A Soft Place to Fall

Written by Tanya Christenson

Red Deer Press

978-0-889956384

409 pp.

Ages 12+

January 2022

 

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;
the most massive characters are seared with scars. 

~ Kahlil Gibran 

Kahlil Gibran's words may end Tanya Christenson's debut novel, A Soft Place to Fall, but they work well as a preface to a story of struggles, challenges and loss from which triumphs emerge from the ordinary.

The story is told from the perspective of Creighton Fischer, a boy whose singing mom, Gracie Rae, left when he was just five, and whose father's work with the carnival has kept them moving for many years. When, after Creighton's Grade 7 year, Dad decides it's time for them to settle down, they move to Breton, Mom's old home town. Because of gaps in his learning and attendance, it is recommended that Creighton join an alternate school. There, under the compassionate and diverse teaching methods of Ms. Hayworth, Creighton becomes part of a unique cohort. The dozen or so students soon reveal themselves to be impacted by various traumas and disabilities but Ms. Hayworth's approach is to meet their needs and not slot them into the rigid curriculum. And by showing flexibility and empathy, she brings out the best in most of them. That is, except for Carlos a.k.a. Carcass. And for Creighton, he finds his first real friends in Carin, Ratchet and Schooner and the support system he and all of them need to brave the loss of loved ones, economic hardships, bullying, past traumas, criminal charges, and even love.

The twelve kids in Ms. Hayworth's class may attend L.O.S.E.R. (Lane Oslo School of Educational Reform) but they aren't losers. They may be flawed through trauma, mental health, disability or circumstances beyond their control but they are not losers. They are human. Their resilience may at times be shaky but it is undeniable and it thankfully allows them to persist.

 

BC's Tanya Christenson, a teacher and school counsellor, knows kids and she's written these kids as human as you and I. And she doesn't wrap up their struggles with happy endings, ribbons or balloons. Tanya Christenson makes their outcomes as real as the kids. They've suffered abandonment, abuse and upheaval, and they have endured. Sometimes they've triumphed over those struggles and  sometimes not, and like all of us, they have needed support and a soft place to fall. Because, after all, we will all fall some time, some way. I just hope that there will always be a soft place to fall, perhaps even land, for anyone challenged by life. And that's everyone.

Thanks A Lot, Universe

Written by Chad Lucas

Amulet Books (Abrams)

978-1-4197-5102-8

288 pp.

Ages 10-15

May 2021 

Thanks a Lot, Universe is the story of two boys, both coming to terms with new realities. While they are as different as they appear on the cover, the two are both looking for and finding their true selves, with or without the help of the universe.

Told in the alternating voices of thirteen-year-olds Brian Day and Ezra Komizarek, Thanks a Lot, Universe parallels the stories of the two Halifax boys as they become true friends, and maybe more, though the plot is very much driven by the shy and socially anxious Brian. On the day of his thirteenth birthday, Brian learns via letter that his father has left–the police are after him for his role in "cannabis production and distribution"–and his mother, distraught, attempts suicide, though Brian finds her in time to save her.

We'd thought everything was fine. We hadn't known the world was ending. (pg. 16)

Because the whereabouts of their father is unknown and their mother is hospitalized, Brian and his 9-year-old brother Richie are sent to the foster home of grandparents-like Gordon and Emma Wentzell. Still being questioned by Sergeant States of the police about his father, and now dealing with social worker Kate Evans and the incessant attempts at Mrs. Wentzell to engage him, as well as bullying by Victor MacLennan at school, Brian gets absolutely no respite from his social anxiety, dealing with strangers everywhere.

Meanwhile, Ezra is dealing with his changing relationship with his best friend Colby Newcombe who is in the throws of first love and hanging with a new group which includes Victor. Fortunately Ezra still has his older half-sister Natalie and friends Ty and Kevan with whom he can talk and help him sort out his feelings, including about girls or not.

There are people we hang around because it's comfortable or convenient or safe, then there are our people. When you find them, you'll know the difference. (pg. 48)

Though Ezra knows the quiet Brian from basketball, it's not until the two connect over music briefly on a bus ride, that Ezra begins to really notice him. So when Brian runs away with his brother, Ezra joins up with Brian's teacher's son, Gabe Clelland and his girlfriend Brittany, to find them.

Life is probably doing to kick you right in the junk someday, B-Man. This is all the fatherly wisdom I've got. Brace yourself and kick right back. (pg. 84)

Finding Brian and Ritchie is only half of the story. What happens after the boys are found is a new story, with Brian establishing new supports and the means to divert his Super Awkward Weirdo Syndrome–SAWS is his term for his social anxiety–and Ezra admitting his feelings about his new friend and acting on them with heart and gentleness.

