'Hope Was Here' by Joan Bauer

From the BLURB:

One new life, coming right up. Hope's used to thinking on her feet - she hasn't become a terrific waitress by accident. But when she and her aunt move from New York City to a small town in Wisconsin to run the local diner, she isn't sure she'll fit in. Luckily, she doesn't have much time to brood. G.T., the owner, has decided to run for mayor, an no one in town knows what to think. After all, G.T. has leukemia. And his opponent is the unscrupulous current mayor, who will do or say anything to win the election. Hope knows that G.T. is up against the odds=but his visiton of the future is so vivid and good that she can't help but join the campaign. Because, after all, everyone could use a little hope to get through the touch times. Even Hope herself.

Hope’s mother was meant to be a waitress more than a parent. That’s why after Hope was born prematurely, she left Hope with her aunt Addie and never looked back (though she does send Christmas newsletters). Just about the only thing Hope’s biological mother left her was a bad name (Tulip) which she has had legally changed… plus a talent for waitressing, and frequent tips on how to get good tips.

Addie has been the best mother a girl could ask for. Her pancakes are legendary, her pies are criminal and her meatloaf is drool-worthy. It’s Addie’s job to show up at diners that need help, get them back on their feet and then take off for parts unknown again.  Which means she has dragged Hope and a U-Haul all around America – and Hope has made friends and said goodbye to them in countless states, always leaving behind the scribbled words ‘Hope was Here’ in some unassuming place.

Now Addie and Hope are coming to Wisconsin, to help out a man called G.T. - owner of the “Welcome Stairways” diner who has recently been diagnosed with leukaemia, and needs a helping hand to keep the restaurant going while he recovers.

But that’s not all G.T. needs help with. He figures that since he’s dying, he has nothing to lose – so he’s taking on the local mayor, Eli Millstone, and the big business Dairy factory and running for local candidacy. G.T. intends to take on the corruption that is rife in town, bring down the tax-evading dairy factory, and Eli who is lining his pockets with dirty dealings.

Helping G.T. accomplish his clean political campaign is young cook, Braverman, who Hope develops a small fascination with. Local pastor and best friend, high school politician called Adam and a slew of small-town customers.

Hope isn’t really used to permanency, or trusting people. But since coming to Wisconsin and seeing the integrity with which G.T. is trying to win a hopeless campaign … well, it’s got Hope trying to live up to her very big name.

‘Hope Was Here’ is a NewberyHonor book, written by Joan Bauer in 2000.

 ‘Hope Was Here’ is continuing my love of Newbery Honor books, another sweet gem of the middle-grade readership that I gobbled up in one train ride. The book begins with sixteen-year-old Hope leaving New York behind and heading out to Wisconsin with her adopted mother, Addie, for yet another new food adventure. But when we meet her, Hope is becoming weary of the road and her and Addie’s always-changing homes. Hope is feeling particularly disgruntled at this latest move, because it came after their NY diner business partner, Gleason Beal, took off with another waitress and all of Addie’s life savings.

Hope is a most interesting character; because when we meet her life has already beaten her down and moulded her some. She admits that it took a short boxing career to punch out her built-up anger at her mother; anger for leaving her as a sick baby, anger for not being the mothering type, anger for still calling her ‘Tulip’ when she changed her name to Hope. After the Gleason Beal debacle, Hope is both saddened but not all that surprised at the betrayal. Here we are meeting a kid who is already world-weary, and if it wasn’t for Addie being her constant and comfort, she would have a completely negative outlook on life.

What kinds of kids live in Mulhoney, Wisconsin? 

Would they like me? 

Would I like them? 

Have they ever eaten suhi? 

That’s usually how I determine food sophistication. Maybe a personal ad would get the ball rolling. 

Insightful, hardworking 16-year-old girl, emotionally generous and witty, seeks friend/pal/chum to wile away meaningful hours. Picky eaters need not reply.

Hope’s low-expectations of people are confounded by her having to leave the best ones behind. She finds that making friends is the first step to accepting a new place as home, but having had to leave so many people she loves behind, she has taken to not making promises of seeing them ever again (though she does write them). When we meet her in Wisconsin, she’s really feeling down and out;

When does the magic hit in a new place and you suddenly fit in?

So, of course, the stickler of ‘Hope Was Here’ is reading Hope change her outlook on life, and try living up to her name. The journey Hope has to go on has an obvious end-result, but it’s the way Joan Bauer gets her there that’s so darn great.

