The Doll's Eye

Written by Marina Cohen

Roaring Brook Press

978-1-62672-2040

208 pp.

Ages 8-12

February 2017

There’s a creepiness in the old house to which twelve-year-old Hadley Jackson and her mom, and mom’s new husband Ed Crenshaw and his six-year-old son Isaac have moved. 

A heaviness in the air seemed to press down on her.  And, despite the August heat, it was cold and clammy, like a years-unopened tomb. (pg. 2)

She even feels like she’s being watched, though it could simply be the doll’s eyeball she discovers beneath her bed.  But, with her mom giving the lion’s share of her attention to Isaac, a child with numerous food allergies, Hadley is feeling less than hospitable to Ed and Isaac.  When the girl discovers an old dollhouse, a replica of the actual house, with four carved dolls–a man, a woman, a little girl, and an older woman in the apartment over the garage– Hadley sees a perfect family, and wishes the same for herself.   But, as many a tale has taught us, you must be careful with wishes.

Though she still feels out of sorts–in fact, she’s feeling an odd numbness in her hand which is extending to other parts–Hadley meets a couple of individuals who make her start to feel at home: Gabe, a neighbour boy who knows everything about snakes and insects , and the elderly woman, Althea S. de Mone a.k.a. Granny, who lives over the garage.  Gabe comes over daily to play and take her on excursions into the ravine at the back and Granny invites her for tea and crumble and chats about the dolls which she admits to carving.

But things begin to get really strange when the people in her life begin to change as the dolls disappear and are replaced.  First, Ed and Isaac disappear like they’d never existed and all of Hadley’s mom’s attention is focused on her daughter.  Hadley knows it is related to her wish that Ed and Isaac had never come into her life and tries to make things right again but ends up with another more haunting scenario with a father she’d never known.  She knows it’s all tied to the doll’s eye and the dollhouse but making it right seems near impossible. 

Hadley barely made it to her bed before her knees gave out.  She lay for the longest time, thinking, rubbing her numb hands.  It was as though someone had wrinkled the fabric of reality, changing the pattern of its threads.  She closed her eyes.  Perhaps if she dozed off, she’d wake from the nightmare and things would be back to normal. (pg. 100)

As if.

In the subtle terror reminiscent of W.W. Jacob’s chilling short story "The Monkey’s Paw", Marina Cohen brings creepiness into making wishes and into a young girl’s desire for a perfect family.  Hadley is just a naïve young girl who thinks she knows what will make her life better, just like the young girl from the past whose reminiscences Marina Cohen includes throughout The Doll’s Eye. But, whether in the past or the present, the young girls in The Doll’s Eye make some selfish and poor choices that have impacts never imagined.

By implanting her story in the seemingly innocent entities of youth i.e., dolls and dollhouses, Marina Cohen will have young readers shocked when they enter the disturbing realm of horror. But I guess that’s what the genre is meant to do, frighten and disturb. Thankfully, it’s the right amount of fright for young readers, never too much or of the grotesque variety, and it will keep them edge-of-their-seats reading until the last page, never expecting the ending.  As a seasoned reader, I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t, and I expect younger readers won’t either, though they will be thrilled with Marina Cohen’s twisted take on making wishes and what a perfect family entails. But, more than anything, they will be beguiled with another offering by Marina Cohen to a genre rarely published for middle grade readers and a sensational and supernatural contribution at that.

A Family is a Family is a Family

Written by Sara O'Leary

Illustrated by Qin Leng

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-794-8

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

September 2016

Following prescribed curricula from across the country, teachers will be encouraging their students to share details about their families and what makes them special, just like the students in Sara O'Leary's book in which a teacher asks her young charges what makes their families unique.  And though I suspect most children will see a version of their family somewhere in the multitude of families in A Family is a Family is a Family, it's Sara O'Leary's poetic inclusivity that takes the concept of family from an insular group to a worldwide love-in.

When the teacher first asks her students about their families, it is evident that one little child, who drops his eraser so that he can go last, is reluctant, knowing that "My family is not like everyone else's." (pg. 3) He's right, of course, because all families are unique.  From the little girl whose parents are heavily into PDAs, "It's kind of gross" (pg. 4) to the one whose parents "just keep coming home with more" (pg. 6) –I counted fifteen children!–

From A Family is a Family is a Family 

by Sara O'Leary, illus. by Qin Leng

to the children who are part of blended families, or have same-sex or divorced parents. But it's the last little child who finally recognizes that their foster family is still a family after recalling Foster Mom's affectionate answer to a rude query about which of the children were "her real children."