 

In his debut novel, Chad Lucas has given young readers a new way of seeing. As readers, we see the anxiety of family trauma, coming out, and regular teenage angst but Chad Lucas has made us see beyond the surface and look a little deeper into what we think we know. Brian is seen as the quiet kid, perhaps a little weird, even by himself, but beneath that front is a complicated young man who is dealing with so much more: making sense of his own disorder, worrying about a mother with a mental illness, angry with a father involved in illegal activities, and agonizing over a broken family, which may or may not be repairable. But when you're only thirteen and you're left to repair that family without having the supports necessary to do so, it's overwhelming. Most of his peers only see him as different and, though there are adults who can see his need for help, Brian's anxiety doesn't allow him to ask for it. Ezra, on the other hand, is comfortable in his own skin, with his friends and family, but he too is dealing with something new. In his head, he ruminates about his attraction to boys and with whom he might be able to share that. But taking a chance on talking about it with someone else, whether family, friend or crush, is still a risk. 

 

Fortunately, sometimes the universe gives you what you need. Through an alignment of circumstances, Brian and Ezra find each other and give each other something they need, whether a push, a pull, or just a hand. It's all good, or at least better. Sometimes that's all the universe can give you.

 

• • • • • • •

 

Look for my interview with author Chad Lucas tomorrow.

 

• • • • • • •

Trail of Crumbs

Written by Lisa J. Lawrence

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-2121-7

247 pp.

Ages 13+

2019

We all hope a trail of crumbs will lead us to safety and maybe even home, but both are sadly elusive for seventeen-year-old Greta in this young adult novel of trauma and abandonment.
 
After their mom died from breast cancer when Greta and her twin brother Ash were just eight, their dad Roger fell apart. He lost his truck driving job because of a DUI, had to sell the house and sent the kids to live with a relative. Though he remarried and got the kids back, the turmoil of their lives becomes one of emotional abuse with their stepmom Patty always yelling, complaining and blaming Greta and Ash for everything. After another altercation, Patty convinces Roger to abandon the kids and they sneak off in the night.

Seven years he'd made excuses for Patty's anger, tried to make them share the blame in her tornado of drama. They'd been kids–imperfect, noisy, messy. He'd played middle man between a wolf and two sheep, trying to justify why the wolf always tore at them. Trying to please that rabid wolf. (pg. 89-90)

Left alone in their cold basement apartment in Edmonton with limited money of their own, Greta and Ash consider their options. A plan to confront their father falls apart, though it does find them a new ally in a classmate and neighbour, Nate. They look for jobs. They approach their landlord, Elgin Doyle, an older man who lives in the upper part of the house, about deferring the rent but instead he offers to let them stay in a spare room he has in return for chores like shovelling snow.

Though initially uncomfortable with their new living situation, the normally-withdrawn Ash seems to come out of himself, cooking with Elgin and standing up for the older man to his hostile adult daughter Alice. But, while Greta grapples with their abandonment, she is also trying to clarify the traumatizing circumstances involving a sexual encounter with Dylan.

She could never make sense of those shards still rattling loose inside her. They dug in, but no matter how long she looked at them, they never formed a whole picture. A grotesque kaleidoscope. When she tried to sort through it, all the colors mixed together until it turned into swamp brown. (pg. 124)

Trail of Crumbs is a story of finding a way to survive the trauma of parental abandonment and of sexual assault. It's about finding family and friends in unlikely allies and trusting those who would support you no matter what. It's not an easy story to read because the trauma is so raw. Even when Greta and Ash try to logically deal with their abandonment, and Greta tries to sort out the events with Dylan, you know they're just struggling to endure, to get through it, to survive. There is a visceral fear about stopping to give in to the anguish and hopelessness. But Lisa J. Lawrence, who wowed critics with her debut novel, Rodent (Orca, 2016), writes with power and intrepidness, never letting us question whether Greta and Ash are real. They are, as are their problems. They've survived trauma after trauma and keep on going. They don't even know how brave they are. They are their own heroes.

That trail of crumbs may be elusive and often invisible, but I was consoled that Greta and Ash found sufficient to keep them bound as siblings with enough left over to lead them to a new support family.

Spin

Written by Colleen Nelson

Dundurn

978-1-45974-496-7

296 pp.

Ages 12-15

August 2019

 

Fifteen-year-old Delilah Doucette, affectionately called Dizzy by her father Ray and brother Lou, has had music around her her whole life. Her dad once toured as a saxophone player and now owns a record store called The Vinyl Trap. And her mother? Her mother is the famous singer Georgia Waters. Or at least Georgia Hay is, giving birth to both Lou and Dizzy before she chose to abandon them with Ray and embrace a life of touring and celebrity. Since leaving when Dizzy was one-year-old and Lou was four, Georgia has only seen them once in fourteen years. Still,

She might have escaped us, but we couldn't escape her. (pg. 10)

While Lou, already graduated from high school and working at the store, promoting it on social media and arranging special events, struggles with what he wants to do with his life, Dizzy is still in school and knows what she wants. For her, it's all about spinning and mixing music. The store may be an anchor for both, but for Lou it feels like it may drown him while for Dizzy, it's her foundation. And for Ray, it gives him the opportunity to continue with his music, sharing it with others, jamming with friends Donnie, Rudy, Barney and Big Tom, and providing for his family.