When Hope and Addie arrive at the “Welcome Stairways” diner, they don’t realise they’re stepping into brewing political warfare. Diner owner, G.T. is dying and intends to fight against small town corruption with his last breath. He is the embodiment of everything Hope isn’t right now – he may not be a permanent fixture of this earth for much longer, but he’s intending to do the most he can with what little time he has left. He can’t promise people that he’ll even be able to complete a full term if elected, but he can show them that he intends to do the best job he can for however long this illness he’s battling will let him.

I loved this book. Hope is an exceptional narrator – I sort of see her as this girl who’s fighting a grin, so sometimes it looks like she has pursed-lips from sucking on sour grapes so long, but really that grimace is just a smile waiting to break out.  Her thoughts sometimes turn dark – when she thinks about the mother that didn’t want her, or the people she has had to leave behind – but her namesake is often bigger than her woes and she’s this girl who is constantly breaking out in sunshine, despite the rain. I loved her. And I think she’s the main reason that, despite being a 16-year-old narrator, Joan Bauer’s ‘Hope Was Here' is a proud middle-grade book.

This one also had me crying buckets by the end – as much for the story as to be leaving behind this cast of characters who I so enjoyed spending a little bit of time with.

This is a beautiful, heartfelt book that asks big life questions in a small-town setting. Hope is one of the best narrators, and Joan Bauer’s book is being added to my list of favourite Newbery’s.

5/5 

'Walk Two Moons' by Sharon Creech

From the BLURB:

"Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out."

To trace the path of her missing mother, Sal embarks on a journey from Ohio to Idaho with her grandparents. On the road, Sal tells the strange and exciting story of her friend Phoebe. As the miles pass, Phoebe's tale becomes more and more outrageous, while Sal's own story begins to emerge. In unraveling Phoebe's mystery, Sal comes ever closer to finding out the truth behind her own bittersweet journey. What will she find at the end of the road?

Salamanca "Sal" Tree Hiddle is telling a story to her Gram and Gramps. While on a road-trip trek from Ohio to Idaho, with the trees whispering for her to ‘hurry, rush, hurry’ Sal is recounting the story of her friend, Phoebe Winterbottom and the lunatic who changed her life.

But in the telling of Phoebe’s tale, Sal is learning the truth of the old proverb: "Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins" . . .  because Phoebe’s story is entangled in Sal’s own, and what happened when her mother left for the badlands.

‘Walk Two Moons’ by Sharon Creech was first published in 1994, and won the Newbery Medal in 1995. It has since become an American children’s classic, and for good reason.

I read the last chapter of Sharon Creech’s ‘Walk Two Moons’ aboard the Number-57 tram. Lumbering towards Lonsdale Street I started to cry, and by the time I'd arrived at my North Melbourne destination I was attracting curious stares from my fellow commuters. This book wrecked me, in the best possible way.

We meet Salamanca "Sal" Tree Hiddle shortly after her father has uprooted her from Bybanks, Kentucky and the last memories of her mother. Now they live in Euclid, Ohio next-door to Margaret Cadaver and her blind mother. But when the book begins Sal is at the beginning of a road-trip journey to Idaho with her Gram and Gramps. Something in the trees is compelling Sal to rush across the American heartland, to get to Idaho and her mother . . . but along the way Gram and Gramps want to be entertained. So Sal starts telling them a story. She tells them about her new life in Euclid, where she has befriended the prudish Phoebe Winterbottom, whose family is undergoing a change somewhat similar to the one Sal’s little family went through not so long ago. Sal also talks about Ben Finney, who imagines a soul similar to her own and keeps trying to plant a kiss on Sal’s lips.

‘Walk Two Moon’s is a novel of beautiful equilibrium; at once terribly sad, and terribly funny. In recounting the story of Phoebe’s lunatic, who brings her family crashing down, Sal paints a wonderful picture of her best friend; a young girl whose wild imagination is rivalled only by her snobbish temperance. Sal recounts Phoebe’s story like a puzzle she’s piecing together for her Gram and Gramps – explaining the cryptic messages that were first left on the Winterbottom porch, and then the various investigations Phoebe and Sal conducted searching for the lunatic.

But Phoebe’s story has a deeper meaning for Sal, who draws parallels between the Winterbottom’s struggles and the events that led to her mother leaving Sal and her father behind to go on the very same Idaho road-trip Sal is currently undertaking with her grandparents.

