Blood Brothers

Written by Colleen Nelson

Dundurn

978-1-459737464

216 pp.

Ages 12-15

February 2017

Reviewed from advance reading copy

"...just cuz we share blood, doesn't make us brothers." (pg. 208)

Brothers are born and brothers are made through commonalities in purpose and temperament.  But does one kind of brotherhood surpass the other? How do you weigh what one brother means to you against another?  These are the questions being asked throughout Colleen Nelson's new work of young adult fiction as two fifteen-year-old boys steer through life, amidst the poverty and violence of a tenuous world and one of apparent opportunity for better.

Jakub Kaminsky admits that he has a sad little life. His parents emigrated from Poland for a better life before his mother died giving birth to him.  An injury at work left his devout father with a mangled leg and unable to work.  Now the two live in a rooming house on the West Side and attend and volunteer at St. Mary's, the parish of Father Dominic.  Jakub works hard at school and gets good grades, but he's truly alive when he's tagging as Morf.

Lincoln Bear may live with his mother and father and younger brother Dustin, for whom he tries to be an attentive big brother, but his home life is hardly comfortable, emotionally or financially.  When 21-year-old brother Henry returns from eighteen months in prison and promptly reestablishes his connection to the Red Bloodz gang, Lincoln is pulled in, hopeful of reconnecting with his brother and making a better life for himself. But restoring that relationship entails Lincoln becoming involved in jacking cars for a chop shop the gang runs which leads to more dangerous and illegal activities.

Jakub knows Henry is using Lincoln but he has no defence when he himself is involved in illegal tagging, especially after Lincoln takes the fall when they are almost caught by the police.  With Jakub starting as a bursary student at the prestigious St. Bart's school, and Lincoln falling deeper under the thumb of his violent brother, it becomes evident that the friendship between the two teens is at risk.

The survival of their friendship ends up being the least of their worries, though it is a driving force, when Lincoln becomes involved in a murder, and Jakub finds a very public but dangerous way of revealing the perpetrators. Blood Brothers culminates with a violent struggle between brothers of different kinds and very real consequences for all involved in desperate ventures.

"It's too late, I want to tell her.  It's like when water gets sucked down a drain.  Stuffing a finger in to stop it won't do any good.  The water still slips away." (pg.161)

Colleen Nelson leaves no time or breath of respite for the reader who is thrown from one harrowing situation to another, as both Jakub and Lincoln attempt to create lives that matter for themselves.  Yet, with all the poor choices the two make–and there are many–they are guided by a desire to be part of something good whether it be family, friendship, church or school. They want to be persons of consequence, because of their art or their presence or their actions.  They want what everyone wants: to matter.  Whether that happens depends on where you start and where you go and all the steps you take in between.  For Jakub and Lincoln, whose voices Colleen Nelson asserts both honestly and compassionately through those strides and missteps, it's their brotherhood that walks with them, leaving its own footprints.


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Be sure to check out Dundurn's book trailer for Blood Brothers at https://youtu.be/k026kfO89L4.

Uploaded to YouTube by Dundurn Press on November 24, 2016. 

Don't Tell, Don't Tell, Don't Tell

by Liane Shaw

Second Story Press

978-1-927583-95-1

272 pp.

Ages 12-16

April 2016

Frederick, 16, in Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell, would loathe to be lumped into a group of individuals with Asperger’s syndrome or labelled with his “disorder”.

Giving me a label groups me together with many others who share a cerain number of common characteristics that would then define me as a syndrome or a disorder rather than a person with a mind of my own.  I don’t want to be a syndrome, and I am far too orderly to be a disorder.
     I just want to be me. (pg. 50)

Though Frederick is different from many of his peers in his love of numbers and math, of routines, and of the dictionary and in the difficulties he has interpreting idioms and slang with which he is unfamilia, he is relatively comfortable in his own skin, having developed some stellar coping strategies for dealing with verbal abuse,  and ensuring that he is able to meet his needs for quiet and routines.  But, when he is befriended by another awkward teen, his routine becomes far more  tenuous and Frederick is taken outside his comfort zone.

Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell begins with Frederick being questioned by the police about the disappearance of the teen who’d befriended him, Angel Martinez.  Though their friendship had been discreet and primarily involved Angel using Frederick as a sounding board, Frederick gets lassoed into keeping a secret for her.  Questioning by the police, however, has Frederick carefully choosing his words, always reminding himself “Don’t tell, don’t tell, don’t tell.” When it seems that Angel’s secret plan isn’t as perfect as anticipated, Frederick begins to rethink that promise and find a way to stay true to himself and bring order to a very disordered situation.

The mature situations that have Angel scrambling for a way out makes Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell more appropriate for a young adult audience but the issue of labelling and keeping secrets are far more universal.  Liane Shaw, whose previous books Fostergirls (Second Story Press, 2011) and The Color of Silence (Second Story Press, 2013) capably dealt with difficult issues of foster care and guilt, continues to demonstrate the empathy needed to understand and help teens with the emotional, behavioural and physical problems.  Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell takes us into the world of a boy with Asperger’s and a girl whose efforts to make friends take a bad turn and demonstrates that we all are looking to find a way to fit into the world, whether it’s a world we make for ourselves or one into which we try to insinuate ourselves.