After Dizzy opens for DJ Erika at one of the store's Friday Night Spin DJ nights, she is advised to tell a story with her music to make more of an impact. Unbeknown to her family, she uses some private and forgotten recordings from when Ray and Georgia were first together in a mix that she uploads to her Mixcloud account. That mix and a choice to see Georgia in concert in the city leads Dizzy to turn her back on a promise she and her brother had made to their father to never reveal their mother's identify.

As both Dizzy and Lou search for the path that is right for them, Dizzy through her music and potential connection with her mother and Lou slipping into university English lectures and crushing on a fellow student Olivia, Ray tries to hold onto his love of music in any way he can and do what is right for his children. Whether that will be with or without Georgia will depend on how things play out.

Telling the story in Spin through the voices of Dizzy, Lou and Ray, Colleen Nelson creates one firmly rooted in perspectives. Three family members are all looking at the same circumstances–the abandonment of the family by the mother–and revealing different takes on her and her choices. From curiosity to anger, resignation and confusion, the Doucette family sees Georgia as an enigma. Whether she's as Lou sees her...

Georgia had had her chance ten years ago and she'd left us on the table. Forgotten leftovers from a life she didn't want. (pg. 33)

...or the potential celebrity mom that Dizzy craves or the love Ray once had, Georgia has chosen to be what she wanted and not necessarily what others wanted of her. And how they have reacted to her choice is what makes Spin a great story of family. It's not a straightforward story but then most families aren't.  They're complicated and messy and nurturing and debilitating in their own ways and Colleen Nelson knows this. (Read The Fall, 250 Hours, Finding Hope, and Blood Brothers for a good sampling of great stories about family.) Colleen Nelson excels at putting families in all their configurations out front and exposed, never judging their frailties or flaws, only revealing for the purpose of demonstrating that

It's how you go forward from your past 

that makes you who you are. (pg. 138)

Whether teen or adult, child or parent, the characters in Spin, including secondary characters like the homeless Leroy and Dizzy's best friend Maya, do move forward, choosing to advance their own stories with the spin they've selected for themselves, all courtesy of Colleen Nelson's dynamic text and powerful narrative.

Sadie

Written by Courtney Summers

Wednesday Books

978-1-250-10571-4

308 pp.

Ages 14+

September 2018

If you notice that the book cover is larger than I usually post, it's because Sadie, the book and the girl, should not be relegated to the back or to a corner to be forgotten. In her life, Sadie was neglected and abused and she may have felt insignificant, but she is courageous and responsible, and she deserves to be noticed–and not because of her stuttering–and her extraordinary efforts appreciated.

Sadie begins with the murder of Sadie's thirteen-year-old sister, Mattie Southern, after she'd left their home in Cold Creek, Colorado, ostensibly to search out their mother Claire, who'd left 3 years earlier. Mattie had never given up hope on her mother, an addict who'd showered her meagre love and limited attention on her youngest daughter and essentially ignored or was hostile to her eldest.

I can't even put into words what it's like to swallow down a moment like that, but I can tell you exactly how bitter it tastes. (pg. 55-6)

Sadie had given all of herself to her baby sister and mothered Mattie even more, when at 16, it was just the two of them, abandoned and living in a trailer park run by their surrogate grandmother, May Beth Foster.  When Sadie disappears eight months after her sister's murder and her car found abandoned the next month, May Beth contacts WNRK New York to get some media attention and help. So begins a serialized podcast, The Girls, by producer West McCray, who pursues Sadie's story and consequently Mattie's as well.

The Girls explores what happens when a devastating crime reveals a deeply unsettling mystery. It's a story about family, about sisters, and the untold lives lived in small-town America. It's about the lengths we go to protect the ones we love. . . and the high price we pay when we can't. (pg. 1)

Sadie alternates between The Girls podcast and Sadie's telling of her pursuit of justice for her sister. West's podcast includes narration and interviews with persons of interest as he tries to locate Sadie, all the while unravelling her story. There's May Beth Foster who acts as his home base for information and clarification, and then the people Sadie meets along her journey. The chapters based on Sadie's pursuit of Mattie's murderer begin at an out-of-town diner where Sadie suggests she's looking for her father, always showing a photo of her family with Claire's ex, Keith. From that starting point, she gets one lead after another, desperate to locate the man she is convinced is responsible for Mattie's death. Mixed with reminiscences, many unsettling, as triggered by those she meets, Sadie must uncover Keith's story, told from the points of view of those who considered him a good guy and those who won't reveal much from the cloak of shame and trauma. Regardless, she pursues and inevitably helps in ways she might never know.