‘Walk Two Moons’ is glorious. For a long time it feels almost like Sal’s story is a collection of vignettes as she recounts the many memories she has of her mother, the enigmatic Chanhassen Hiddle. So many things trigger memories for Sal, something as harmless as a blackberry pie holds a landmine of remembrance; 

She pulled me to her and said to me - though it was meant for my father, I think - 'See? I am almost as good as your father!' She said it in a shy way, laughing a little. I felt betrayed, but I didn't know why.
After that dinner at Phoebe's where we had the blackberry pie, I started wondering about all of this. I was part of my mother - she was me and I was her - more than I was part of my father. So anything that was true of her was true of me. It was as if she had said, 'We're almost as good as your father,' and I wanted to say, 'We're as good as - We're better,' but why I wanted to say this, I don't know. I love my father.
It is surprising all the things you remember just be eating a blackberry pie.

But in teasing out the memories, and questioning the events that led up to her mother leaving home, Sal’s story begins to take shape. I wouldn’t say that ‘Walk Two Moons’ is ever a strictly linear story – though Sal’s recounting Phoebe’s lunatic tale is a fairly straightforward narrative, Sal explaining her own story takes many twists and turns. She’s a young woman who has gone through a lot of life changes in a very short amount of time – not least of which includes moving away from the only home she has ever known, a new shivery awareness of Ben Finney and the colossal hole her mother’s leaving gouged in her heart. It often happens that to understand one component of her changing world, Sal has to go back and look at old memories with a fresh perspective. This is a rather lovely facet of childhood-into-adulthood that Creech explains at Sal’s slow and steady pace.

Half-way through the book, you will begin to feel a niggling of sadness. Something is on the horizon, and the same way that Sal hears trees telling her to ‘rush, hurry’ or ‘slow, slow’ – so too will the sadness of this book start whispering. It’s a creeping kind of sadness – beautifully teased by Creech increment by increment. But there’s an overarching theme in the book, concerning the Greek myth of Pandora’s Box, a subject Sal’s class are studying in English. By the end, tears in my eyes, I decided that ‘Walk Two Moons’ was a literary Pandora’s Box in itself – that although there was incredible sadness and pain within, the slivers of hope are the lasting effect of Creech’s wonderful novel. The lessons Sal learns, her singing tree, blackberry kisses, the shivery feeling Ben ignites and Phoebe’s lunatic are all so beautifully hopeful that the sadness, though sharp, does not prevail – hope does.

5/5

'The Hard Pan Trilogy' by Susan Patron

From the BLURB: 

Lucky, age ten, can't wait another day. The meanness gland in her heart and the crevices full of questions in her brain make running away from Hard Pan, California (population 43), the rock-bottom only choice she has.  

It's all Brigitte's fault -- for wanting to go back to France. Guardians are supposed to stay put and look after girls in their care! Instead Lucky is sure that she'll be abandoned to some orphanage in Los Angeles where her beloved dog, HMS Beagle, won't be allowed. She'll have to lose her friends Miles, who lives on cookies, and Lincoln, future U.S. president (maybe) and member of the International Guild of Knot Tyers. Just as bad, she'll have to give up eavesdropping on twelve-step anonymous programs where the interesting talk is all about Higher Powers. Lucky needs her own -- and quick. 

  

But she hadn't planned on a dust storm.  

Or needing to lug the world's heaviest survival-kit backpack into the desert. 

Lucky Trimble lives in Hard Pan, California, in a canned-ham bedroom attached to a trailer. She lives with Brigitte, who is not her mother but her biological father's French ex-wife. Brigitte came to Hard Pan all the way from France because Lucky's father asked her to, after Lucky's mother went out into the desert after a storm and was struck dead by lightening.  

So for now Lucky lives with Brigitte, who calls her 'petite puce' which sounds lovely in French, but really means 'little flea' in English. Lucky loves Brigitte, but does not dare hope that she will want to be Lucky's mother for good.  

So in between trying not to hope that Brigitte will become Lucky's mother, and avoiding looking at her real dead mother's ashes in an urn, Lucky decides to find her higher power to get her through. It's what everyone talks about at the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting held at Hard Pan's Found Object Wind Chime Museum. Higher power. Short Sammy talks about it a lot, when he recounts the story of the day his beloved dog got bit by a snake and his wife left him, and how he ended up finding his higher power that got him through the worst time in his life. 

