Standing on Neptune

Written by Valerie Sherrard

DCB

978-1-77086-687-4

160 pp.

Ages 13+

April 2023

Brooke Wells's story begins with an important line:

…this is about what happened (pg. 1)

But the seventeen-year-old explains that it’s only a moment in her story, not her whole story. It's less than a week, in fact, but a monumental one of a secret, hidden beneath the facade of being a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend, a friend and a classmate. It's a moment and one that may, or may not, change her life.

 

x + y = -5 is the equation Brooke envisions for her situation on the Monday of her story. What this means is she and her boyfriend Ryan had sex and now her period is five days late. Standing in Neptune is primarily her story, told in free verse, as she comes to terms with what it means, who to tell, and what to do. While she grapples with the shock and enormity of the possibility of a pregnancy, Brooke is almost frozen in place, telling only Ryan and only in the briefest of terms. She sees his panic, his anger, his fear, and even hope, and, instead of supporting each other, Brooke becomes more aloof and distant. 

Her bestie Emma knows something is up, but Brooke lies, worried that Emma may let her secret slip. Brooke's nine-year-old brother Kevin can also see that she is distracted, but she denies it and lies to him as well. Her thoughts are her only support, though she finds a convenient distraction in a science project on Neptune. As she learns about the frozen planet, she finds parallels to her own situation, like how it was detected mathematically and what is visible and not visible.

Our shared truth, I suspect, is that

it too has secrets, hidden beneath

what can be seen.      (pg.79)

Like Neptune, with so much more to it than the obvious, Brooke is more than her relationships with others. She is more than Ryan's girlfriend or Emma's friend. She is holding in a secret that might impact her whole life. Or will it? The frozen blue planet of Neptune with its orbiting moons is easily recognizable but, like Brooke, there is much beneath the surface that is unknown. And, until she knows the truth, i.e., is she pregnant or not, she is frozen with inaction, with hesitancy to share, and projecting a facade that all is normal.

Perhaps I am simply frozen in place, afraid of

facing things, of

getting it wrong.      (pg. 99)

Novels in free verse are one of my favourite genres, packing so much emotion and storytelling in few but well-chosen words, structured for meaning. Valerie Sherrard, whose earlier novel in verse Counting Back from Nine (2013) was nominated for a Governor General's Literature Award for children's text, knows how to use the genre to tell gripping stories. She takes us into the thoughts of teens as they contend with issues of teen pregnancy, shaky friendships, blended families, insecurities, and self-awareness. There's a lot going on in Brooke's head, more than she reveals to others, and Valerie Sherrard lets us hear Brooke's thoughts. Though Ryan's point of view is occasionally shared in excerpts of prose, it is Brooke we hear. It's her perspective that is paramount in Standing on Neptune. Whether she is pregnant or not, or right or wrong in her choices is irrelevant. They are hers. And as she studies Neptune and sees herself as a lone planet with moons that orbit her, perhaps someday being torn apart by her gravitational force, Brooke still knows she's part of something far greater.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

by E. K. Johnston

Dutton Books for Young Readers

978-1-101994580

256 pp.

Ages 12-18

March 2016

It's not unusual for me to add graphic elements to my image of a book cover to enhance it and perhaps provide the reader with a little hint about the book. I could not do that disservice to Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston as the book's emotional story deserves to have its superb cover unadorned by my trivial efforts.  Exit, Pursued by a Bear needs to be left with a starkness that attests to the nature of the story within because

Everything about this is unfair. (pg. 131)

Teen Hermione Winters is off to cheerleading Camp Manitouwabing with best friend and co-captain Polly, boyfriend Leo and the rest of the Fighting Golden Bears, Palermo Heights high school’s squad, along with their coach, Alexandra Caledon.  As she will be entering her senior year after camp, Hermione whose positive attitude is as bright as her future intends to make this, her last cheer camp, the best for all involved. At the first bonfire, when squad captains share what their teams need to overcome, Hermione talks of two curses the school has: that each graduating class, since the death of Clara Abbey in 2006, will lose one person to a drunk driver, and that every year one girl at school gets pregnant.