Courtney Summers always tells bold stories, whether based on zombies (This is Not a Test, 2012; Please Remain Calm, 2014), on sexual assault and shame (All the Rage, 2015), on bullying (Some Girls Are, 2010) or self-destruction (Cracked Up to Be, 2008). They immerse the reader in tense situations of agonizing brutality, emotional and physical, that rarely have happy endings. But that's reality. Life is not neat and it's not fair. It's raw and real and not for the faint of heart. Courtney Summers sugarcoats nothing. Nothing at all. Even as West McCray speaks to witnesses or persons of interest, they spin Sadie's story with an effort to make themselves look better. It's not honest but it's real. Take Claire, for instance. This woman cared more for the child who looked like her than the one who didn't (and blames that on her youth, her mother's death and May Beth); neglected her children in favour of her addiction; sends an abuser packing only when she suspects he might have attacked her favourite; abandons her children for years; and blames West McCray when he can't find Sadie. Yikes. Sadie's story is gut-wrenching in itself: bullied for her stuttering, neglected by her mother, abused by her mother's boyfriend, abandoned, becoming a surrogate parent to a resentful child, and grief-stricken for her beloved sister. Her story is almost too much to take.

Don't look for a happy ending in Sadie, and it's not because Courtney Summers ends Sadie with another tragedy. It's just hard to tell what kind of an ending Courtney Summers has given readers. While there is justice, Courtney Summers also leaves a gaping hole in Sadie's story that readers will need to fill, either with hope for a new story for Sadie or with another tragedy to complete her original one. Read Sadie and let me know what you think happened to this fierce young woman because her story is far too important to let her be forgotten.

Too Young to Escape: Book launch (Brantford, ON)

Join

author of children's picture books, middle-grade and YA novels and non-fiction

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

and 

Van Ho

her co-author and subject of this 

new middle-grade non-fiction book

for the launch of

Too Young to Escape: A Vietnamese Girl Waits to be Reunited with Her Family

Written by Van Ho with Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Pajama Press
978-1-77278-066-6
152 pp.
Ages 8-12
November 2018

on 

Saturday, December 1, 2018

2:30 - 4:00 p.m.

at

Brantford Public Library

173 Colborne Street

Brantford, ON

 

Read my review posted October 3, 2018 

here on CanLit for LittleCanadians

Too Young to Escape: A Vietnamese Girl Waits to be Reunited with her Family

Written by Van Ho with Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-066-6

152 pp.

Ages 8-12

November 2018

When Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch co-wrote Adrift at Sea: A Vietnamese Boy's Story of Survival with Tuan Ho, she began a family's story of escape from Vietnam in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and taking of power by the communists. In that picture book, illustrated by Brian Deines, a mother and her two daughters, Loan and Lan, and six-year-old son Tuan escape Vietnam by boat, hopeful of joining father and the eldest daughter Linh in Canada. But there was another story. Because four-year-old Van is left behind.  Too Young to Escape is her story.

In May of 1981, four-year-old Van awakens at 5 a.m. in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to find her mother, older sisters Loan and Lan, and her six-year-old brother Tuan gone. Though it is unusual for Tuan to go with the women to do their early morning work, Van is distracted by her own chores. As guests of their aunt and uncle, Dì and Bác, since her own family lost everything when the communists took over, Van's pre-school work includes cleaning the house and spinning yarn for a weaver to later make the rice sacks Dì and Bác sold. But when her siblings don't show up to school, Van learns from her grandmother, Bà Ngoại, that her mother and siblings are gone. Van is devastated, wondering why she wasn't good enough to go with them, but Bà Ngoại reassures her that they've gone on a dangerous journey and Van's respiratory issues–she has difficulty breathing and often has to clear phlegm from her lungs–would have made it even more hazardous for her and the family.

Sometimes there are no perfect solutions. (pg. 31)

So begins a difficult chapter in little Van's life, slaving away at her aunt and uncle's home, tormented by a policeman's son at school, and feeling the loss of her family, particularly her mother who, she'd thought, should have been there to protect her. Still her Bà Ngoại, though seemingly insensitive to Van's struggles, tries to help Van understand.

Be thankful for what you do have, little one, instead of fretting about what you don't have. (pg. 64)

And Van learns to become "an expert at hiding my sadness" (pg. 67). Finally, they get a heartfelt letter and package from Saskatoon where her parents and four siblings have reunited. Along with some gifts, including clothes that growing Van desperately needs, Van learns that that her parents have submitted applications to bring Van and Bà Ngoại to join them.

