Spotting Dottie (Orca Currents)

Written by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-3483-5

112 pp.

Ages 9-12

R: 2.5

April 2024 

There's Nessie, the Loch Ness monster. There's also Chessie, the Chesapeake Bay creature,  and Champ, the lake monster of Lake Champlain. But in Gail Anderson-Dargatz's latest hi-lo novel for Orca Currents, we have Dottie, a cryptid that lives in the deepest part of Dorothy Lake. Or does she?

Charlotte believes wholeheartedly in Dottie, just as her grandmother Donna always has. Ever since Donna saw the lake monster when she was 14, as Charlotte is now, she has been interested in Dottie, collecting memorabilia and photos, interviewing prospective witnesses, and patiently watching through her spotting scope and binocs. This has earned her the moniker of Dottie Donna, and though her grandmother doesn't mind, it really bothers Charlotte's mom Anna who is not a believer in the creature.  When Anna gives Charlotte a drone with a camera for her birthday, Charlotte (a.k.a. Lottie) and Grandma and Charlotte's friend Scott witness something large, with humps rolling out the water. Convinced they have footage of Dottie, Charlotte shares it with the Dorothy Lake News website. 

That posting starts everything, from media attention, local ridicule–Charlotte becomes known as Dottie Lottie–self-doubt, and an undesirable draw of tourists and cryptid hunters to the lake. All Charlotte had wanted was to get her mother to believe Grandma in her assertion that Dottie existed. Instead, she has brought chaos and perhaps danger to her friends and family and perhaps, worse of all, to Dottie.

 

There is a natural interest in the unknown, attempting to understand the unexplainable, to prove that which has not been proven. It's wondering about things we don't know and defending those whose beliefs may be different than our own. Charlotte is a sweet granddaughter who really just wants to help her mother and grandmother get along better. The two strong women in her life are pulling Charlotte to different perspectives and Charlotte is convinced that if she can find evidence of Lottie and prove it to her mother, then everything will be alright. Unfortunately, beliefs can be entrenched and making someone believe something other than what they've always held true is a tall order. It doesn't help when there are those who ridicule you for those beliefs. But Gail Anderson-Dargatz doesn't force Charlotte or Anna or even Donna to believe something they don't. She lets them be a family who can love and accept differences and bend as needed. Spotting Dottie may lead young readers to investigate the real story of BC's cryptid–Ogopogo in Lake Okanagan–but that mystery is one that will remain while families come together, and sometimes fall apart. And Gail Anderson-Dargatz will let us watch them and learn.

Whether Nessie or Chessie or Champ are logs, mega eels or cryptids, it doesn't matter to Dottie's story. Dottie is as real as she needs to be for all the families involved. And we're going to keep her secrets safe.

The Momentous Expiration of Tremmy Sinclair

Written by Michael F. Stewart

The Publishing House

978-1-989133-05-7

259 pp.

Ages 13+

June 2021

 I can do anything at all, but now there's not time. How do you live a lifetime in four months? (pg. 4)

Tremendous Sinclair, talented and privileged son of wealthy parents, has been dealing with brain cancer over the summer before his senior year, keeping his diagnosis, treatments and prognosis from his best friend Jenkins and everyone at Amborough Private School. His parents, desperate to give him anything, including a miracle, are taking him on a first-class trip around the world. That is, until Tremmy decides that what he really wants is to return to school, and live out what little time he has being the head boy, a drone war general, captain of the swim team and his best self. Unfortunately, Tremmy soon realizes that...

Nothing can be truly fantastic anymore. Now fantastic is coated in a prickly sweat of impending doom. (pg. 42)

Still he returns to school. What he had hoped would be a stellar few months of accomplishments and camaraderie soon becomes something different. His symptoms slowly begin to affect his daily life, though he tries to cover it up. But when his medical circumstances are leaked to all, the school's administration does whatever it can to get him out, not wanting a student's death at school on their hands. And his friends? Audra wants to run a social experiment and record photographs of his dying. Girlfriends Jodie and Mona come out of the woodwork and make him think about his relationships. Margot, scholarship student and head girl prefect, supports him and makes him consider how he needs to fight. As for Jenkins? He may be pompous, privileged, self-absorbed, and perhaps criminal–Tremmy has to get him out of at least one bad situation–but Tremmy may need him because his attempts to procure medical or parental assistance in dying is not happening.

With each day, and those days are counted down in chapter headings that record "days to demise," Tremmy tries to enlighten his classmates about death and dying, knowing it will help him as much as them. 

Silence is when I am most alone. That's when the shadows of death's in the room. (pg. 235)

But how do you convince anyone to listen when you're stripped of your achievements, squirreled away in an unused room, growing weaker and less able, and your best friend is either not talking to you or doing things you're starting to see as questionable? Tremmy has more than one fight on his hands, and whether he wins any of them may not be up to him.

Michael F. Stewart’s latest young adult novel–earlier ones include Heart Sister, Counting Wolves and Assured Destruction–may ask readers to think about what a good death is but more importantly it reminds us that it only comes with living a life that is of value. And that value does not comes from wealth or bountiful experiences, both of which Tremmy has available to him.  It’s value that comes from meaning.

 ...it's at the point of discomfort where life gets important. (pg. 149)

From the onset of The Momentous Expiration of Tremmy Sinclair, it's clear that Tremmy's circle of friends and family are highly advantaged, wealthy beyond imagination. 24K gold-trimmed double-screened cell phones with firefly companion drones. Caviar served in the cafeteria. Selling of transcripts of one teacher's lectures for $10,000. These kids and their families have gobs of money. But it won't save Tremmy from death or others from poor decisions and bad behaviour. Michael F. Stewart may take us into their world but he doesn't leave us there. We're like the drones the kids fight with, watching Tremmy and his classmates, the school's administration and his parents, and others who flit into their lives. We see the calamities and the injustices, the insights and the fears. And we see the resolution, for Tremmy, at least. Surprisingly, that resolution brings both tears and cheers. Tremmy couldn't change the life he'd lived prior to his diagnosis but he sure added value to it with his death. In that way, Tremendous Sinclair's expiration is truly momentous, as is Michael F. Stewart's telling of it.