“…I do think it’s life’s way of reminding us that nothing should be taken for granted, that things might take a turn in ways that aren’t fair or don’t make sense.” (pg. 23)

It’s an amazing camp of hard work, meeting new people and fun, though Leo is in a perpetual cranky mood for the lack of time he gets with Hermione.  Then, at a dance, Hermione is drugged and raped and left in the lake.  Awakening in the hospital, she has to be told what has happened to her because she has no memory of the attack.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear is Hermione’s journey of emotions and waiting and introspection and compassion.  Hermione may be a flyer on the cheerleading team but she is fully grounded in herself and her caring of others and what she believes.  As much as she is convinced that she is a changed person when she returns from camp, she truly isn’t.  The rape, and subsequent pregnancy and abortion, and search for the rapist do not change the force that makes Hermione a leader and a flyer.  Even through her sessions with the indomitable Dr. Hutt, Hermione does not come across as traumatized or broken.

That’s the first time I’ve thought of myself as broken.  Polly won’t let me, I don’t think, but everyone else seems to expect it.  And maybe I am.  Maybe this would be easier if I acted like I am broken.  Then they’ll be able to fix me.  You can’t fix something that doesn’t know it’s broken. (pg. 81)

She is hardly self-absorbed–though she should be allowed to be–often worrying about how her trauma is affecting her best friend, her teammates, her parents, her psychiatrist, even the OPP officer that is handling the criminal investigation.

Take a deep breath before you read E. K. Johnston’s Exit, Pursued by a Bear.  It’s strenuously moving, both dispiriting and uplifting, as Hermione and her team of family, friends and strangers as well as the reader are taken from the trauma of a rape through the healing process, including an unlikely return to the scene of the crime, before tumbling to a finish that is fair and astonishing.

Taking a Chance on Love

Written by Mary Razzell
Ronsdale Press
978-1-55380-455-0
156 pp.
Ages 14+
February 2016

Taking a Chance on Love was still to become a jazz standard, having only been released a few years earlier in 1940, but it perfectly exemplies the summer of 1944 for seventeen-year-old Meg when boys and affairs of the heart seem to abound for her and everyone.

Though Meg is still quite innocent and naïve about her feelings towards boys, her best friend, Amy Miller, is anything but.  Amy is well aware of them, easily flirting with the wealthy Robert Pryce whose extramarital activities involve several married women, including Amy’s own mother, and setting her sights on any man who could give her a good life.  Meg notices a lot and sometimes knows enough to be wary but can’t always put the big picture together, unfortunately accused by Amy of being jealous  when she attempts to share those feelings.  With her own mother deeply entrenched in the staunch ideas of what being a woman entails i.e., not continuing one’s education but marrying instead, and her father and older brother Sam away at war, Meg has to navigate these treacherous waters as best she can.

From Doug Thompson, a soldier pen pal, to seventeen-year-old Glen Pryce, wealthy half-brother of Robert Pryce, and 22-year-old Bruce Hanson, the emotionally- and physically-scarred Navy son of her employer at Hanson’s Guest House, Meg has no shortage of young men who can help her learn how to handle how she feels.  Sadly, as with coming-of-age for all of us, Meg endures many sweet and bitter moments as she tries to uncover this.

It made me curious, excited, with strong, unexpected yearnings.  But I also felt uneasy, not really ready to know any more about this new world. (pg. 94)

Taking a Chance on Love may be rich in the landscape of 1940s British Columbia, with the war, TB, medical practices, the expectations for women, and the music and clothes, but it could be any teen girl’s story as she delves into first relationships with boys and tries to find herself while opening herself up to the possibilities of finding someone to love.  With some marriages falling apart and others forged because of war, Taking a Chance on Love takes place in a tenous and strengthening time.  It’s a time that is both sweet and enlightening, temporarilty transporting readers to an era when love wasn’t dependent on social media and digital technology but more on self-discovery and resolve.

The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing

by C. K. Kelly Martin

Dancing Cat Books

978-1-770864115

256 pp.

Ages 13+

September, 2014

The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, as a title, suggests the lightness of song and joy. But those moments are few and far between in the actual story. That's because The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing is a story of secrets, confusion, anger, and grief, with only a few bars of a sweet song that may be heard in the background, leaving you hoping the song will make its way to the forefront and be sung loud and clear and passionately.

