Denial

Written by Lorna Schultz Nicholson

Lorimer

978-1-4594-1671-0

176 pp.

Ages 14-18

RL 2.7

February 2022

 

When September started, seventeen-year-old Nova's senior year was looking pretty good. She was excelling at her school work and already had early acceptance to U of T for science, as a precursor to med school. She was part of their high school's power couple, having dated star swimmer Leo for the past 5 months. She had a regular gig tutoring students and she was on the swim team too. But Denial begins the following May with Nova covered in blood and worried about what she'd done. Evidently, life wasn't as perfect as Nova had thought.

Though he's not pressuring her to have sex, Leo makes it clear that's what he's interested in. Fortunately, Nova wants her first time to be perfect and to ensure she gets on the pill first, having heeded her mother's own experiences with a teen pregnancy that resulted in Nova's half-brother Brad, currently living in Thailand after dropping out of university. But, while she's anxious and excited at the prospect of losing her virginity to the guy she loves, Nova is also considering it in the context of quitting the swim team–she's probably the weakest on it–and of leaving Leo exposed to the machinations of the star female swimmer, Jada, who seems to be trying to drive a wedge between Nova and Leo.

But that perfect senior year with the love of her life slowly seems to become something else. Battling tension within the family, between her parents who've had to restructure their lives after Dad lost his job and between her parents and Brad after he ditched university, and with her jealousy of Jada and Leo's increasing unavailability as he tries out for the national team, Nova is finding it hard to cope. And, with Lorna Schultz Nicholson peppering the chapters that document the school year with the glimpses into the May fiasco that may result in a death, Denial becomes a heavy but relatable story of first loves and school stresses with a touch of family drama.

Being in denial is an easy attitude. It's sticking with the status quo, the familiar, even if the familiar is unhealthy, suspicious, or jeopardous. And there's a lot of denial in Denial. (Duh.) But, as easy as denial can be, it is also a powerful force. It makes you see things you don't and ignore things that are evident to everyone. So when you're a teen and don't have decades of life experience to inform you, denial is really easy and Lorna Schultz Nicholson gets that. While she is well-known for her stories rich in sports (e.g., rowing in When You Least Expect It and hockey in Taking the Ice), it's her finesse in addressing issues important to teens that has always impressed me. Whether it's trauma or disabilities, peer pressure or teen sex, Lorna Schultz Nicholson knows how to write about the angst of being a teen and balancing friends, family, school and love. She allows teens to be human and make mistakes, even huge mistakes based in denial, but also to recover from them and move forward. And when you're a teen and everything is monumental and seems life-ending, Lorna Schultz Nicholson gives you hope that life-changing is the norm and can be transformative rather than ruinous.

Fire Song

Written by Adam Garnet Jones

Annick Press

978-1-55451-977-4

232 pp.

Ages 14+

March 2018

Maybe the game is rigged and the only way to win is by giving up. (pg. 115)

So much about Shane's life hurts that it's hard to find the faith he needs to help endure it.  It should be full of hope and promise. He's finishing his final year of school and anticipating a move to Toronto for post-secondary. He's smart, given the nickname of "College".  He has a pretty girlfriend, Tara, who adores him. But much is a facade because underneath it all, Shane is a mess of grief, confusion and guilt.

Fire Song begins the day of the memorial for Shane's younger sister Destiny who took her own life six weeks earlier. His mother Jackie is despondent, unwilling to leave Destiny's room, even with the constant ministrations of elder Evie. Fortunately, his Anishinaabe reserve community, the only home he's every known, is tight and supportive.

His heart beats under this ground and the roots of the trees spread through his lungs. (pg. 14)

But Shane has secrets and burdens that are disturbing his potentially bright future. He has just learned that his funding for school isn't available from his reserve because he is registered with his father's reserve, though his father is long passed and Shane never lived there. School wants a hefty deposit but Jackie hasn't worked since Destiny's death. Moreover, the roof on their house is disintegrating and, though the materials are in at the store to repair it, his family does not have the money for both the roof and his schooling. But Shane's most emotional struggle comes with balancing his growing sexual relationship with David, Evie's grandson, and his public romantic involvement with Tara, a teen eager to find a new life away from an abusive father and a private writer of introspective prose and poetry.