'The Higher Power of Lucky' was Susan Patron's 2007 Newberry award-winning middle-grade book. In 2010 Patron went on to continue Lucky's story with 'Lucky Breaks', and ending with 'Lucky For Good' in 2011, when Lucky is twelve-years-old, rounding the books out to the 'Hard Pan Trilogy'.

Susan Patron's series is a complete delight; for both its charismatically flawed heroine and her delightfully quirky hometown of Hard Pan. The first book, 'Higher Power of Lucky' begins when Lucky is ten-years-old, and her mother has just recently passed away, 'replacing' her with her father's ex-wife, the French Brigitte. We are introduced to this very unconventional family unit, which encompasses the wider town of Hard Pan, populated with quirky characters. There's Lucky's best friend, Lincoln, a knot-tying protégé with hopes of becoming the future President of the United States. Litle boy Miles who has a perfectly-timed cookie-retrieval system for visiting all the Hard Pan residents. There's also Short Sammy who lives in a water tank, and mourns the loss of his best dog friend not to mention an archeological team who breeze through Hard Pan to stop at Brigitte's renowned French-bistro café. 

The books are all about Lucky; a glorious ragamuffin of a girl who is navigating the changing landscape of her life after losing her mother. The books begin when she is ten and follow her to age twelve, but Patron's brilliance lies in not restricting Lucky to her young age - she has moments, particularly in 'Lucky Breaks' and especially 'Lucky For Good' when she's starting to notice the opposite sex, beginning to appreciate (and resent) the flaws in her character and truly come to realize the impacting world beyond Hard Pan. 'Lucky For Good' is a particularly interesting book for Lucky's evolution, because she starts to think on the feelings of resentment and anger she has towards her absent father - who abandoned Lucky and her mother shortly after she was conceived.  Patron doesn't inundate the books with all of these life-changing, big marker moments - and it's partly thanks to the third-person narration that as readers we can see Lucky's forming character, but don't get bogged down in the life-changing momentousness of it all.  Patron is such a masterful storyteller, particularly in her middle-grade revelations, that she gives the readers just enough incite to have that spark of recognition regarding big changes within Lucky. And some of Patron's emotive descriptions and similes are just so pitch-perfect and brilliant;  

Lucky had the same jolting feeling as when you're in a big hurry to pee and you pull down your pants fast and back up to the toilet without looking - but some man or boy before you has forgotten to put the seat down. So your bottom, which is expecting the usual nicely shaped plastic toilet seat, instead lands shocked on the thin rim of the toilet bowl, which is quite a lot colder and lower. Your bottom gets a panic of bad surprise. That was the same thump-on-the-heart shock Lucky got finding out that Miles's mother was in jail.  

—   'The Higher Power of Lucky'.  

These books are very much focused on family, but not the conventional, nuclear one of other middle-grade books. Patron, in her 'Lucky' series really embraces the notion that it takes a village to raise a child, and lacking blood-ties doesn't mean lacking in love. Lucky's interactions with her stepmother, Brigitte, are heartfelt and lovely;  

Brigitte laughed. "I tell you a little story about why I love to live here. When I first arrive in California, I see the sign on the highway; 'Soft Shoulder.' I think this is a very beautiful thing for a road sign to say: 'soft shoulder.'" 

Mrs. Wellborne laughed and nodded. 

"We do not have any like it in France, and I am curious. Later I learn it means the side of the road is too sandy and your car can get stuck. So 'soft shoulder' is a practical warning, but sweet. Like a small poem. It is a romantic way to see the world, just like to believe anything is possible." She shrugged. "Before, when I live in France, I believe not everything is possible. Never do I imagine that one day I will go to a little town in the middle of this big California desert or that, even working very hard, I can start my own business." 

Lucky listened with some amazement. Usually Brigitte didn't share those kinds of private thoughts with someone she'd just met. The two moms must have really bonded because of those phone calls. 

"And," Brigitte continued, "certainly never do I dream that the girl waiting inside a water tank house will later be my daughter. So now that I am almost American, I see out of my almost-American eyes that it is true: Anything can be possible. And if Lincoln does become president, he will be a very great one."  

—  'Lucky Breaks'  

I really enjoyed reading Susan Patron's Newberry-winning series, focused on Hard Pan native, little girl Lucky and the cast of quirky characters in her desert hometown.