When Serena LeBlanc's older brother, Devin, trades a life of Mensa brilliance at university for drugs and life on the street, she could never have foreseen the impact it would have on her and her family.  Having endured Devin's plunge into drugs, theft and erratic behaviour, culminating with his disappearance, Serena's parents seem to have disassociated themselves from any life without Devin.  Mom is constantly on eBay purchasing new Swarovski figurines and Dad just seems to go through the motions of life. Her eldest brother Morgan, a celebrity VJ at MuchMusic, lives with his partner Jimmy in Toronto, but still tries to offer the support they all need to remain an intact family.  Serena, not yet sixteen, loses almost thirty pounds and begins dating Jacob Westermark, leaving behind her old friendships, and enjoying a new popularity.

But recognizing an incident at a party as an attempt at sexual exploitation, Serena swears off Jacob and guys in general, finding new friends in girls Nicole and Genevieve who have been humiliated by their boyfriends too.  Bonding with the girls over their disappointment in boys provides Serena some refuge from her parents' detachment, as does a part-time job as a cashier at Total Drug Mart.  But two events change everything for Serena.

A young man who regularly drops into Total Drug Mart begins to show an interest in Serena.  But Serena is torn between being loyal to her friends and their boyfriend-less status and becoming involved with a really nice guy, Gage Cochrane.  Worse still, Serena doesn't know how to be herself around Gage.  She still sees herself as the chubby girl who would need to throw herself at a guy to keep him interested.  Gage, on the other hand, seems fairly well-adjusted and is not impressed with Serena's sexual antics.

Then, while attending one of Jimmy's art shows in Toronto, Serena spots Devin on the street.  But when he flees from her, catching a streetcar, Serena is left with more questions about who her brother has become and whether he wants to come home ever.

It's painful to read Serena's attempts to understand and find her brother, especially as she examines her relationship with him and how she sees herself.

...I can see with absolute clarity how the tangled mess of my former blubber, personal insecurities, and stupid need for some kind of male appraisal have shaped me into a person I don't want to be. (pg. 114) 

As she did in My Beating Teenage Heart, Yesterday and Tomorrow, C. K. Kelly Martin expertly weaves a story based on the typical confusion of the teen years but with an atypical, devastating situation that impacts that confusion all the more.  In The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, she imbues the story with a grittiness and harshness about young relationships, especially in the shadow of social media exploitation, and a young man's severance from his family, and creates a series of scenarios you hope you'll never have to experience.  You won't necessarily like Serena (or at least I didn't, at the beginning) but you'll understand how she has become the person she has.  Her life is messy but it's not until she takes some responsibility for that mess and faces that she can't force things to turn out the way she wants that life begins to feel better.  She can't make Devin come home.  She can't make her parents change.  She can't make Gage act like she thinks he should.  Serena cannot make her life all sweet and lovely but she can control herself and her choices and that makes things all the sweeter.  C. K. Kelly Martin gets that very right and, without making Serena's life a Broadway musical, she allows her to find a song that is sure to become sweeter. 

This One Summer

by Mariko Tamaki

Illustrated by Jillian Tamaki

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-152-6

320 pp.

Ages 14+

May 2014

The anticipation of summer holidays can be overwhelming, especially if you're looking forward to another great summer at a Muskoka cottage where your family has gone for years.  Beaches, water, sunshine, friends, freedom, videos, board games, and no school.  Another wonderful summer at the cottage.  Except that things never stay the same: not people, not places, not experiences.

Superficially everything seems to be the same. The Wallace family is heading to the cottage at Awago Beach where everything seems familiar.  Young teen Rose meets up with her younger friend, Windy, and her mother Evelyn there. They ride their bikes.  They go to the beach and swim. They visit Brewster's, the only convenience store at Awago, for candy, videos and junk food.  They watch videos at night, and play board games.  It's a time for sleeping in and no worries.  Even Rose's parent have their routines: Dad enjoying a beer, making jokes and doing the BBQ thing, while Mom organizes, visits with Evelyn and reads and writes. But there's an undercurrent of unease.

