Ebb & Flow

Written by Heather Smith

Kids Can Press

978-1-77138-838-2

232 pp.

Ages 9-12

April 2018

If you've been reading this blog for a number of years, you'll know what a fan I am of novels in verse. These are stories told in free verse form and the authors who do it well are highly accomplished at writing with impact and few words.  I can now add author Heather Smith to that very short list of accomplished writers of novels in verse.  And she is extraordinary.

Ebb & Flow is the story of twelve-year-old Jett who has been sent to spend the summer with his Grandma Jo. Though he has been sent to stay with her because of a troublesome year, Jett is happy to see Grandma, having many positive memories about her before his move with his mother to the mainland.

I remembered

hugs that were big for her size,

her arms growing

like expandable straws. (pg. 9)

Wordplay is the dialogue between the two who love talking in puns, with Grandma telling her story as if she were a character in a series of anecdotes.  Sadly, because of the mistakes he made over the past year, Jett sees himself as the villain of his stories, deserving of little goodness, including his grandmother's love. Even away from the negative influence of Junior Dawson, a bully and angry classmate, with whom Jett teamed up, the boy cannot shake the bad thoughts about people and the anger he harbours about his own actions.  

In titled chapters of only one or two page verses, Heather Smith subtly reveals Jett's history and the events that led to his relocation for the summer.  In fact, Jett's character development is so subtle that the change in Jett from angry and confused boy to responsive and responsible is as inconspicuous as the tides that come in and go out.

Grandma?

Yes?

Why can't things just stay the same?

Because life is like the tides.
In, out.
Back, forth.
Push, pull.
High, low.
You just have to go with the flow, you know?

Yeah...
(pg. 177)

The reader will sense Jett's progression in increments, as slow as when he and Grandma Jo creep along the beach looking for sea glass, and then he's there, asking to visit his father and telling his own story to his grandmother.

Ebb & Flow may refer to Jett's responses to the ever-changing circumstances that impact him, including his own choices and mistakes, but the book makes a powerful statement about resiliency and the power to ride the tidal motion of life. Sometimes you need a little help, like Jett gets from Grandma Jo who never pushes her grandson to come to an epiphany, though she helps him get there with her love and guidance. Ebb & Flow makes it clear that, with forgiveness to others and self, people and relationships can be salvaged and, like sea glass, taken from sharp edges to soft gemstones.

In Grandma's hand,
five pieces of sea glass –
two white, two green,
one red.

I didn't find anything, I said.

You will.
(pg. 26)

Gatekeeper

by Natasha Deen

Great Plains Teen Fiction

978-1-927855-39-3

232 pp.

Ages 13+

May 2016

Someone was pounding at the front door at 10:30 p.m., and common sense said not to answer.  Then again, I see the dead, live with a ghost, and was dating a supernatural being who transported souls.  Common sense may have been in my neighbourhood, but it wasn’t on any street I lived. (pg. 7)

Natasha Deen grabs readers and thrusts them into Gatekeeper with this opening, not unlike her opener to its prequel Guardian (Great Plains Teen Fiction, 2014),  in which 17-year-old Maggie reveals her knack for seeing the dead and helps solve the murder of Serge Popov with whom she now has become a guardian to help the dead transition into the next world.  Along with supernatural boyfriend Craig, a ferrier of the dead, and her best friend Nell, as well as her caring father Hank and his girlfriend, Sheriff Nancy, who all know of her gift, Maggie has found herself at the centre of more than one mystery in their small town of Dead Falls.  And Gatekeeper places her in the role of sleuth and ghost-communicator once again.

That knocking at the door is the wealthy Mrs. Pierson, frantic over the disappearance of her and Dr. Paul Pierson’s six-year-old daughter, Rori, and looking for Sheriff Nancy.  Maggie, Serge and Craig with Rori’s babysistter Nell go to help in the search and help locate the little girl on the brink of death.  But after Serge uses his energy to get her heart beating, he and Maggie meet the newly-dead ghost of Kent Meagher, former all-around amazing Dead Falls student and current med student at the University of Alberta who is oblivious and confused about his death.  And this is the murder mystery at the heart of Gatekeeper.

But Gatekeeper is more than a whodunit because no one knows Kent is dead, not the least of which are his separated parents whose antagonistic relationship destroyed the family and left them financially ruined.  Kent’s concern for his mother is overwhelming and brings back a lot of memories for Serge about his own family dynamics, his mother and his death, but demonstrates the newly-developed empathy that makes Serge such a key and now likeable character.  By way of some careful research and snooping, Serge and Maggie discover that a lot of people are keeping secrets, including Kent, and that Kent’s determination to be a doctor may be at the heart of a series of mysteries, including his own death and rampant vandalism in Dead Falls.  And, of course, there’s the dead people that add a suprisingly humourous and horrifying combination of subplots to Natasha Deen’s story.  (Be prepared for a nasty legion of souls called The Family who cannot find peace and is looking for additional souls to ingest.)