It takes over four years before Van and her grandmother are reunited with her family in Canada, a family that "was like a storybook family" (pg. 87), and, though her life in Vietnam is difficult, it is a life with which she is familiar and leaving it is difficult.

Van Ho, who lived this story, tells it through Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's pen of extraordinary writing which reflects both Van's youthful point of view and her trauma. Her story is a disquieting but it's also uplifting, focusing on Van's resilience.  Told from her perspective, from Van explaining away her family's absence before she learns the reason to her obligation to completing chores many of our culture might deem inappropriate for one so young to finding a friend in a girl less fortunate than herself, Van's story of being left behind is heartbreaking.

Enhancing Van Ho's story with photographs and interviews with her father, Nam Ho, and mother, Phuoc Ho, Too Young to Escape gives a snapshot of a different time and place, one of upheaval and loss, perseverance and endurance, that ends with a reunion and a good life in Canada. It is a story of survival, even if Van Ho was Too Young to Escape.

Wicked Nix

Written by Lena Coakley

Illustrated by Jaime Zollars

HarperCollins Canada

978-1-443454698

163 pp.

Ages 8-12

October 2018

Wicked Nix is the foulest of fairies who lives in the forest in a nest in the old oak tree, ever since the Good Queen and all the other fairies left last Midsummer's Eve for the Summer Country.  Wicked Nix has learned to survive through some help from Mr. Green, a forest entity (or a figment of Nix's imagination?) and a little girl-people, Rose the Wise, who is not repulsed by Nix's looks. The gifts the villagers leave out, like a bit of cheese or honeycomb, to appease the fairies also help.

But now a man-people has shown up at the cottage in the forest and Wicked Nix is not happy.

I can smell him, or at least I think I can. Like all peoples, he smells like soap and taking baths and eating with a fork. Horrible. (pg. 3)

Anticipating the return of the Good Queen and knowing the presence of the man-people will displease her, Wicked Nix looks for ways to frighten the man-people away. But, unlike the other fairies, Nix has no magic and the man-people figures out the tricks used to drive him away and uses his own, including salt, iron and daisies, to keep the fairies at bay. Will Wicked Nix be successful in getting rid of the intruder or will the intruder succeed in making a home of the abandoned cottage in the fairy wood?

Lena Coakley has always spun a great YA fantasy tale (Witchlanders, 2011; Worlds of Ink and Shadow, 2016) but, with Wicked Nix, she's proven that she can write really great middle grade fiction. While Wicked Nix does not contain the angst we anticipate in YA fiction–because life becomes more complicated as you get older, doesn't it?–it delves into the worries of young readers: freedom to choose, belonging, and being loved. Wicked Nix may well be a tale of fantasy with its fairies and magic but at its roots it's a story of abandonment, home and finding connectedness, sometimes where least expected. It's also about perspective, both Nix's and the reader's, and seeing beyond the established and being open to the unexpected. And Lena Coakley has such a gentle touch with the voice of Nix and Rose and others that it's easy to empathize with their plights.

I'm sure she did not forget me, though. I'm sure she loves me. She once pulled a star down from the sky for me–that's how I know. She must have left me here to protect the forest. She must have left me here because she trusts me more than all of the others. (pg. 32)

While I encourage all readers to take the path through Wicked Nix's woods (follow Jaime Zollars's map at the beginning of the book), be sure stick to the road meant for people. Otherwise, there may be some nasty surprises in store for you and you wouldn't want to be taken by the fairies, since Nix probably won't be able to help you out.

A Month of Mondays

by Joëlle Anthony
Second Story Press
978-1-77260-026-1
340 pp.
Ages 9-13
March 2017

I was reminded of the Boomtown Rats song "I Don't Like Mondays" when I read the title of Joëlle Anthony's middle grade book and I couldn't even imagine a month full of those oppressive days.  It's just too overwhelming.  Not unlike Suze Tamaki's life.

Suze Tamaki is twelve years old and a Grade 7 student at Maywood Junior High in Victoria, BC.  She lives with her father and her slovenly sister, seventeen-year-old Tracie, in a cramped apartment.  Her Aunt Jenny a.k.a. AJ and Uncle Bill essentially round out her family.  That is, until her mother Caroline who’d abandoned them when Suze was 3 returns to town and wants to reconnect with her daughters.  Everyone has an opinion about that happening, especially Tracie who vehemently refuses to have anything to do with Caroline or allow Suze to do so.