(A version of this review, in conjunction with one about Everyday Hero by Kathleen Cherry, was originally written for and published in Quill & Quire, as noted in the citation below.)



Kubiw, H. (2016, May). [Review of the book Don't Tell, Don't Tell, Don't Tell by Liane Shaw]. Quill & Quire, 82 (4): 37.

Home Ice Advantage

by Tom Earle
HarperCollins Canada
978-1-44340-904-9
224 pp.
Ages 8-13
September 2013

Shame, embarrassment and fear often keep us from exposing our psychological baggage and, in Tom Earle’s newest middle-grade Home Ice Advantage, it’s evident that those in the limelight are especially keen to shun its unveiling. Jake Dumont, 12, may be an outstanding centre for the North York Penguins of the Greater Toronto Hockey League, but the physical and emotional abuse he endures from his father and the vague support he gets from his fearful mother has him giving it all up one night and running away. With very limited funds and supplies, Jake heads to downtown Toronto and finds shelter in the abandoned Maple Leaf Gardens, closed in February of 1999.

But the Gardens already has a resident, an older homeless man named Scooter. Over daily meals at a local soup kitchen, an occasional donut at Tim Horton’s, and regular readings of The Toronto Star, Jake and Scooter share just enough about themselves to realize the complexity of their situations. There is no predictable outcome here when the two find the means to help each other live beyond just surviving.

While details of hockey games and plays, courtesy of teacher Tom Earle’s extensive experiences as a Triple A, college and pro hockey player, provide the background for Home Ice Advantage, it’s the vulnerabilities of the players, too often seen as athletic heroes, that give the story its layering. Underneath the brilliance of game-winning goals, historical blocks and memorable wins (sure to interest young hockey fans) are boys and men with apprehensions, desires and pride. But even deeper they have the instinct to survive. Jake and Scooter may seem to be all about the hockey but Tom Earle’s solid storytelling demonstrates that, when it all comes down to it, their heroics are off the ice, finding the means to prevail when everything is working against them.

(This review was originally written for and published in Quill & Quire, as noted in the citation below.)

Kubiw, H. (2013, November). [Review of the book Home Ice Advantage, by Tom Earle]. Quill & Quire, 79 (9): 36.

Voiceless

by Caroline Wissing

Thistledown Press

978-1-897235-98-0

241 pp.

Ages 14+

2012

Even before Annabel becomes voiceless, her life is tenuous, though virtually tethered to the very mother who causes its deficiencies.  Abandonning Annabel at age 5 for a boyfriend, leaving her to be rescued by the police and to move in with Granny, Annabel's mother pops in intermittently, always with ephemeral cheer and a new boyfriend and the promise to return for her daughter.  Unfortunately, the last time Annabel sees her mother, during the Christmas holidays of her Grade 7 year, is the night Mama and new beau Julian ransack Granny's apartment looking for money and Granny is murdered.

Voiceless now, Annabel goes into foster care and is placed at the Noble Spirit Farm and Horse Sanctuary of Mary and Bobby Gervais.  While becoming a foster child can be the beginning of more transience, Annabel's placement provides her with some comfort, especially with a rescued horse, Jett.  Now being called Ghost, Annabel joins other foster children at the farm: Tully, a teen boy with dwarfism; Char, a street-wise young prostitute; and Big Jerome, an Ojibwa teen whose little brother killed himself with a rifle carelessly stored by his negligent, alcoholic parents. But the arrival of Graydon Fox (whose history is unclear) and the sexual relationship he and Ghost form leads Ghost away from the farm, into the savage, drink- or drug-addled world of Graydon's acquaintance, Cooper.

Annabel/Ghost's world is gritty and dangerous, evoked well by Caroline Wissing's text.  Profanities, alcohol, drugs, sex, prostitution, rape, theft, abuse and arson are all part of the fabric of Annabel/Ghost's life.

"The room was abuzz with people going about the individual business, everyone with their drunk or drugged out tunnel vision, caring only about themselves." (pg. 151)

Imagine believing that "Going to a dance felt like suicide to me" (pg. 121) or that "I felt like I was walking around in a prison full of dead eyes" (pg. 100).  The few tender instances are so fleeting that it's unbelievable that Ghost has only lost her voice, not her essence.  But that essence is still always present, knowing and doing the right thing instinctively though problematic.  Annabel/Ghost finds a way to get the police involved in investigating Cooper, without involving herself.  Moreover, while others around her were using drugs, Ghost will not use them, afraid of becoming her mother.  And when Francine, an unpleasant girl sleeping with Cooper becomes pregnant and Cooper performs an ad hoc abortion, Ghost finds a way to get Francine to the hospital. 

Voiceless is not an easy read.  It's not a coming of age story in which a girl learns who she is and develops into that person, although that does essentially happen for Annabel.  But Voiceless provides greater messages, offering the reader the evidence that voicelessness (or blindness or paraplegia or any other disability) is not in itself the tragedy. The tragedy is in the context.  Ghost may be voiceless but she is substantive and never stronger than when she is voiceless.  Annabel finds the means to communicate and right wrongs without the spoken word, ultimately letting her voicelessness propel her to a future in which she has a say, guaranteeing her a happier life, finally.