Gatekeeper, like its predecessor, is completely an edge-of-your-seat read, though I found that I looked forward to the witty dialogue as much as the paranormal elements which Natasha Deen flawlessly embeds in her plot.  I’ve always thought Norah McClintock was the queen of YA crime fiction but I think Natasha Deen has developed into a princess of YA paranormal murder mysteries.  With her multifaceted plotlines and great, great characters who are neither perfect nor surreal (though they may be otherworldly), Natasha Deen has become one of my go-to YACanLit authors for spooky whodunits with a smidgen of romance.  Consider them the young adult equivalent of Scooby-Doo: fun sleuthing with the ever-helpful Maggie and Serge and the gang. Gatekeeper is one more mystery solved, and I look forward to more.

Best Friends Through Eternity

by Sylvia McNicoll

Tundra Books

978-1-77049-710-8 

192 pp.

Ages 12+

For release February 10, 2015

Most of us dream of the opportunity for a do-over after we've messed up something big.  The regret and/or guilt can be overwhelming.  But what if a do-over was possible but you'd have to be careful not to make matters worse.  Would you do it?  What if you thought you had nothing to lose because you were already dead?

Fourteen-year-old Paige Barta is willing to take that chance after she is killed by a train walking home from school, believing she should have been trying to help her best friend Jasmine (Jazz).  Jazz had been off with her new boyfriend, Cameron, unaware that Cameron's ex, the vicious Vanessa, was plotting an attack. Angrily taking off when she should have been waiting for Jazz,  Paige finds herself laying in a hospital bed, unconscious and dying.  But meeting up on an after-life beach with a childhood friend, Kim, who'd been adopted from China as was Paige, gives the teen the chance for a retake of the past week.

So now Paige has to rethink everything she has said and done, knowing this is her chance to make things right, without letting on that she's going to die or that she knows about the future attack on Jazz.  However, Paige is also rethinking her attitudes about her adoption, about her parents, about Kim's death of which she'd been unaware, about the friendly Max Liu, and even about her food choices.  Being given the chance to make different choices, however, doesn't mean those choices are necessarily better, and Paige learns that sometimes, no matter what, you can't control everything.

Though life-and-death do-overs (is there an actual term for this?) have been popularized in movies and in TV shows, it's a tough one to do well in text, especially for young people for whom the idea of death is often completely unimaginable.  Sylvia McNicoll has shown that she has a knack for writing great teen voices and a strong record for bringing the issue of death into the realm of youth, having made it a focus in books such as crush.candy.corpse (Lorimer, 2012), Dying to Go Viral (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2013) and Revenge on the Fly (Pajama Press, 2014). But the focus is not on the morbid but the life lead and the choices made for purposeful lives. Although Paige is shocked to learn she is dying and that Kim has died and that others may die as a result of her actions, her focus remains on choices made with compassion rather than anger and bitterness.  It's a lesson we could all learn.  Too bad Paige–and probably everyone who has ever lived–doesn't learn this lesson until it's too late.  Fortunately, in Best Friends Through Eternity, Sylvia McNicoll gives Paige another chance to show us how it's done.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If you get the chance, check out the book launch for Best Friends Through Eternity, this weekend in Burlington, Ontario. Sylvia McNicoll puts on a great book launch!

Best Friends Through Eternity: Book Launch (Burlington, ON)

Join 

Sylvia McNicoll

author of numerous middle-grade and young adult novels

including

crush. candy. corpse

Lorimer 

978-1-4594-00627 

219 pp. 

Ages 12+ 

2012

Dying to Go Viral

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

978-1554552719

232 pp.

Ages 12+

2013

Revenge on the Fly

Pajama Press

978-1-927485-56-9

224 pp.

Ages 8+

2014 

for the release of her newest young adult book

Best Friends Through Eternity

Tundra Books

978-1-77049-710-8 

192 pp.

Ages 12+

Sunday, February 15, 2015

 2:00 p.m. 

at

 A Different Drummer Books 

513 Locust Street

Burlington, Ontario

Call or email to reserve an autographed copy

905.639.0925

diffdrum@mac.com

Sylvia McNicoll promises Indian food, a demonstration on sari dressing, a reading and autograph session.