At school, things aren’t any more settled. Suze, who regularly spends time in the office of the principal, Mr. Farbinger, and seems to be quite content to coast through her coursework, is moved into Honours English to work with best friend and super achiever Amanda on a speech presentation.  With the aim of presenting to the school board, the two decide to take up the cause of the custodians who are set to lose their jobs to more cost-efficient contractors.  But even that becomes a fiasco when Suze finds some unorthodox ways to research the custodians’ impact on schools.

Meanwhile, Suze is trying to navigate a potential relationship with a mother who seems to be out of touch with her children, though she has plenty of money to try and make an impact.  The question for Suze is whether any of her hurdles–her schooling, her mother, the rest of her family–are worth the effort necessary to overcome them and lead to some positive resolution.  Unfortunately or not, it’s up to her how she proceeds.  And when life feels like a month of Mondays, it’s hard to get up for any of it.

It’s nice to see a kid who neither has it all together or sits at the bottom of the heap trying to crawl out of the despair of a horrific life. Suze is probably more like most kids, at neither extreme but somewhere in the middle, just trying to make sense of the people and circumstances of her life.  She may not always choose well–her recurrent trips to the principal’s office attest to that–and may get distracted and discouraged but she keeps on plugging away.  Without creating a superhero for the middle grade set, Joëlle Anthony has created a very realistic young teen who’s just trying to find her way.  She may drag a few people along for the ride, and it’s sometimes a bumpy one, but she keeps heading somewhere and in her own time. I guess that’s as real as it gets, isn’t it?  And Joëlle Anthony ensures the reader comes away with a lesson in stick-with-it-ness, demonstrating that things always resolve themselves somehow, sometimes more and sometimes less positively than you might imagine.

Saving Stevie: Book Launch (Toronto, ON)

Debut YA author

Eve Richardson

will be launching 

her young adult novel

Saving Stevie

by Eve Richardson

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-540-0

228 pp.

Ages 14-17

November 2016

on 

Thursday, December 8, 2016

7 p.m.

at

Mabel's Fables

662 Mount Pleasant Road

Toronto, ON

Thirteen-year-old Minto's family is in crisis. Minto's older sister has had a baby and immediately abandoned the family and her son. Her father and mother are overwhelmed with the new baby and not coping. When Minton hears discussions about the possibility of turning weeks-old Stevie over to adoption services, Minto must take action and responsibility. She steals away in the night with the baby, some basic supplies and a little bit of money to hide in a shacktown. There are so many problems to deal with — Minto isn't sure she can make this work. But she has to keep trying because the alternative is not acceptable.

Description retrieved December 5, 2016 from Fitzhenry & Whiteside website at http://www.fitzhenry.ca/Detail/0889955409

The Finding Place

Written by Julie Hartley
Red Deer Press
978-0-889-95533-2
244 pp.
Ages 10-14
September 2015

Thirteen-year-old Kelly, the narrator of The Finding Place, knows only that she’d been found outside a village school in Yangshuo, China before she’d been taken to an orphanage from which her parents adopted her at a few months of age. Other than being Chinese by birth, Kelly knows little of her beginnings and herself.  But this was always okay with her, until her dad leaves.  Not knowing why he left, where he was, and if he was coming back, Kelly is left filling in the blanks of that story with various possibilities, all that make her mom the bad guy.  Moreover, Kelly is starting to feel lost, unaware of who she truly is.

My Canadian identity came from my parents but, with Dad gone, how much of that was left? (pg. 44)

Like a typical teen, Kelly lashes out at her mother, Auntie Lou and best friend Raziel whenever they question her about what she’s thinking or doing.  Not surprising that Mom wants to find a way to connect with Kelly, so she plans a March break trip to China, hoping that it will help Kelly clarify some things about her birth place and ultimately herself.

But Mom’s debilitating headaches often leave Kelly alone and exploring–without permission–outside the hotel.  At times, she feels Chinese, empowered by trying out her Mandarin and being understood, and participating in a Tai Chi activity in a park.  But then the confusion returns.

Back in the lobby of our hotel, I stood for a moment among the American business peple and the western tourists with their cameras slung around their necks, and I thought, where do I belong? Here, where everyone except the desk staff looks like my parents, but thinks and speaks the way I do? Or out there in the real China where everyone looks like me, even though I can’t understand a single word they say? (pg. 110)

Her mom’s annoyance and anger with Kelly reveals her plan to move them from Toronto to Brantford to live with her Auntie Lou, giving them a fresh start.  Kelly is devastated, believing that her father would never come home then, disregarding the countless emails she’s sent him without response.

Their arrival in Yangshuo, ever closer to her finding place i.e., the spot where she’d been abandoned, brings them in contact with other parents picking up their adopted children, including a Toronto woman Clare whom Kelly met at the Bejing hotel and was adopting a child from the very orphanage that Kelly had resided in before her own adoption.

