Adrienne Maria Vrettos

Vrettos, Adrienne Maria. 2006. Skin: A Novel.

Narrated by fourteen-year-old Donnie, SKIN is a heart-breaking story of a family in crisis. The first chapter opens with his sister's tragic though not unexpected death due to an eating disorder. The rest of the book tells the before and after effects of that disorder and her death.

I'm telling you this because you didn't ask. I've got it all here, growing like a tumor in my throat. I'm telling you because if I don't, I will choke on it. Everybody knows what happened, but nobody asks. And Elvis the EMT doesn't count because when he asked, he didn't even listen to me answer because he was listening to my sister's heart not beat with his stethoscope. I want to tell. It's time to tell. Even if you didn't ask, you have to hear it (4).

Karen, his sister, wasn't always like this. There was a time when she was normal. When she liked to have fun. When she liked to laugh. When she liked to eat. Donnie shares the good and bad times of his sometimes dysfunctional family. Beginning with his parent's turbulent marriage--arguments that go on for days, screaming matches, etc., and describing how through all of the chaos his sister was his anchor. His safe place to fall. But as the months progress even Karen begins to disappoint him. First she abandons him (his perspective) to be with her new best friend, the neighbor across the street, Amanda. Then as if that wasn't bad enough his own friends abandon him as well suddenly becoming 'too cool' to hang out with such a loser.

I wish they'd just sat down at the beginning of the school year and said, 'You're out,' instead of deciding together to drop me and waiting to see when I'd notice. If they'd done that, sat me down and told me, I would have laughed in their faces. I would have gotten up and walked away and left them sitting there to realize what they'd just done. It's not like there's a whole line of kids waiting to be friends with us, clamoring to take my place. We're the end of the line. We're the ones that people look at and think 'at least I'm not them.' Kids get a death grip on their friends when it looks like they might be slipping down to where we are. It's like a kick in the balls, when people use you as a threat, when you hear someone say, 'Stop being such a douche bag or we'll make you go sit with LePlant and the other freaks.' . . . Nothing about us is right. We're the wrongest kids you've ever seen. Our faces are wrong with zits, we have the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, and I think we might be ugly. Our families are wrong because none of us are rich, our bodies are wrong because we suck at sports, and there's something really wrong with all of our personalities, because nobody likes us, not even the teachers. Teachers make fun of us too, and think we don't notice. (21-22)

As his sister begins to push everyone away, even her best friend Amanda, Donnie feels like he is becoming invisible. His parents don't notice him. His sister is too busy not eating and busy pushing everyone away to notice him. And that's when she's not in the hospital being treated for her disorder. His teachers don't notice him. And he has no friends to notice him either.

I'm becoming invisible. Every day more and more light shines through me. I think about writing Karen at the hospital and telling her. If I wrote her and told her I was becoming invisible, I think she'd tell me to stop being so dramatic, and she'd say that she understood. Once I realized that I was becoming invisible, once I realized that no one really noticed me anymore, I stopped fighting it. I stopped taking the tiny bit of room they left for me on the bench at the lunch table and sat by myself at the end of the teacher's table, which is pretty much the worst place any kid can sit, ever. Unless that kid's invisible, and then it doesn't matter. Every day since Karen's been gone, I practice floating through the school halls like a ghost. I don't touch anyone and I imagine that the times I do brush up against their arms it feels like a clammy, cold breath on their skin. I sit in the back of the class and I don't raise my hand. I ignore everyone, even the teachers. Not the kind of ignoring where you jut out your chin and hope that everyone notices you ignoring them. I ignore them like we're not even in the same universe. I ignore them because it's easy: I'm not even here. My goal is to get through the whole school day without anyone talking to me. I decide once I do that, I'll become a superhero. I'll become Donnie Disappeared. (119-120)

Even after Karen's death, Donnie remains invisible. His parents trapped in ever-going arguments about whose fault everything is continue to ignore him until one day he snaps.

You never see me! You only see her, even when she's gone, you only see her. I disappeared so she could get better! I never asked you for anything! I disappeared and you didn't even notice! And she's gone and I'm here! I'm here!

Skin is an emotional novel, a powerful one, a story with ups and downs, hopes and fears, losses and gains.

Other fiction books about eating disorders include Just Listen by Sarah Dessen and Mercy, Unbound by Kim Antieau.

Another fiction book about young teens feeling invisible is Neal Shusterman's The Schwa Was Here.

Other fiction books about grief include: Maybe by Brent Runyon, Looking for Alaska by John Green, Saving Grace by Katherine Spencer, Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata, and What is Goodbye by Nikki Grimes.

http://www.adriennemariavrettos.com/index1.html

The Book of Bright Ideas

I tend to be slightly skeptical of any book that proclaims itself: A powerful, poignant novel of family, friendship, and a summer that will change lives forever. However, The Book of Bright Ideas by Sandra Kring, author of Carry Me Home, was described quite accurately.

Kring, Sandra. 2006. The Book of Bright Ideas.