  

5/5  

'Everything on a Waffle' by Polly Horvath

From the BLURB:

Primrose Squarp simply knows her parents did not perish at sea during a terrible storm, but try convincing the other residents of Coal Harbour on that score. For all practical purposes, at least for the time being, Primrose is an orphan, and there’s no great clamoring of prospective adopters. After realizing the impracticality of continuing to pay Miss Perfidy (a mothball-scented elderly lady) an hourly wage to baby-sit her, the town council is able to locate a relative, Uncle Jack, who reluctantly takes Primrose into his care. Primrose does warm up to living with him and in his home, despite the eerie noises resembling a hockey game that haunt her in the night. But true sanctuary can always be found at a restaurant called The Girl in the Swing, where everything—including lasagna—is served on a waffle, and where the proprietor, Miss Bowzer, offers a willing ear, as well as sage advice. .

Primrose Squarp is busy believing in the unbelievable.

Primrose’s mother and father are lost at sea – and Primrose has been living with her babysitter, Miss Perfidy ever since the wild storm that (supposedly) carried them away. But then her Uncle Jack arrives in the town of Coal Harbour, to become Primrose’s guardian.

Uncle Jack leaves the navy to come and live with Primrose (and start a housing development in the picturesque town) – but Primrose expects the arrangement will only be a temporary one – because she is certain that her parents are alive. Primrose is positively certain that her mother and father are sitting huddled on an island somewhere, deciding how to return to their daughter.

In the mean time, Primrose loses a toe and hangs out at ‘The Girl in the Swing’ and gets cooking tips from Miss Bowzer, who his fending-off Uncle Jack’s offers to buy the place out.

It’s just a matter of time before Primrose’s parents return, and everybody in Coal Harbour who thinks Primrose is in grief-denial will be proven wrong, and showed the power behind positive thinking. . .

‘Everything on a Waffle’ is the Newberry Honour book by Polly Horvath.

I read this book as a part of my Printz/Newberry kick. I loved the title, and thought it had an interesting premise about a girl whose parents recently vanished (suspected dead). But in reading ‘Everything on a Waffle’ I found myself somewhat let-down by Horvath’s avoidance of the heavier topics hinted at in the blurb. . .

Primrose Squarp is a wonderful character (and has a cool name!). She’s very upbeat in the wake of tragedy; a perpetually sunny, optimistic little sweetheart whose faith in her family is unwavering. Throughout the book Primrose gives recipes for the various foods and delicacies that she mentions throughout her adventures in Coal Harbour. It’s partly out of comfort that she recites these recipes for the reader – since many of them are meals her mother made. But the recipes also illustrate Primrose’s deeper perceptions about the goings on around her, like this recipe for Caramel Apple;

Do not muck around with chocolate or nuts or anything else fancy that may tempt you. It will only gum up the works. Sometimes you get tempted to make something wonderful even better but in doing so you lose what was wonderful to begin with.

I really liked reading about the town of Coal Harbour and its residents. From the boastful-boring Ms. Honeycut, to forgetful Miss Perfidy. Horvath does a wonderful job of making the town a character unto itself – and I had no problems in believing that Uncle Jack would be trying to buy up real estate in the area.

What I struggled with in this book, was Horvath’s reluctance to write the tragedy of Primrose’s parents. Her father, a fisherman, was at sea in the middle of a terrible storm – and Primrose’s mother took a little dinghy out to try and save him. Both were lost at sea, suspected dead by everyone (except Primrose). I thought the whole book would be about Primrose coming to terms with the truth of her parent’s death. But Horvath isn’t building up to that at all – instead she wraps things up nicely, and I had a small problem with that.

In reviewing this I’m thinking about the very sad news of Maurice Sendak’s death. I read a great article about the author of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ in The Age. This article discusses how Sendak’s life was affected by the Holocaust; his brother joined the army, and many of Sendak’s European relatives were captured and killed. As a result of encountering death and brutality so early on in life, Sendak said "It forced me to take children to a level that I thought was more honest than most people did." The point of the article being that, although Sendak’s books were magical and beautiful adventures, at the crux of them he wanted to help children grow up – to confront a few realities and leave the “wild rumpus” behind, for truer things. And I like that. I love children’s and young adult authors who don’t ‘talk down’ to their audience – they don’t pull punches and they don’t shy away from the harder, truer side to life. And that’s why I didn’t particularly like the ending of Horvath’s book . . .  it was all wrapped up a little too neatly, a too sickly-sweet, unbelievable happy ending.

