Everyday Hero

by Kathleen Cherry

Orca Book Publishers

9781459809826

168 pp.

Ages 8-11

March 15, 2016

Reviewed from advance reading copy

Everyday Hero is the story of thirteen-year-old narrator Alice who moves to Kitimat with Dad while Mom stays in Vancouver temporarily to assist her elderly parents.  Alice is very clear in her own mind about who she is, what she likes and dislikes, and what she can do and can’t and doesn’t want to do. But Dad refuses to tell the middle school of Alice’s Asperger’s, convinced she’ll have a chance to be a normal kid without the label.

This omission results in a series of detentions where Alice meets Megan, a goth-inspired teen who seems to attract negative attention but is also the only one who recognizes and helps Alice with her vulnerabilities in social situations, with distractions from routine, and with confusing verbal expressions.  While Alice is wondering whether she can be normal, “average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development” (pg. 54), Megan gives her opportunities to be so. But when Megan decides to get away from her mom’s abusive boyfriend and meet up with an online friend in Vancouver, Alice does what any normal friend would do: she tries to keep her friend safe.

Kathleen Cherry balances Alice’s story on our vague but overwhelmingly-supported ideas of normalcy by demonstrating that anyone can be normal, just as anyone can be a hero, in the right circumstances.  Don’t assume Alice’s thoughts, powerfully reflected in the seemingly erratic and tangential text, are evidence of anything but something normal, though they are manifestations of the syndrome with which she  is labelled. Kathleen Cherry, as a school counselor, get Alice’s voice just right.

Everyday Hero is heavily character-driven though it focuses on the issues of trust and responsibility.  But the message about the perils of labelling and trying to make everyone fit into one definition of normal is clear, and Everyday Hero helps the reader see into a very different but just as real one.



(A version of this review, in conjunction with one about Don't Tell, Don't Tell, Don't Tell by Liane Shaw, was originally written for and published in Quill & Quire, as noted in the citation below.)



Kubiw, H. (2016, May). [Review of the book Everyday Hero by Kathleen Cherry]. Quill & Quire, 82 (4): 37.

Finding Melissa

by Cora Taylor
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
978-1-55455-274-0
184 pp.
Ages 14+
December 2013

In 1990, two-year-old Melissa Warren goes missing from her family's tent in the middle of the night while camping in northern B.C. The family dog has been found killed and the authorities suspect a sow grizzly may have taken Melissa who was prone to waking early.  Or she may have fallen in the river.  There is no definitive answer.  Melissa's five-year-old sister Clarice could offer no help, something that seemed to frustrate their mother.  Twelve years later, mom and dad have split, dad has remarried and has a new daughter.  Mom has spent much of those years volunteering at Child Find in the hopes of solving Melissa's disappearance.  Meanwhile Clarice has become the unmanageable teen who craves even a portion of the attention her mother still bestows on her missing child.

Finding Melissa alternates between Clarice's first person reminiscences of that June camping trip and her current struggles and two other narratives. One set of narratives, titled Leesa, shares the spring and summer happenings in the life of a young teen who lives in northern Alberta with her old-fashioned Aunt Rosie, having been deposited there after Leesa's mother and then her father, Rosie's brother Hector, abandoned the child.  But, a third set of accounts, appropriately in bold font, recount the twisted actions and thinking of Hector Weldon, focusing on his drug trafficking, his incarceration and his horrific plans for Leesa.

Each of their lives begin to unravel at the twelve year mark.  First, Clarice has flashbacks about seeing Melissa leave the tent that night and spotting an extra set of headlights in the campground. What better way to appease the guilt of not remembering those details earlier than volunteering at Child Find and establishing detailed databases to allow for cross-referencing?  For Leesa, who has been plagued by nightmares, a live-in babysitting stint for Rhonda and Peter Friesen and their two children, Aggie, 5, and Dawson, 1, has her exposed to the dysfunctional machinations of the Friesen family.  In response, Leesa is determined to be spunky and do what's right for both children, but especially Aggie.  But Leesa will also need that spunk to deal with Hector.  Newly released from prison, Hector, appropriately shortened to Heck, starts coming around, intending to take Leesa away from Aunt Rosie.

Finding Melissa is a riveting story that takes an old missing child case and escalates it to thriller as Clarice, Leesa and Heck's stories begin to converge.  However, the anticipation of that convergence is not rife with hope and a happy ending.  There are too many secrets and deceit and hard feelings at play to lead to a gratifying resolution for all characters.  Cora Taylor plays off her characters' needs for love and support, sometimes sincere, sometimes misplaced and occasionally manipulative.  And what if there is conflict between those who give you love and those who are family?  Clarice and her parents, Leesa and Aunt Rosie and Heck, Aggie and her parents–all their lives are in flux by virtue of their relationships, both perceived and real, and by choosing to move forward with that instability or fight it will make all the difference.  Cora Taylor gets it right for her characters, especially for the repugnant Heck.