Set in a small community in Wisconsin, Eveyln "Button" Peters and her family (mother, father, aunt, uncle) expect this summer--the summer of 1961--to be quiet and quite ordinary. All that changes when the Malones come quite noisily into town to stay. Winnalee and her older sister Freeda are a bit wilder and more vivacious than their new neighbors. But Button knows this: Winnalee is her new best friend and her drab life will never be the same again.

Winnalee's relationship with Button is close. The two become almost like sisters, sharing intimate, private secrets with one another. One such secret is a book--a blank book--Winnalee keeps in which she writes her bright ideas. The goal, if she can write down 100 bright ideas she knows she'll be wise and never make the same mistake twice. These bright ideas are often quite observant about human nature--universal and specific.

Here are a few of their bright ideas:

And although this isn't the official #1 in Winnalee's book, this is what would be Bright Idea #1 in Button's own book.
Bright Idea #1: If you take an ugly girl and you dress her up in a pretty pink dress, lacy anklets, and plunk a homemade bow on her head, you're not going to get a pretty girl. All you're going to get is an ugly girl in a pretty dress, lacy anklets, with a bow plunked on her head.

Bright Idea #86: If you're scared of dead people, then you're probably scared of live people too. But you don't got to be scared of either.

Bright Idea #89: If you ever don't know which direction to go in, or you start moving in the right direction but then get lost along the way, don't get rattled and start moving fast, this way and that. Instead, stand still and be quiet. Then you'll be showed which way to go.

Bright Idea #90: After you play beauty shop, your husband might say you look like a beauty queen, or he might just ask you where the Phillips screwdriver is. Either way, it doesn't matter, as long as your new hair makes you think nice things about yourself.

The Book of Bright Ideas is about how much of an impact a person can have on those around her/him. One person can change a life. It is a novel about discovering yourself. Finding your authentic self. Becoming the person you want to be. Growing in confidence and self-esteem. It's a novel about opening up and becoming vulnerable. And a novel about letting go of the past and saying hello to the future.

Although our heroine "Button" is nine, the novel is written for an older audience.

http://www.sandrakring.com/

The Nothingness of Octavian

Anderson, M.T. 2006. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Volume 1: The Pox Party.

Unless the 'astonishing' quality of this book is how boring it is, Octavian Nothing is anything but astonishing. That doesn't mean that critics aren't praising Octavian, they are if the National Book Award is any indication. It won in the category of 'Young People's Literature.' Here is how they described this book: "Set against the disquiet of Revolutionary Boston, this novel, the first of two parts, re-imagines the past as an eerie place that has startling resonance for readers today." I have two comments. First, The National Book Award has in my opinion always been slightly out of touch with reality. When a book wins an award decided by adults it doesn't reflect or have any connection with how that book will appeal to its targeted age group. Sometimes a book wins that does. Sometimes the book is a dud. Second, I would like a full ten-page explanation as to how the book could possibly have any startling resonance for readers today. Seriously. The book is boring, boring, boring. Then dull. Then back to boring. The only thing that resonates in this reader's mind is: how could a book EVER be so boring and unappealing? In case you're thinking that I am put off because it's historical fiction, know that historical fiction is one of my favorite genres. I am also not put off by the novel's length, theoretically speaking. Its 351 pages is only tedious because of the book's content and drudgery style.

Octavian Nothing is set in Boston in the early years of the Revolutionary War. It is his 'memoir' of his unusual life beginning with his earliest recollections and continuing at least through his fifteenth or sixteenth year. He is a slave, though for the first eight to ten years he is unaware of this fact.

Right thinking is ever a battle, and often I cast my mind back to these early lessons and pursue these early ideals, though now the ghastly purpose of that dim college has been made clear to me; and he who ran it appears to me not like a man but some monster who instructed me, some beast endued with the speech of man, as the centaur Chiron wrote out lessons for young Achilles with his human hands, and spake his lectures with his human mouth, while his glossy hindquarters dropped faeces upon the Senate lawn. (12)

A man in a topiary maze cannot judge of the twistings and turnings, and which avenue might lead him to the heart; while one who stands above, on some pleasant prospect, looking down upon the labyrinth, is reduced to watching the bewildered circumnavigations of the tiny victim through obvious coils--as the gods, perhaps, looked down on beseiged and blood-sprayed Troy from the safety of their couches, and thought mortals weak and foolish while they themselves reclined in comfort, and had only to snap to call Ganymede to their side with nectar decanted.(37)

And so the answer to my perplexities, which must appear in all its clarity to those who look from above, was finally clear to me: that I too was the subject of a zoological experiment (51).

And in case you hadn't picked up on it, the language, sentence structure, and style of Octavian Nothing is grandiose, archaic, and rarely if ever 'resonate.'