So, ultimately, I thought that the neatly-wrapped ending didn’t do this book justice. Sure it was cute and quirky, Primrose was magnificent and the recipes offered an interesting character insight. But I felt like this book was a bit like fairy floss – all temporary tastiness, no real substance.

3/5

'Olive's Ocean' by Kevin Henkes

From the BLURB:

Sometimes life can change in an instant

Martha Boyle and Olive Barstow could have been friends, but they weren't. Weeks after a tragic accident, all that is left are eerie connections between the two girls, former classmates who both kept the same secret without knowing it. Now, even while on vacation at the ocean, Martha can't stop thinking about Olive. Things only get more complicated when Martha begins to like Jimmy Manning, a neighbor boy she used to despise. What is going on? Can life for Martha be the same ever again?

Olive Barstow died before anyone could really get to know her. She was the shy new girl who had only been in Martha’s class for a month before a tragic accident took her life. Her death was a shock and terribly sad, but it’s not like Martha really knew the girl . . .  at least, that’s what she thought. But right before Martha and her family leave for their annual holiday at her grandmother ‘Godbee’s’ house by the ocean, Olive’s mother pays Martha a visit. She has a note for Martha, a note that Olive wrote, about her hopes and dreams for the coming year; and it turned out that one of the things she most wanted, was to be friends with Martha.

‘Olive’s Ocean’ was the 2005 Newberry Honour book from young adult and children’s author, Kevin Henkes.

I’m still on my Newberry/Printz book kick, and still on a winning streak with Henkes’s deceptively deep, ‘Olive’s Ocean’. The book is ultimately about death, and the moment in a young person’s life when they come to realize their own mortality and fleetingness. Martha Boyle is about to go to her Godbee’s house by the ocean, a trip she looks forward to every year, but she is waylaid by the appearance of Olive Barstow’s mother; who appears on Martha’s doorstep a month or so after the death of her daughter who was hit by a truck while riding her bike. Olive’s mother just wants Martha to know that her daughter had hopes of a friendship with her, that along with dipping her toes in the very ocean Martha is about to go visit, she most wanted to be friends with her because she seemed nice . . .  thus, Martha leaves on her family vacation with Olive’s note in her pocket, and her thoughts keep retuning to the dead girl.

Martha spends a good deal of her holiday thinking about the many small coincidences and links between herself and Olive, and she inevitably thinks about how Olive is no longer here to live out all those dreams she put into a note. Also turning Martha’s thoughts to life’s passing is her grandmother, ‘Godbeee’. Godbee is getting on in years, and she speaks cryptically about maybe not being around forever. Godbee devises a plan over a game of Parcheesi to get to know her granddaughter a little better, and impart some wisdom before it’s too late;

"I have an idea," Godbee said suddenly. "You have to tell me something about yourself each day you're here. Something I don't know." She paused. "And, to make it fair," she added, "I'll do the same for you. What do you say?"
"I guess." How could she disappoint her favourite grandmother?
"Good," said Godbee. "Who knows, this might be our last summer together." And then her eyes strayed and fluttered shut, and she tilted her head to take full advantage of the sun.

While the theme and touched-upon subject of death may seem a deep and dark one, I feel the need to stress that ‘Olive’s Ocean’ isn’t all doom and gloom. Martha is a twelve-year-old girl who is really only just starting to grapple with the concept of death, prompted by her classmate’s sudden tragic death and her grandmother’s obvious aging. Henkes does a truly marvellous job of counter-balancing all the talk of dying and mortality by also including all the typical things that matter to twelve-year-old girls.

There’s Martha’s rambunctious family; her one-year-older brother, Vince, whom Martha is in a constant tug-of-war, love/hate battle with. Her toddler sister, Lucy, who likes to give “good one” kisses. And then there’s Martha’s parents – her radio-host mother who mortifies Martha on a daily basis in her drive-time program. And Martha’s father; a lawyer turned stay-at-home dad who is starting to feel the strain of babysitting Lucy day in, day out with little else to occupy his mind (not even the novel he’s attempting to write). Henkes does a phenomenal job of writing a very tight-knit and complex Boyle family unit; imbuing the story with little familial struggles and side-stories. I loved reading about her father’s boiling over temper, about to flare at any moment under the strain of banana baby food and too little sleep. I also really loved Martha’s talks with her grandmother – especially one in which they both lament Godbee’s aging, crab-like hands which were once so beautiful a boy asked to draw them. . .

