around Vera in the small confines of her car or at the Pagoda Pizza Delivery shop where she works.

But Vera has her own problems. Like convincing her Zen-like dad that she isn’t succumbing to his lousy alcoholic genes. Or convincing herself that she’s nothing like her stripper mother who abandoned the family when Vera was twelve. Vera also has to convince herself that her friendship with Charlie meant something, and wasn’t tossed away because of some Detentionhead losers who stole him away from her in the months leading up to his death.

Vera Dietz may just want to be ignored – by her dad, classmates, arch-nemesis Jenny Flick and the thousand-and-one Charlie’s who haunt her daily. But some things you can’t ignore . . . like the truth.

‘Please Ignore Vera Dietz’ is the acclaimed Printz Honor novel from literary young adult author, A.S. King.

Urgh.
Wow.
Sigh.

Words cannot express (but I’ll try).

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you one of my new all-time favourite novels – ‘Please Ignore Vera Dietz’. This, *this* right here is why young adult novels are more than the sum of their parts. When somebody gives me a perplexed look after I tell them that I write and most enjoy YA books – I wish I could shove ‘Please Ignore Vera Dietz’ down their throats and make them eat it the same way Vera and Charlie eat their napkins. A.S. King is exquisite proof that some of the most exciting and refreshing writing are being explored in the genre intended for younger readers. The young adult genre is the cable television network of writing (HBO, baby!). Everyone may think that movies and adult literary fiction are where it’s at – but cynics and critics need only look to ‘Vera Dietz’ to know the truly astounding work that lies within this genre.


When the novel begins Vera is eviscerated by her emotions. Her childhood best friend (turned enemy in recent months) has just passed away under a cloud of suspicion. Vera misses Charlie every day . . . while also hating him for the way he treated her before his death. But Vera’s emotions are even more complex than that. Because Vera loved Charlie, even when she hated him she loved him. And now that he’s dead she loves to hate him even more in a never-ending spiral of mixed messages and hopeless emotions for a dead kid.

Is it okay to hate a dead kid? Even if you loved him once? Even if he was my best friend? Is it okay to hate him for being dead?

Vera’s grudge extends to her reluctance in helping ‘ghost’ Charlie clear his name. Vera holds the key to Charlie’s innocence . . . but before she can find it in her to forgive him enough to free him, she has to go back to where it all began . . .

The story back-tracks through Charlie and Vera’s history. Sometimes figments of memory feel empty and pointless – like tossing paper airplanes off the rocks overlooking the Pagoda shopping mall. Other times previously forgotten memories take on bigger-than-life meaning . . . like a white Chrysler cruising by. Or the wall-shaking fights that come from the Kahn house next door.

Interjecting Vera’s recounts is the dead kid himself, putting his two cents in from beyond the grave. Also piping up is the inanimate object, Pagoda – a monument to failed dreams and questionable symbolism. Vera’s dad also has a thing or two to say – about how Vera is coping with Charlie’s death (not well, and with copious amounts of alcohol).


And as Vera remembers, she misses and mourns. She mourns the tree-climbing friendship she and Charlie had in their youth, and she misses the future she and Charlie don’t have to mend.

Because with Charlie, nothing was ever easy. Everything was windswept and octagonal and finger-combed. Everything was difficult and odd, and the theme songs all had minor chords.

‘Please Ignore Vera Dietz’ is a novel of magnificence. It’s about bullying and grief, abandonment and ignoring a problem until it festers and explodes. But above all else, it’s a novel of forgiveness. Forgiving people their mistakes and bad choices, the hurts inflicted and sorry’s never given.

5/5