Girl of the Southern Sea

Written by Michelle Kadarusman

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-081-9

224 pp.

Ages 8-12

May 2019

This is the story of Nia, a girl who lives with her five-year-old brother Rudi and their father in a tin shack along the train tracks of Jakarta, Indonesia. Though at fourteen she has finished middle school, she craves to continue her education, but there is no extra money for the school fees needed for high school. Instead she works to tend to the family: getting her brother to and from school, making meals, cleaning, and preparing batter for their father's fried banana cart. Sadly, it also means bringing her father home from nights of drinking arak (an alcoholic drink) at Jango's hut and cleaning up after Bapak's poor choices. Still Nia tries to see a future, hopeful of saving money for school and writing stories about Dewi Kadita, the Queen of the Southern Sea, who offers life lessons and the promise of a better life from dire circumstances.

But, with any story, there are plot twists and conflicts that challenge characters and wrench the narrative from a smooth path to a satisfying terminus. For Nia, it's a minibus crash from which she alone survives essentially unscathed. In a culture rife with superstitions and a predilection for supernatural stories, Nia's survival is seen as a miracle and consequently their banana fritters attributed with being infused with good luck. But how fortunate is Nia truly?

This is the basis for Michelle Kadarusman's story of Nia, but I cannot convey the depth of the storytelling within Girl of the Southern Sea and it's message for girls to make their own opportunities. (A portion of the book's proceeds go to Plan International Canada's #BecauseIAmaGirl campaign.) Even dealing with her father's alcoholism and weakness of character, and inherent vulnerabilities because of poverty and alarming cultural and social attitudes, Nia is driven to continue her education and write her stories. She stands up for herself–"I am not your promise to give." (pg. 196)– and makes sure that her life becomes the story she wants told.

I am here to live a different story. I am here to write my own story. (pg. 202)

There are so many tragedies in Nia's story that come when others try to impose their lives on her circumstances. There are the corrupt police who assault her father; her best friend Yuli who may be involved in illicit activities as a way to improve her conditions; vigilantes who turn on Nia violently when the good luck they purported she peddled was proven to be lacking; and her father who is willing to choose his own needs over those of his children. Still Nia takes guidance from her mother, via dreams, and from Dewi Kadita, the princess cursed with disfiguring skin conditions relieved only in the Southern Sea, and begins to make a life for herself. Its origins may be saturated in misfortune and tragedy but it will become the story she wants to write for herself and make her the Girl of the Southern Sea.

Burned, Exposed, Unleashed: Retribution series

But each of us had taken on the responsibility of protecting or avenging those few who had become dear to us.  Willing to risk our lives to see justice done.  We were all so different and yet so much the same. (Exposed, pg. 86)

Three teens: Josie, Raven and Jace.  Three injustices needing to be righted.  One series.  Retribution.

Exposed
by Judith Graves
Orca Book Publishers
978-1-4598-0726-6
137 pp.
Ages 12+
October 2015

Although the three books in the series can be read in any order–I read Unleashed first, then Burned and Exposed–and my image shows the books in alphabetical order,  I’d like to start with Judith Graves’ contribution to the series, Exposed.  Exposed is Raven’s story.  Raven, who has left the home of her meth-addicted parents, has found a new family working with other young people as an urban climber getting into high-end, secure car parkades to steal cars for Diesel.  And climbing is a release for her.

From here all my worries seemed smaller, so small they could be tucked away in my pocket and forgotten, like empty candy wrappers that would someday just slip away unnoticed.  (pg. 32)

Raven anticipates leaving this life when she turns 16 in a few weeks, diligently going to school and secretly saving her money and purchasing a houseboat for herself, and, to that end, Diesel has her training a younger climber Supersize.  But when Diesel sets up Supersize before he’s ready to lead a team and tragedy ensues, Raven is determined to get even with Diesel.

Burned
by Natasha Deen
Orca Book Publishers
978-1-4598-0726-6
161 pp.
Ages 12+
October 2015

While scouting out cars to steal, she meets Josie, the main character in Natasha Deen’s Burned. Jo has been on the streets for two years and has learned the way to survive is to trust no one, show no fear and that “hope is just another way to spell dead” (pg. 26).  But, though Josie has found a way to make herself useful,  scouting security leaks for a family grocer, helping stock shelves at a community kitchen, and painting art forgeries, she’s still looking for retribution against the woman responsible for the deaths of her mother and younger siblings.  Josie is out to

Burn her with the same heat she used to set my life on fire, and the orange red flames that scorched the breath from my family will cauterize her soul. (pg. 3)

Josie is out to prove this woman cop shot her family and another young woman, but she needs the help of  ATM Guy whom she spots using his tech skills to steal money at the family grocer.  When she approaches him to try to get evidence from the cop’s laptop, she learns that his name is Bentley and his brother is Jace, whom she refers to as Boxer Boy because of his physique, and so the third protagonist is introduced.