"Oh, I don't have any imaginary children," Mom said.  "All my children are real." (pg. 28)

Though I know, and children do too, that not all families are perfect or happy or supportive, Sara O'Leary's book celebrates families in all their forms–big, small, alike, different, blended, separated, adopting, fostering–as worthy of note, eclectic as they may be.  Her narration is a universal one of acceptance and appreciation for families of all kinds.  The sweetness of her message is matched page by page with Qin Leng's illustrations of children and parents of assorted colours and shapes, economic backgrounds and interests. The lightness of Qin Leng's lines and the whimsy of her colour and shape help portray a diversity of families that are as fluid as they are depicted.  After all, families can and do change over time, even if a new baby isn't the result of mom ordering him online, as one little girl suspects.  A Family is a Family is a Family is a book in which every child will find themselves, I hope, as Sara O'Leary and Qin Leng have diligently tried to include everyone in an assortment of situations that honour families at their best.

From A Family is a Family is a Family

by Sara O'Leary, illus. by Qin Leng

Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts

by Esta Spalding

Illustrated by Sydney Smith

Tundra Books (Penguin Random House)

978-1-770498761

224 pp.

Ages 8-12

May 2016

Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts because they’re here now and I’m sure they’re going to be around for a while (I’m already anticipating a follow-up book), even if they don’t have anyone really looking out for them.   The four Fitzgerald-Trout children-Kim, 11; Kimo, 11; Pippa, 8; and Toby, 5–are an odd assortment of children conceived through different combinations of fathers and mothers which include the wealthy and greedy Maya (mother to Kim and Pippa), the vain singer Tina (Kimo and Toby’s mother), the missing-at-sea Johnny Trout (father of Kimo) and mammalian research scientist Dr. Fitzgerald (father of Kim, Pippa and Toby).

They had different mothers and different fathers.  But they knew that didn’t matter.  They were a family because if you aren’t a family, you don’t live together in the same little car.  They knew they were brothers and sisters, even if when they made a new friend at school they had to take out a stick and draw in the dirt to explain just how they were related. (pg. 31)

And they all live in a small green car, which has gotten too small for them all to sleep in comfortably at night.  Kim, who wishes she lived in a house like the Perfects in her favourite book (a two-books-in-one The Perfects and The Awfuls),  keeps their little family on track with her to-do lists (which often includes "Find a House"), ensuring they go to school, do their laundry at Mr. Knuckles’ laundromat, and purchase food essentials and ice for their cooler from the loose coins Maya would give them or the money Tina dropped off for them.

When Maya is arrested for defrauding her investment clients, Kim almost finds them a home in Maya’s empty mansion, until it is seized to help repay investors.  Also thwarted is Kim's plan for them to hide away in the staged bedrooms of the massive furniture store MARRA.  It’s not until Kim decides that the Perfects whose lives are just too ideal are not the best of role models and that the Awfuls, who have endured and survived a variety of challenges, might be able to help guide them, that the Fitzgerald-Trouts find a home, far off the beaten path.

Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts may read like a handbook of how NOT to parent your children but it’s a celebration of family, unconventional as it may be, and the drive to find a home and meet challenges with creativity and perseverance.  Esta Spalding has produced a set of widely-different characters who don’t always get along but at heart are everything to each other.  They are strong and weak, and childish and mature, and selfless and inconsiderate, and they are children who have adventures and suffer all manner of adversity and stick together. Middle-grade readers and proficient early readers will enjoy the journey on which Esta Spalding’s story takes them, all the more beguiling for its tropical island setting, its diverse and over-the-top characters and the ruts and potholes along the way.  And, though the illlustrations are rarely a subtantial component of any novel, Sydney Smith’s black-and-white line drawings help give substance to the Fitzgerald-Trouts and their story.  Look out for Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts on reading lists everywhere very soon.

Kim from Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts 

by Esta Spalding, illus. by Sydney Smith

We are All Made of Molecules

by Susin Nielsen

Tundra Books

978-1-77049-781-8

246 pp.

Ages 12+

For release May, 2015

Blending families can be difficult but even more so when each family has a young teen burdened by the issues related to why their original family no longer exists.  We Are All Made of Molecules is told in the alternate voices of two young teens, Ashley and Stewart, whose families are joined together when Stewart’s dad, Leonard Inkster, and Ashley’s mom, Caroline Anderson, decide to move in together.  Stewart’s wonderful mother, Janice, has died of ovarian cancer, and Ashley’s father, Phil, has realized that he is gay and now lives in the laneway house behind the very house Stewart’s dad, Ashley’s mom, and Ashley and Stewart, and Stewart’s cat Schrödinger, will now cohabit.  Yep. Awkward.

