Me (and) Me

Written by Alice Kuipers

HarperCollins Canada

9781443448826

288 pp.

Ages 14+

April 2017

Lark Hardy’s seventeenth birthday should’ve been a fun day, and it had begun that way, a first date with Alec Sandcross canoeing at Pike Lake.  But one moment changes everything.  As the teens are about to embark on some swimming, a cry from Suzanne Fields, the mother of five-year-old Annabelle whom Lark had babysat, draws their attention to the child face down in the water. Alec dives in but hits his head and starts going down.  And as Suzanne yells at Lark to do something, the teen hesitates, not knowing whom to save.  So begins a novel split in two voices, both Larks and both Lark’s.

The first Lark begins to describe the days after the near drowning in which Alec has been saved and Annabelle lays in a hospital bed in a coma. Alec and Lark’s new relationship is blossoming, and he begins to teach her how to do parkour, climbing, running and jumping across obstacles such as buildings and bridges. Becoming so entwined with the attentive and charismatic Alec, Lark starts blowing off best friend Lucy and bandmates Nifty, Reid and Iona to spend time with Alec.  When she starts getting weird messages on her phone about Alec not being saved, Lark is disconcerted but has no answers. But when she visits Annabelle in the hospital, and hallucinates that she’s drowning in water and then glimpses a girl who is but isn’t her, Lark starts to think she’s going crazy.

In an alternate voice and chapters, a second Lark, one who cuts her hair short and dyes it red, recounts those same days, but ones in which music exec Martin Fields and wife Suzanne are ever grateful to her for saving their young daughter while Alec’s family sits by his hospital bedside, contemplating turning off the machines that are keeping him alive.  Lark still harbours much anger about her mother’s passing and translates that anger into petty shoplifting of items she doesn’t even want.  But though this Lark is starting to connect with bandmate Reid, she too is baffled by freaky messages including those of a not-hospital bound Alec and an intimate relationship with him.

Lark, whether the long- and dark-haired one or she of the red hair, have similar circumstances: a musical mother who has passed; a dad with heart issues; best friend Lucy; a passion for writing songs; and playing with bandmates Reid, Iona and Nifty.  She is also starting to suspect she’s losing it, seeing things like imaginary water near drowning her and disappearing messages.

The linchpin for Lark becomes the lyrics her mother started penning before her death.

Perhaps you see it differently
You and me
It’s just a case of who tells the story
Perhaps you see it differently. (pg. 86)

Showering her intense text with astounding lyrics, Alice Kuipers  brings both Larks together to juxtapose the parallel lives they lead after the near drowning at the lake.  Confused by grief, fears and even guilt, both girls (or are they really two?) attempt to make sense of a world in which their own choices for actions have consequences that they wish they could undo.  They are two halves of the same whole, different but similar. They are Me (and) Me.  (There’s even a crazy moment when the two face off and shout, “Who even are you?” “Who the hell are you?”; pg. 240) It’s hard to say whether the two will come together equally, though Lark recognizes that,

I have to stitch myself back together.  I have to make myself whole. (pg. 270)

or whether Lark will become more of one than the other.  However, it’s clear that Alice Kuipers in her daring storytelling and almost maternal concern for her characters wants to help keep Lark together. Life is hard enough without questioning your decisions, especially those made under pressure, and when literally being torn apart by them.  I can’t tell you how it ends (you’ll see when you read Me (and) Me) but I can tell you that the story comes full circle, secured in its own way, though not tied up as you might expect.

Check back tomorrow for my Me (and) Me blog tour stop with a guest post by author Alice Kuipers.  Ever enlightening, Alice Kuipers speaks about why she writes YA.

Northwest Passage

by Stan Rogers

As seen by Matt James
Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-153-3

56 pp.

All ages

September 2013

Ah, for just one time
I would take the Northwest Passage...
                                                             – Stan Rogers, 1981

And so begins a journey.  A journey of  explorers to find a northern route to Asia.  A journey for singer-songwriter Stan Rogers to discover the multitude of pulse points of our nation. And yet another journey.  That of Matt James, award-winning illustrator of I Know Here (Groundwood, 2010), in his visual interpretation of the Stan Rogers' 1981 song that many believe may be the epitome of a Canadian ballad.

Ballads are perfect for wrapping up history in story-telling, and the selection of Northwest Passage for an illustrated book is inspired.  Matt James' acrylic paintings easily transport the reader from the beautiful but dangerous iridescent turquoise waters of the Arctic through the snow-clad or barren lands of the tundra and our mountainous regions.  There are sightings of narwhal, snowshoe hare, polar bear, bear and buffalo.  There are crisp cold nights, and bright sunny days, overcast skies and impenetrable fogs. There are the travellers on old sailing ships, the coureurs de bois and Aboriginal People in canoes, First Nations on horseback, Canadians in planes and musicians in Rogers' yellow touring van.  And there are those points in history and the characters who gave substance to the ballad: Sir John Franklin, David Thompson, Alexander Mackenzie, and others, all included in the double-spread titled, "A Gallery of Explorers."

Matt James' selection of Northwest Passage is all the more profound for the number of young readers who will never get to experience Stan Rogers' talent first-hand.  But, though thirty years have passed since Rogers' death, Matt James has refreshed his memory with eloquence and colourful passion.  Northwest Passage, the book, will have Canadians such as myself revisiting the song, over and over and over again, while introducing younger readers to Stan Rogers' legacy, hopefully compelling them to search out his music and biographic information at the Stan Rogers and Fogarty's Cove website http://stanrogers.net/ or elsewhere.

While no young reader wants to hear this, I believe that Northwest Passage will be a unique teacher resource for melding language and music with Canadian history, supported by the wealth of additional content about the First Arctic Peoples, the explorers, especially Franklin's expedition, and the European settlement of Canada.

The Circle Game

Text by Joni Mitchell

Illustrations by Brian Deines

Dancing Cat Books

978-1-77086-042-1

32 pp.

Ages 3-6

2011

Turning song lyrics into children's books is not unusual, especially for those tunes that were originally written for children such as nursery rhymes and camp-fire songs.  There are wonderful children's performers like Eddie Douglas who take poetry (e.g., Dennis Lee's poems from Alligator Pie (Macmillan, 1974), Garbage Delight (Macmillan, 1977),  Jelly Belly (Macmillan, 1983) and The Ice Cream Store (HarperCollins, 1991) and adapt it for children's music.  But, in Canada, we don't have a long history of taking the poetry in song or hymn lyrics and adding graphics to produce children's books. Until now, I can only think of two such songs:

• The Huron Carol by Father Jean de Brebeuf, illustrated by Frances Tyrrell (Key Porter, 2003) 
• The Huron Carol by Father Jean de Brebeuf, illustrated by Ian Wallace (Groundwood, 2006)
• Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot, illustrated by Ian Wallace (Groundwood, 2010)

Now we can add Joni Mitchell's song, The Circle Game, to that list. 

The lyrics of Canadian-born Mitchell's song describe growing up and looking forward to new experiences, apparently in response to Neil Young's lament of lost youth in "Sugar Mountain". (1) The honest but hopeful words are beautifully embodied by Deines' paintings in complementary colours of purples and oranges.  Although impossible to tell whether Deines' medium is oil or pastel on canvas, the softness of his illustrations, whether the warm joys of capturing a dragonfly or the dark tremors of thunder and falling stars, always with uniquely dotted backgrounds, capably expresses the joys with the uneasiness of new experiences.  Moreover, just as our perspective of these experiences change as we grow up (dare I say it, age), so does the view of and from the carousel, never allowing one to return but accessible in our memories.

(1) Joni Mitchell interview notes