Here is how Octavian describes his tutor:

His knowledge was prodigious; his mastery of philosophic depths was total, though his notions were somewhat eccentric. He worked with me word by word, leaning over my shoulder as I parsed my way through Tacitus and Homer; which instruction much have seemed to him not unlike the sea-captain, who having braved the catastrophic blasts and giddy precipices of the maelstrom, and but skated to their side; having passed with expert haste through the clashing Simplegades; having sat in the sick green eye of the hurricane, surrounded by the hulking wrecks of other, less fortunate, fleets; now wades with a little nephew in the warm shallows, collecting trash and pretty bits of shell. He must have looked out to sea with his glass sometimes, and wished for the spray, and men with whom he could truly speak of the rigors of navigation. (58-59)

Perhaps the only resonate line in the book I discovered was: Shed no tear for me; for I shed none for myself(67).

Add to the confusing language and style of the text the fact that only three or four people are given names and the rest are referred to by numbers. It is hard as a reader to care about these characters and what happens to them. How can you get emotionally involved with someone named 03-01 or 09-01, etc.

What I will grant is this, after about 130 or 150 pages into the novel, the reader is finally able to get adjusted to the style and begins to warm up slightly to these characters. But before that each page is dull drudgery. And I ask you this...what reader...what young reader...would ever be patient enough to sit down with a book that is so boring and dull and pointless for over a hundred pages? It is only towards the end of the novel when Octavian is beginning to contemplate escaping from his masters, once he becomes more like the 'average' slave--forced into work, receiving beatings and punishments--that the book becomes slightly worth all the effort the reader had put into it up until that point.

This is hardly best-book-of-the-year material, but I'm sure other best-lists will follow suit and pay homage to this National Book Award winner. My opinion, this is a year where the winner is a fine example of the Emperor's New Clothes. Lots of praise, lots of acclaim and prestige, but the average, honest reader (with a head of common sense) will find a whole lot of nothing.



http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2006_ypl_anderson.html

Wait for Me

Na, An. 2006. Wait For Me.

An Na’s first novel, A Step From Heaven, was a National Book Award finalist and Michael L. Printz Award winner. Her second novel, Wait For Me, features older protagonists. Mina is the imperfect daughter trying desperately to live up to her mother’s high expectations. Since she can’t meet them naturally--no matter how hard she tries--she has formed the bad habit of lying to her parents, her friends, and to some extent herself. Mina is a complex character torn between finding herself and living authentically and continuing to live the lie of a ‘perfect’ and ‘obedient’ daughter that her mother expects and demands. She is also desperately trying to be there to support her younger sister, Suna, who is hearing impaired. Suna is mistreated (verbally abused) by the mother and has been since childhood when her problems came to light. The father is also pushed around (manipulated) by this domineering, controlling woman. But how long can one live a lie? Wait For Me chronicles the summer before Mina’s senior year in high school as her ‘perfect’ world begins to crumble and be replaced by a truer more authentic one. It is told through both Mina’s and Suna’s voices.

Twilight Child

Warner, Sally. 2006. Twilight Child.

I could honestly say that I've never read a historical fiction book set in Finland and Scotland in the mid-eighteenth century until I picked up a copy of Twilight Child. It has long been said that when a baby is born at twilight, the precise moment that hangs between day and night, that child is given a special gift. She is able to sense other in-between things. Eleni, our heroine, is a twilight child. She is able to see and therefore communicate with both Finnish and Scottish 'mythological' creatures: the tonttu of the sauna, the blue men of the Minch, and the brounies of the Scottish highlands. But her life while full of magic is also full of sorrow.

Prologue: Eleni and her best friend Matias are out walking in the forest discussing the war between Sweden and Russia. Their fathers are being called upon to join the army, though neither are too fond of Sweden. (Sweden apparently was in control of Finland much like England was in control of Scotland). It is only a few pages long, but it serves to present the idea of a peaceful childhood and a best friend she could trust.

The First Few Chapters: Taking place at least five to six years later, Eleni's life is radically different. Her father is an outlaw after leading an unsuccessful rebellion. Her mother is sick and dying. And Eleni is a maid in a lady's household. Mattias has been 'missing' for years on end. She has no idea what happened to him or his family or if they're even still in Finland.

The book takes a while to get into the 'main' part of the story. After the death of Eleni's mother, she is 'kidnapped' by her father and his friends. He is a captain of a small vessel, a vessel barely sea worthy. They are on their way to Spain where he will leave his teenage daughter with his new lady-friend. Eleni is far from pleased. Her father's friends turn out to be brutes, well, all except for one who gets killed tragically in a storm. So when Eleni is out on deck and sees the blue men of the Minch, she is told that everyone on board will die at sea but she'll be allowed to live because she is 'one of them' (aka a Twilight Child). She is told to escape from the ship at the next port which happens to be in Scotland--near the town of Tobermory. She is weak but she manages with the help of some creatures to make it away. And sure enough the rest of the crew are lost at sea a bit later on. She is rescued by a wonderful family and taken into the first real home she's had in a long time. There she meets another child touched by magic.

As Eleni gets used to her new life: meeting new people, regaining strength, learning a new language, making friends, etc. she has to decide where she belongs and who she really is. Is 'home' a place in Finland, a place in Scotland, or a place with her future-husband wherever that may be. As different men pay court to her, she must rely on her heart to lead her to a place she can truly call home.

http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-warner-sally.asp