But, just like life, things do not run smoothly. Clare’s baby, Phoenix, is ill and may be kept from adoption; Mom did not apply for permission to visit the orphanage; and Kelly, who’d been convinced that her mother had been keeping her dad away, learns the real reason for his absence.  A life-threatening situation finally helps Kelly realize what she has in the way of an identity and that what seems like an end might just be a beginning.

I have always believed that every child should be able to see themselves somewhere in the books, hence the push for diversity in literature.  The Finding Place opens up that door to children who became part of new families through international adoption, here specifically from China.  Kelly’s story and perhaps that of Clare and Phoenix may or may not be similar to those of other girls adopted from China but it provides a starting place for filling in the blanks of their adoption and heritage.  Julie Hartley’s rigourous research (an interview with Julie Hartley at the end of the book will attest to this) provides a more complete background for Kelly’s story, though The Finding Place is still much more than a story of a child’s adoption.  It’s her story, absolutely, but it’s of finding herself: her beginnings, her place as a daughter, friend and niece, and as a part of a broken family.  Her struggles with self-determination and self-acceptance are the greater story of The Finding Place, though China does become the finding place by definition in a far greater manner than mother and daughter probably could ever have imagined.

The Biggest Poutine in the World

by Andrée Poulin

Translated by Brigitte Waisberg

Annick Press

978-1-55451-825-8

160 pp.

Ages 9-12

March, 2016

Reviewed from advance reading copy 

Using food to fill the void of loneliness and to quench the anguish of abandonment would not be unusual but using a 650-kilogram poutine to smother the emptiness of a cold, distant father and an absentee mother is definitely unique.  But that’s what twelve-year-old Thomas Gagné of Sainte-Alphonsine believes might offer his pathetic life some hope.

A glimmer of hope lights up in my mind.  A tiny, fragile, trembling glimmer.  I try not to pay too much attention to it. I’ve tasted disappointment before, and it doesn’t taste good. (pg. 11)

Though it has been seven long years since he’s seen his mother–and yet he does receive  very brief notes with cash from her at his birthday–Thomas has fond memories of her making poutine for him: peeling whole bags of potatoes, buying cheese curds together, making the gravy and cooking the fries.  Taking a cue from his favourite website, the Guinness World Records, Thomas concocts the idea of making a giant poutine and feeding hundreds of people so that he might earn a world record and become worthy of the attention of his parents.  So begins the Phenomenal Poutine Project, PPP, for which Thomas enlists the help of his best friend, Sam Bernier; Sam’s godfather and French fry truck owner Fat Frank; and Irene Ladouceur, who runs the local cheese shop and insists Thomas include her daughter Elie in the project.  But things run amok when the mayor, Thérèse Tartatcheff, refuses to rent the arena to Thomas for the event.

Thomas is not deterred, however, and cooks up a plan to kidnap the mayor’s Senegal parrot and then recover the bird, all to sway Tartatcheff into relenting to his PPP.  But, as with so many good plans, things go awry.  His friendships with Sam and Elie, his missing mother, his aloof father, an allergic reaction, a wayward parrot, and a candy-pink note all get heaped on top of each other and smothered in emotions.  Fortunately, all culminates in a satisfying fusion of humour and coming-of-age drama, with a side order of dysfunctional family.

The Biggest Poutine in the World is the English translation, by Annick Press’s Brigitte Waisberg, of Andrée Poulin’s La plus grosse poutine du monde (Bayard Canada, 2013) which won the 2014 Prix TD de littérature canadienne pour l’enfance et la jeunesse and the 2015 Le Prix Tamarac of the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading.  The story is a visually-appealing mixture of graphics, including fun text messages between Thomas and Sam, drawings of emails between Thomas and Elie, an album of types of poutine (who knew there were so many!), and black-and-white sketches, with text set in large font and broken into small chapters with massive titles.  Young readers will undoubtedly appreciate the organizational format of the book but it’s the story line with which they will empathize.  Thomas is a boy with much resentment, anger and jealousy and yet he can still see the potential for hopefulness.  He even has a willingness and positivity to accept a challenge to captivate that hope although obstacles and self-doubt test him.

With The Biggest Poutine in the World, Andrée Poulin demonstrates an understanding of the complexities of a child’s mind when faced with familial conflict.  Being an accomplished author of over 30 French-language picture books and children’s novels, Andrée Poulin effortlessly translates that strife with compassion and humour into an uplifting tale of friendship and determination and emotional growth.  It does pull a bit at the heart, but no more than the occasional high-cholesterol poutine might.

(A version of this review was originally written for and published in Quill & Quire, as noted in the citation below.)

Kubiw, H. (2016, January/February). [Review of the book The Biggest Poutine in the World, by Andrée Poulin]. Quill & Quire, 82 (1): 44.

250 Hours

Written by Colleen Nelson

Coteau Books

978-1-55-5—641-9

152 pp.