Unleashed
by Sigmund Brouwer
Orca Book Publishers
978-1-4598-0726-6
160 pp.
Ages 12+
October 2015

Jace, Sigmund Brouwer’s protagonist in Unleashed, leads a double life: one as a boxer slumming it at Billy’s gym, and one as the preppie, chess-playing son of disgustingly wealthy and emotionally-abusive Dr. Winchester Wyatt.

Life, to me, was a combination of chess and boxing.  You had to think everything through a couple of moves ahead and also be prepared to pound hard and often. (pg. 107)

Jace  is determined to get something on his father, especially because of the  horrific way he treats Jace’s tech-brilliant younger brother, Bentley, who was born with Laron syndrome which manifests as dwarfism.  Though he enlists a private detective and then Raven and Josie’s help to learn of some scandal in Winchester’s medical background, Jace has major trust issues and has to find a way to determine whom he can expect to be forthcoming and cooperative without taking advantage of his wealth.

The stories in Retribution are complex and intricate and the plot and characters interlaced in sophisticated weaves.  Writing the books must have been a complicated process for Judith Graves, Natasha Deen and Sigmund Brouwer.  But, the three authors stepped up, pen or laptops in hand, and were able to create a coordinated story with multiple plotlines while keeping their own writing voices unique and distinct.  That’s quite an accomplishment, especially for high-interest YA told in about 150 pages each. And, in the end, I believe that, though Raven, Jo and Jace are involved in less-than-legal schemes to get retribution, readers will admire their determination to seek justice.

I stopped thinking about my sorrows and focused on something else. Infinite possibilities. (Unleashed, pg. 160)

I’m hopeful that Jo, Raven, Jace and Bentley will continue to be that irrepressible team that is “living in the shadows, dispensing their own kind of justice” (Unleashed, pg. 156) and I look forward to their next quests for retribution.

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Remember: Orca Book Publishers has a contest on until November 30, 2015 (see my post about it here).  It's all about those infinite possibilities.

Run Marco Run

by Norma Charles

Ronsdale Press

978-1-55380-131-3

183 pp.

Ages12-17

2011

Marco has not done anything wrong, if you're thinking that's why he's running.  He's running because his father, James Graham, a journalist in Colombia, tells him to run while himself being kidnapped from a marketplace in Buenaventura.  Even though only thirteen, Marco knows the ins and outs of Buenaventura's criminal elements: its kidnappings of foreigners and journalists and their families, and corrupt police, drug cartels, and rebel groups.  His father, whose light skin distinguishes him as a gringo, is not silent about illegal or corrupt practices, making him an easy target.  Although Marco is Colombian-born and speaks Spanish more easily than English, he is vulnerable, without a mother now and the only child of a target.  So when his father cries out, "Run, Marco, run," he does just that.

Run Marco Run follows Marco in his quest first for safety and then for help in saving his father from potential death.  Although his mother's cousin, Aunt Rosa, and her children, Juan and Rosita, are family living in Buenaventura, asking for their help will only put them in danger.  So, when he finds refuge under a lifeboat on a ship heading for Vancouver, his father's former home, Marco latches onto the idea of getting help there, specifically from an influential international lawyer, Rolando Mendoza, who Marco's father had helped immigrate to Canada.

While Marco's decision to travel to Vancouver as a stowaway and the ensuing journey seem too implausible, Marco's introduction to Canada reads as legitimate as he suffers physical trauma, hunger and thirst, meets Canadians both helpful and scary, and experiences obstacles to his goal of finding Mr. Mendoza.  His suspicions of almost everything new (people, food, water) are clearly evident, though he acknowledges to himself his need to accept risks in order to have any hope of achieving his goal.

The legitimacy of Marco's need to help is father takes him on a very purposeful adventure, which middle grade readers will appreciate.  There are no awkward jumps from past to present and back again to confuse younger readers, or subplots that stray from Marco's desire to reunite with his father.  While Marco's voice may come across as awkward sometimes (for example, I don't know anyone who uses the word "hurray" anymore), and this may just be a reflection of his less-comfortable use of English, his need to find Mr. Mendoza as his father's only hope is convincing.

Norma Charles, author of The Girl in the Back Seat (Ronsdale Press, 2008) and Bank Job (Orca, 2009) with James Heneghan, has tackled some tough issues in her books: polygamy, peer pressure, foster children.  In addressing the vulnerability of foreigners and journalists, as well as the Buenaventura's criminal notoriety (Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada advises against all travel to the city of Buenaventura due to the "presence of illegal armed groups." Colombia Travel Report, Still Valid April 27, 2012), Run Marco Run provides young readers with a bona fide action-adventure while seeing their own country from another young person's perspective.