Though only a year and a half different in their ages, best friends Rose and Windy are no longer always in sync in their thinking.  Rose seems to have gone through puberty and is seeing beyond the silliness of their summer antics.  She's crushing on Duncan, the teen working at Brewster's, and eavesdropping on the local teens and her own parents, trying to understand all she hears and sees.  Windy, on the other hand, is always joking around (she calls Duncan "the Dud"), being loud and hyper and trying out new words that seem to get a reaction (like slut and sexy ta-tas).  She notices Rose's distraction and tries to go along with her, realizing Rose knows a lot more that her and can share about things Windy knows nothing.

Two particular dramas seem to be affecting Rose: the friction between her parents, and the relationship between Duncan and his girlfriend Jenny.  Surprisingly, they both involve babies.  Although Rose doesn't really share what she's thinking about either situation, Windy seems to interpret her reactions, often infuriating Rose.  Puberty can be a confusing time, with a perceived loss of youthful innocence and unrestraint and being expected to deal with more mature issues.  And Rose has a foot in both worlds: the one of her fun, curious younger self and the one of conflict, relationships and judgment.

Everyone must remember a summer of awkwardness, in the pre- or early- teen years.  Most of us would choose not to relive it.  But Mariko Tamaki's text suggests that it's a rite of passage for many young people, whether it be a cottage experience–something more common in parts of Canada than others–or a summer in the city.  Friendships are reconfigured to accommodate new feelings and thinking, and with new knowledge, even incomplete, come more questions and insecurities about that knowledge.  The voices that Mariko Tamaki gives Rose and Windy reflect their balancing between childhood and adolescences, just as the language of the Awago teens, heavily peppered with profanity, reflect their perceived invincibility and rebelliousness.  Enhancing Mariko Tamaki's text is the artwork of her cousin, Jillian Tamaki, whose first work together was their highly-acclaimed graphic novel, Skim (Groundwood, 2008).  Her characters reflect their natures so well. Windy is the dark-haired, freckled girl with an extra pound or two of baby fat, though thankfully not affecting her exuberance for life (yet).  On the other hand, Rose is the light-haired, slender girl who doesn't smile as easily and carries her body more stiffly, as if still getting used to it. Moreover, choosing to use the dark blue-purple of indigo for the cover of This One Summer and midnight blue for the illustrations within is an ingenious selection by Jillian Tamaki, reflecting the appearance of brightness on the surface but a darkness within. 

This One Summer is the summer coming-of-age story with which many teens will be familiar and with which many parents would hope their pre-teen girls won't have to experience, at least for a while. 

Game Plan

CanLit for LittleCanadians 

is pleased to join with

 

and 

author Natalie Corbett Sampson

 in their

Basketball and Babies Blog Tour

to celebrate the release of

GAME PLAN

Game Plan

by Natalie Corbett Sampson

Fierce Ink Press

978-1-927746097

351 pp.

Ages 12+

November, 2013
Reviewed from ebook 9781927746127

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
gang aft a-gley  
~ Robert Burns (from "To a Mouse")

Robbie Burns astutely wrote that, whether preparing for winter or for your future, plans do not always follow in a straight trajectory from beginning to end.  I'm not even sure whether it be best that they do.  Regardless, there are many times when you're on track and successfully following the steps of your plan when you may be catapulted off and onto a different road.  The trick is knowing how to adapt to your new plan and deciding whether returning to your original is a good idea, or even an option.

The life plans of two families are entwined from the start of Natalie Corbett Sampson's first novel, Game Plan.  Basketball is everything to teens Ella, older brother Ben and his best friend Charlie.  All on their school teams, along with Ella's friend Alex, the friends are always up for improving their skills and practising, and hopeful of being scouted and attending university.  And, though she has always been more comfortable being one of the guys, Ella is flattered when another basketball player at school, Sam Cleveland, shows an interest in her and asks her out.  That's the little penny on the tracks that will have Ella's plans teetering.

Katherine and Danny Frayne are a young couple who've been married for 7 years, and trying for a baby for the past 5.  Their plan of a family seems to be dissipating, after several tries at in vitro fertilization.  Katherine is desperate, having envisioned herself as a mother for so long, but Danny gets her thinking about other options, including adoption and fostering children.