The other distractions in Martha’s holiday are the Manning brothers. Five brothers who live down the beach from Godbee’s house, and who Vince always falls into easy friendship with, while Martha has gone through summers of loathing and tolerating the pack of brothers. Except this year Martha is paying attention to oldest Manning brother, fourteen-year-old Jimmy (which has her unknowingly putting a dampener on Tate Manning, the brother closest to Martha in age).

And then there’s the fact that this summer, Martha has decided what she wants to do with her life – be a writer. She wants to write novels, and she’s starting her first one this summer – about a girl called Olive who escapes to the ocean. . .

I loved ‘Olive’s Ocean’. It’s a powerful young adult novel, delving into a young girl’s first confrontations of death and dying while life and love move all around her at the holiday house she visits every year with her family and which, she’s coming to realize, may not ever be the same without her grandmother. Kevin Henkes’s Newberry-winning novel is smart and thoughtful, a serious look at the frail fleetingness of life, but still including a story about a twelve-year-old girl’s first kiss. Loved it!

5/5

'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

'When You Reach Me' by Rebecca Stead

From the BLURB:

Four mysterious letters change Miranda’s world forever.

By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner.

But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper:

I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.

The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realizes that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that have not even happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late.

Miranda is writing a letter. She doesn’t know to whom. She doesn’t know why. But someone has asked her the location of the spare key. And to explain the day that her best friend, Sal, stopped wanting to hang out with her. Someone wants Miranda to write it all down … so she is, slowly.

‘When You Reach Me’ by Rebecca Stead was the winner of the 2010 John Newbery Medal.


‘When You Reach Me’ is sort of like the Georges Seurat painting, "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte". Up close it’s just a bunch of tiny, tiny dots – indecipherable and meaningless. But when you stand back, you get the whole picture… and it’s kind of magnificent.


Stead’s novel is set in 1981, and is in part a recollection of her own childhood as a ‘key kid’ in New York. She delves into the curiosities and concerns of many sixth-graders – like losing friends, getting somersault-belly when a cute boy walks past, and facing fears. For Miranda, her biggest fear is the laughing man on the corner street, the man she passes everyday on her way to and from school. He yells out insanities – “bookbag, pocketshoe” – he calls her new friend an ‘Angel’ and Miranda a ‘Smartkid’.

Miranda’s other consuming fear though, is that she’s losing her best friend, Sal. They have stopped hanging out, upon Sal’s request. A run-in with a bully called Marcus has sent Sal into a sort of hibernation, and Miranda doesn’t know what to do about missing him.

But Stead’s novel is bigger than the sum of its parts, and interspersed with Miranda’s narrative about cute boy Colin, and working at Jimmy’s sandwich shop, are curious asides to an unknown person who has tasked Miranda with writing a letter. This person wants to know the location of the key to Miranda’s apartment. They leave notes for Miranda, foretelling of a Christmas present and her mother’s appearance on Dick Clark’s $20,000 Pyramid game show. This person also warns Miranda that when they meet, they will not look the same …

And therein lies the true brilliance of ‘When You Reach Me’. On the surface Stead’s novel is an enjoyable recollection of a NYC sixth-grader navigating the torrential waters of growing up and moving on. But there’s more … oh! There’s so much more. To reveal would be to ruin a wonderfully plotted semi-mystery.

What I liked best about Stead’s novel is that it was intended for a middle-grade audience, but also appeals to a crowd much older than that. Through Miranda, Stead explores big ideas through tactful and succinct sixth-grade musings, and it’s a delight to get Miranda’s view of the world;

Mom says each of us has a veil between ourselves and the rest of the world, like a bride wears on her wedding day, except this kind of veil is invisible. We walk around happily with these invisible veils hanging down over our faces. The world is kind of blurry, and we like it that way. But sometimes our veils are pushed away for a few moments, like there's a wind blowing it from our faces. And when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. We see all the beauty, and cruelty, and sadness, and love. But mostly we are happy not to. Some people learn to lift the veil themselves. Then they don't have to depend on the wind anymore.

‘When You Reach Me’ is nothing short of incredible. When you read it through once, you’ll want to go back and read it again – hold the book up in a new light and appreciate the delicacy and interwoven complexity. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

5/5