Even though Stewart could continue at Little Genius Academy, he chooses to attend Ashley’s high school, claiming “It’s time for me to work on my ungifted parts.” (pg. 31) In fact, he makes a list of things he will do at his new school like getting more involved, smiling more, making jokes, and not getting discouraged.   And with a new “sister” like Ashley who melds her drama queen with mean girl to perfection, Stewart has to work pretty hard.  But the serendipitous attraction between Ashley and a jock hottie and bully named Jared puts Stewart in the awkward position of liaison, one that gives him some respite from attacks on two fronts but also breeds some doubts.

Ashley’s emphasis on the Social Ladder and everyone’s placement on it,

People like Stewart don’t even count. They don’t even have a foot on the ladder. They can’t even touch the ladder.  They are forbidden from going anywhere near the ladder. (pg. 74)

is re-assessed courtesy of Stewart and his quality self.  Susin Nielsen dedicates her book “To Oskar–Boy, did Dad and I hit the Jackpot” and I think Stewart’s family did the same.  He’s a quality human being: incredibly gifted, kind-hearted, compassionate and loyal.  He could rip into Ashley any number of times for her selfishness and cruelty–and her misuse of common phrases are to dye for! (my deliberate faux pas)–but holds back, though he still thinks,

She doesn’t have to changes houses, and bedrooms, and neighbourhoods! And sure, her parents are divorced, but at least they are still ALIVE! (pg. 24)  

Still Stewart shares with Ashley the knowledge that they are all made of molecules, explaining his quirky but tear-jerking way of harnessing any remaining molecules of his mother’s soul. By contrasting these two teens, one with quirky wisdom ringed with love and the other who sees differences as hierarchy and can’t see the difference between “joie de beaver” (pg. 122) and joie de vivre, Susin Nielsen has once again created a story that slices into your heart with tenderness and splinters your side with humour.

Look for We Are All Made of Molecules on award lists everywhere soon. 

Four Seasons of Patrick

by Susan Hughes
Red Deer Press
978-0-88995-505-9
80 pp.
Ages 7-10
October, 2013

Hard to believe that, in a spare 80 pages, author Susan Hughes efficiently and thoroughly takes the reader through a significant year of growth and tumbles in the life of Patrick McAllister, a young boy whose life revolves around his best friend Harry and his family, Dad and older brother Trevor.

Four Seasons of Patrick begins in winter with Patrick enjoying the familiar routines of first snow days with Harry and late night walks with his family to pick out "Mom's star" in the dark sky.  While Patrick cherishes the comfort of these traditions, he notes that his dad's new "friend" Linda and her pesky seven-year-old daughter may change things.  Sure enough, spring brings Dad's announcement that he and Linda are getting married and that Linda and Claire would be moving in at the end of August.  Patrick is overwhelmed by this, thinking of little else, including his friend, as he tries to find a way to cope.  After some drastic notions, Patrick comes up with the idea of a tree house for himself and Harry.

So, with the start of summer, Dad begins renovations on the house and Patrick and Harry start looking for the perfect tree for their hideaway.  The search seems futile until their neighbour Mr. Mutter points them in the right direction, and Patrick realizes that,

"...perfect doesn't always end up matching the picture in your mind." (pg. 48)

But the joy of building their tree house is tempered by Patrick's dad's delays in visiting it, though he does insist the boys take a somewhat-withdrawn Claire to see it. And, with the beginning of autumn and the school year, Patrick is asked to take on even more responsibilities for Claire who has become further withdrawn. 

Readers will empathize with Patrick's situation, as the youngest boy whose discomfort is discounted by Trevor's eager acceptance and by Claire's trumping them all as the youngest and the only girl.  Four Seasons of Patrick indicates that Patrick spends much time on introspection and consideration of his new family situation, and is able to finds the means to accept it and ultimately support Claire as she needs.  Without making him into a self-deprecating victim of family turmoil, Susan Hughes creates Patrick as any child in such a situation: he works at figuring out what's happening and how he can find a place to fit in, because there certainly is at least one.  He plays neither the victim nor the aggressor, and consequently will be that character to whom many children of blended families will relate.

It seems to me that when blending families, all participants must be on their toes, paying attention to any awkwardness, hesitancy, or aggression that may reveal itself.  And while I don't expect that children be allowed to direct the family dynamics or be mean and nasty, I would expect that their feelings not be negated or relegated to less-important status because of their age or gender.  Yes, Patrick is having issues with Linda and Claire coming into their family, but Dad certainly doesn't give Patrick more than lip-service.  Regardless, Patrick is able to find the supports he needs and ascend to an even better version of himself.  Isn't that what growing up is all about?