While Ella and Sam's relationship becomes more serious, she is caught off-guard when they have sex at a party at which she'd been drinking.  Although she doesn't let that happen again (though she feels like a loser and worries about making Sam angry), that single random act catapults Ella into an unforeseen situation: pregnancy. 

While the reader may predict how the two story lines will converge, the Fraynes and the Parkers will not encounter each other till much later in the book.  Until that time, each family experiences repeated disappointments and hope, having been thrown off their game plans and attempting to adapt to their new circumstances, chosen or not. (Surprisingly or not, Sam has no problem telling Ella that the baby isn't part of his plan and that, if she doesn't get an abortion, it's game over for them.)

Natalie Corbett Sampson takes the time to develop the two story lines fully to ensure that the angst of Ella's pregnancy and the hardships Katherine and Danny experience in trying to conceive and then adopt are completely palpable.  The highs and lows of receiving unexpected news, unfathomable positive and negative reactions from close ones, and picking oneself up to continue to adjust are heartbreaking.  The consequences of having your Game Plan averted can be debilitating.  Ella's initial question about whether she's good enough for Sam soon transforms into whether she has ruined her whole life, and Katherine is wondering whether they're not getting pregnant because they'd be rotten parents and then whether they even dare to hope.

Game Plan makes it clear that those with the flexibility and courage to adapt their life plans, as needed, can make it through whatever life throws at them, whether they be basketballs or babies.

I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now.

Harry S. Truman

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/harrystru164081.html#Pu0Q7p41dc32sfLl.99

I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now.

Harry S. Truman

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/harrystru164081.html#Pu0Q7p41dc32sfLl.99

If you're in Nova Scotia this week, consider attending the

Book Launch  

for

Game Plan

on 

Thursday, November 21, 2013

6:30-8:00 p.m.

Canada Games Centre
Halifax, Nova Scotia

to meet author Natalie Corbett Sampson, 

learn more about her book and 

get an autographed copy of Game Plan 

for yourself or a young reader

I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now.

Harry S. Truman

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/harrystru164081.html#Pu0Q7p41dc32sfLl.99

Hummingbird Heart

by Robin Stevenson

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-554693900

ebook: 978-1-554693917

278 pp.

Ages 13-16

April, 2012

Reviewed from ebook

Fiction for younger readers seems to have found a favourite character in the selfish mother or at least mothers who, realizing that they can't have it all, choose in favour of themselves, not their children. Such is Dylan Jarvis' mom, although her mom still has the audacity to tell her that she's doing what's best for Dylan.

In Hummingbird Heart, sixteen-year-old Dylan may know how self-centered her mom, Amanda, is; after all, Mom doesn't seem to worry about constantly getting new tattoos or smoking pot or making out with her newest boyfriend at home.  In fact, Dylan wishes her mother was more predictable and acted more like a responsible grown-up.  But while Dylan may acknowledge how messed up her family is (there's Mom who got pregnant when she was 16 after a one-night stand, and Karma, her "sister", the eleven-year-old daughter of Amanda's deceased friend, Sheri) but she considers herself weird and boring, more like "Diluted Kool-Aid, maybe. Or skim milk" (pg. 35) compared to her champagne-like best friend, Toni.  Even though Toni's parents have divorced, Dylan looks upon Toni as having a more normal family, since she knows both her parents.  Dylan, who knows nothing of her father, struggles for a connection to him by having her mom send a birthday photograph of them to him each year.  Even though he has never replied, Dylan considers going to see him when Mark calls and wants to have dinner with them.

Meanwhile, Dylan is encouraged by Toni to be a bit more sociable and interested in guys; by crushing on new boy, Jax, Dylan feels a bit more normal like Toni, who has a boyfriend, Finn.  Perhaps because she knows so little about him and feels like a different (more normal?) person around him, Dylan takes Jax in as a confidante, sharing with him the news of her father and her feelings about her mother.  While she does question Jax's interest in her, Dylan enjoys the almost out-of-body experience of being with him, especially knowing that he isn't thinking only of himself, as Toni and her mother and even Karma are.

And there's her father, Mark Wheatcroft, a successful lawyer, with a wife and four-year-old daughter, Casey.  Learning Mark's daughter has leukemia and he'd like Dylan to agree to a blood test to check for a bone marrow match, Dylan feels even more humiliated and numbed by the self-centeredness of everyone around her.  This just adds to her already-heightened concern of impending environmental doom, a planet destined for destruction from selfish humans.