Ages 12+

September 2015

“I don’t want to set them. But it’s like if I don’t do it, something worse will happen.  Watching something burn means I’ve saved a different bad thing from happening.”  He knew it sounded crazy, but maybe she’d understand because there was hurt inside of her too. (pg. 68)

And Jess Sinclair is right.  The hurt that compels him to set fires, hence his 250 hours community service, is also in 18-year-old Sara Jean whose grandmother’s garage is being cleaned out by Jess.  But, while both deal with abandonment issues–Jess by his father eight years earlier and Sara Jean at two months of age by her mother–and have significant relationships with their grandmothers, Jess’s hurt is wrapped up in living with the double-edged discrimination of being Métis as Sara Jean deals with being shackled to small-town life as primary caregiver to her 450-lb. grandmother, Gam.

While the two teens attempt to accept their responsibilities to their families and communities, they yearn to become independent of the hurts that define their lives, and they find themselves drawn to each other, particularly after Sara Jean discovers memorabilia of her Grandpa’s teaching at the local residential school.   But everyone seems to be keeping secrets and the discrimination Sara Jean detects from her boyfriend and his family, her own Gam and Aunt Mim towards Jess and Aboriginal People compels her to learn more, especially after she finds a small pair of moccasins that, unbeknownst to her, Jess is convinced his kokum had made.

Colleen Nelson tells another powerful story (see my review of The Fall, Great Plains Teen Fiction, 2013) in 250 Hours, but focuses on small-town mindedness, the injustice of the residential schools, and family expectations in such a way that the reader will sympathize for Jess and Sara Jean who feel trapped by the stifling suffocation of their histories.  How do you break free to make a new life for yourself when there is so much holding you back?

There’s always a reason to stay.  I guess there has to be better reasons to go. (pg. 69)

Don’t be surprised if you feel enraged by the injustices perpetrated against these young people and against Aboriginal people.  That’s good because we all should be.  I suspect that 250 Hours is a truer reflection of life for many who experience blatant discrimination, whether wholesale as evoked by the residential school situations or  randomly by ignorant individuals, and for youth limited by the influence of family and peers.  Not surprising that everyone seems to know what's best for others. Thankfully, Colleen Nelson makes sure that Sara Jean's and Jess's stories are told, albeit in a fictionalized tale, to give them voice, freedom and limitless possibilities to be themselves.  It’s a powerful story of redemption where none seemed possible.

Finding Ruby Starling

by Karen Rivers

Alfred A. Levine Books/Scholastic

978-0-545-53479-6

304 pp.

Ages 10-14

August, 2014

Reviewed from advance reading copy

Karen River’s latest book for young readers is a successful take on a Parent Trap-type plot, albeit with the benefits of modern technology and perhaps a friendly spirit. 

While goofing around online with a face-matching app called FaceTrace, 12-year-old Ruth Quayle, adopted daughter of a heart surgeon and a scientist, discovers a British look-alike in trendier clothes named Ruby Starling. Through a series of Tumblr posts, emails with her best, talking to her parents, and contacting Ruby, Ruth determines that she and the other girl are identical twins who somehow became separated.

“I feel like half of me has just been peeled away, like a decal being pulled off its back sticky bit, making me just the waxy papery rubbish left behind.” (pg. 11)

Unconvinced about Ruth’s theory, Ruby reaches out to her friends for advice, though she knows that only her mother – a busy artist distracted by her work – and her deceased grandmother could tell her the truth.  Finding the need to talk to grandmother, Ruby writes letters (obviously never sent) to air her thoughts.  When a painting by Ruby’s mother of her as a baby with a shadow baby in the background falls off the wall, Ruby becomes convinced that her Nan has sent her a message from beyond the grave indicating that Ruby and Ruth are indeed twins.

By using only emails, letters, and Tumblr posts for Ruth and Ruby to communicate their secrets, concerns and questions, Karen Rivers’ ensures that the girls’ youthful voices are always maintained.  And, though the twins have bigger issues with which to deal, including fear, abandonment and grief, Karen Rivers embeds those issues seamlessly within natural interactions with family and friends, adding quirky teachings from a Buddhist calendar, occasional ghostly messages and some boyfriend-girlfriend drama to help keep the heavy issues from detracting from the story’s feelgood nature.

Karen Rivers’ story of long-lost twins could have easily followed a typical, comedic path. But by showing how the lives of Ruth and Ruby are enriched by the discovery of each other, the author has created a more complex narrative that explores themes of family and friendship.

(A version of this review was originally written for and published in Quill & Quire, as noted in the citation below.)

Kubiw, H. (2014, October). [Review of the book Finding Ruby Starling, by Karen Rivers]. Quill & Quire, 80 (8): 38.