Revelations by her mother, Mark, Toni, and Jax have Dylan confused about what she needs to do, especially when some stories are true, others are untruths to make things better, and some are harmful lies.  Even the hummingbird tattoo on her mother's wrist becomes something different and more, when Dylan learns that Mark has an identical one on his wrist.

Much of Hummingbird Heart revolves around the theme of self-awareness, and knowing who you are and what you want and what you will do to get it.  Sadly, Dylan's insightful thoughts like,  "It was strange, the way an ordinary day could suddenly seem so beautiful and so fragile it made you ache" (pg. 14-15) are not considered valid by her until she begins to see the weaknesses of those around her.  Even the courage that Mark showed in breaking off with Amanda is wrapped in selfishness: "I can't be around you and still have room to be who I want to be." (pg. 251) Somehow, by making the characters less vulnerable to guilt and pleas from others, Robin Stevenson takes Hummingbird Heart from just a mirror of a young girl's attempt to understand others as well as herself to a piece of artwork, extensive and colourful, deep and enduring, of choices, wonderful or humiliating, like a tattoo, hummingbird or otherwise.

How to Tend a Grave

by Jocelyn Shipley

Great Plains Teens Fiction

978-1-926531-19-9

178 pp.

Ages 14+

2012

Death stings the victim only once, but those left behind feel the pain of loss with every passing memory.

~ Unknown

The grief experienced after the loss of a loved one can be excruciating but if it is embedded with secrets and shame and confusion, it can be unmanageable and life-altering.  In How to Tend a Grave, two young teens, Liam Hall and Harmony Trahern, experience such grief and, though they are not acquainted with each other, grief will prompt their introduction and necessitate their interaction.

Though Liam knows his mother was an escort, it isn't until after she is killed in a hit-and-run accident and he must leave Toronto to live with his grandfather, Gully, in Dunlane, that Liam begins to learn how her choices have shaped their lives.  Though Liam's mom, Monica, hated Dunlane and had been ostracized by her own mother for having Liam out of wedlock, Dunlane is where Gully has his daughter buried, next to her mother at Mount Hope & Glory Cemetery.

Liam visits the cemetery daily to chat with his mom, to cry and to try to understand revelations about his mom that contradict what she had told him.  His cemetery visits, though, bring him under the scrutiny of local teen thug, Youth, and his nasty girlfriend, Crime, and their gang, Y4C, who claim the cemetery as their own.  Shrewdly, they will allow him to visit the cemetery if he joins their gang, thus becoming a 4, and following Youth's demands.  Though Liam recognizes their posturing as childish, their violent acts are very real and terrorizing the community. While Gully, a corrections officer, advises Liam to avoid the gang members, Liam, now called Ghoul Guy by Y4C, finds, "He's starved for belonging.  And hungry for the rush." (pg. 118)

Harmony Trahern, not yet sixteen, also visits the cemetery, recording in a journal the epitaphs on the gravestones of dead babies.  In this notebook, she also addresses entries to Rue, the baby she conceived with Jordan,  before Harmony recognized what a mistake it was hanging with him and his new group, Y4C.  It is during her visits to the cemetery that Harmony notices Liam and introduces herself.  They are instantly attracted to one another, though they share very little about themselves, both fearful that their choices related to Y4C and family history will come between them.

When Liam's and Harmony's stories merge, the progression of their grief to acceptance should not be taken as a conclusion to the process.  Liam's mother still lied to him and made choices that were perhaps suitable for her but definitely not for him, condemning him to much unresolved confusion.  He's fortunate to have Gully whose fortitude and experience, as well as gardening prowess, have prepared him well to help Liam through his grief.  Similarly, Harmony may be coming to terms with her grief for her lost child and even the nature of the loss of her virginity, but her parents will need to acknowledge their own grieving and role in their daughter's loss.  Just recreating earlier family activities, like an outing to the auction, is not sufficient to ensure their understanding of the loss.  As such, Jocelyn Shipley's title of How to Tend to a Grave is comprehensive in that tending to a grave can refer to caring for the grave, contributing to it (as in having a responsibility) or inclining to it (as in reaching for it).

By merging two different story-lines, Liam's told in third-person and Harmony's first-person journal entries, Jocelyn Shipley adds depth and texture to her plotting, allowing the reader to see Dunlane and Y4C from different perspectives at different times.  Perhaps because this reader finds the need for justice compulsory when dealing with criminal activities, the unknown fate of Youth and Crime is disappointing.  However, knowing that Liam has Gully in his life and they both accept each other as they are and that Liam has made a mature connection with Harmony, the promise that is Liam's future is sufficient to ensure a sense of resolution and hope.  Moreover, knowing that the threat to the community is something that must be dealt with from within, not by avoidance, Liam demonstrates that he is prepared to become part of the community that his mother forsake.  It seems, as many claim, that everything does tend to work out in the end.  Jocelyn Shipley ensures that it does appropriately in How to Tend a Grave.

40 Things I Want To Tell You

Written by Alice Kuipers

HarperTrophy Canada

978-1-44340-587-4

283 pp.

Ages 13+

2012

When I read a book that touches me, really touches me, I always finish it, close the cover, lay my hand over it, and just sit.  Sometimes I just re-immerse myself in the story, sometimes I weep, sometimes I wonder how the characters managed, sometimes I ponder the title and the cover.  With 40 Things I Want To Tell You by Alice Kuipers, I did it all.

Amy, a.k.a. Bird to her family and best friends, is the queen of lists and the princess of planning.  She knows that she and her good friend, now boyfriend, Griffin, will have sex for the first time on her seventeenth birthday.  She knows what she needs to do and how hard to work to get to Oxford when she finishes school.  Bird is so in control that she sets herself up as "Miss Take-Control-of-Your-Life" on a website offering advice to teens.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of stuff she needs to tell others but she doesn't.  She doesn't tell her best friend, Cleo, about the website until it's been up for months.  She doesn't tell Griffin that she is anxious about their first time, and then when she can't "do it" the night of her birthday, she doesn't tell him why.  She doesn't tell anyone that she's attracted to a new boy at school, Pete Loewen, not even him when he approaches her.  Cleo asks Pete out and he declines, and still Bird tells her nothing about her encounters with Pete which now include mind-blowing kisses.

Of course, Bird isn't the only one who needs to share things.  Since the death of Griffin's dad several years ago, his mom's mental health has been rocky and getting worse.  Offers of help are declined and her condition minimized when he speaks to Bird.  Then, there's Bird's mom who denies anything is wrong, though her mood is off and her organizational expertise (passed down to Bird) is showing weakness.  But, when Bird's dad, an entrepreneur currently focusing on solar bricks, goes to the bank, unbeknownst to this wife, to get a mortgage on the house, which Bird's grandmother left her mom, Bird just can't face the fighting.  Bird just runs away from it, going to the park where she often sits.  A chance meeting with Pete leads Amy (as he calls her) to pitch her self-control and have sex with him.

So, although she continues to offer free advice online, even listing "Top Tips" (e.g., Top Tip 18: When you make a decision, say it out loud; pg. 156), Bird has even more that she should be telling: to Griffin, to Cleo, to Pete, to her parents, and even to herself.  Self-denial is a big issue for Bird.  And, in her not-telling, all their interconnected lives are shattered and transformed.  She would have been wise to heed her own advice, as her own Top Tips continue to reflect the circumstances of her own life.

I wish I could reveal the moving conclusion to Alice Kuipers' story of Bird, but I fear that I will spoil it for the reader.  Suffice it to say that Bird's reactions and resignations and decisions are poignant, heartbreaking and honest, as well as justifiable to her, whether you agree with them or not.  Alice Kuipers' skill at weaving an emotionally engaging story with remarkable characters, likeable or not, like those in our own lives, will disarm you effortlessly until you realize you have been invariably touched forever.

Here are 5 things I want to tell you:

1. If you're a teen, female or male, read 40 Things I Want To Tell You.

2. If you're a parent of a teen, read 40 Things I Want To Tell You.

3. If you are a teacher or counsellor, read 40 Things I Want To Tell You.

4. If you appreciate great literature, read 40 Things I Want To Tell You.

5. Read 40 Things I Want To Tell You.