How can it be
That the smell of home and
the smell of lonely are the same? (pg. 70) 

As Shane tries to keep a roof over their heads and prompt his mother into action, hide his relationship with David while craving it desperately, make some money in a community with few opportunities, and grieve the loss of his sister, his life continues to fray and threaten his future. It's all about choices and not one of them is easy.

Adam Garnet Jones tells Shane's painful story in such expressive prose and poetry, the latter courtesy of Tara's writing, that the reader is carried on a wave from anguish to heartbreak to misery. Shane's story is a tragedy on so many levels: family, school, community, love. But, in each of those circumstances, there are still slivers of buoyancy: a mother who loves him but has abandoned him in her grief; acceptance to school in Toronto, though the money is not at hand; a community of friends who support Shane but would not accept his being a two-spirited person; and a boy and a girl who love him but confound his life's plan.  Adam Garnet Jones may not pretty up Shane's story but he does bring a fitting conclusion to it. I won't tell you if the roof gets fixed or if Shane goes to school in Toronto or if he chooses David or Tara, but I can tell you that things get worse before they get better but better they do. With acceptance of his choices and the life he needs, Shane survives another day to love and be loved.

•••••••••••••••••••••

Fire Song is based on a film by the same name, written and directed by Adam Garnet Jones and produced by Fire Song Films Inc. and Big Soul Productions Inc. I encourage readers to check out the trailer for Fire Song which premiered at TIFF in 2015.

Retrieved from YouTube at https://youtu.be/1HyRNI9kKkA on August 6, 2018. 

Uploaded by TIFF Trailers on August 13, 2015.

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.

Delicate

by C. K. Kelly Martin
Dancing Cat Books
978-1-77086-452-8
230 pp.
Ages 14+
November 2015


Who wants to be called “delicate”? Porcelain dolls, maybe.  But the teens in C. K. Kelly Martin’s Delicate would be loathe to be called delicate, regardless of the challenges, physical and emotional, they have to endure.

Delicate is told in the alternate voices of second cousins, Ivy and Lucan, who haven’t seen each other in seven years since Lucan’s mother Sheri told her cousin Lisette, Ivy’s mom, about seeing Ivy’s dad with another woman at a hotel.  The two teens will become reacquainted at a 75th brithday party for a relative, but first they are involved in their own dramas.  Life is drama after all, isn't it?  Ivy is devastated by her boyfriend Jeremy’s break-up with her after 18 months together and learning that he’s hooked up with her best friend Betina.  And Lucan is dealing with his divorced mother’s embarrassingly physical relationship with Julian, a man much younger than her, as well as trying to negotiate his best friend Des’s volatile relationship with girlfriend McKenna.  After the family get-together, Sheri helps Ivy get a summer job at her merchandising firm which is just around the corner from the Mill Street Café where Lucan gets a job,  and soon the two teens are comparing and sharing their lives with each other and declaring themselves absurdly delicate, though they both have tremendous strengths that they still have not recognized.

Fortunately, they enjoy each other’s company (how much is surprising) and the fresh perspectives on their respective issues.  Ivy vacillates between longing, anger and vengeance with regards to Betina and Jeremy, by whom she has been infected with an STI, even getting Lucan involved in a dog-napping scheme, while Lucan begins to see the abusive nature of Des and McKenna’s relationship, enlisting Ivy’s help to defuse its volatility.

The tenuous nature of relationships is made very clear from the plethora within Delicate: Des and McKenna, Ivy and Jeremy, Ivy and Betina, cousins Sheri and Lisette, Lucan and Des, and so many others.  The relationships between boyfriend and girlfriend, friends, husband and wife, parents and children and other relatives are all so delicate in that any incident or series of circumstances could destroy or alter them, shattering them to shards that may or may not be reconfigured.  I spent most of the book worried that Lucan’s peanut allergy–which I incorrectly assessed as his delicacy–would be his downfall but I was mistaken.  That would’ve been too obvious and C. K. Kelly Martin is never obvious.  Her other books (My Beating Teenage Heart, 2011; Yesterday, 2012; Tomorrow, 2013; The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, 2014) have always fascinated me by her analysis of the complexity of the human condition and Delicate takes that one step further by examining both the obvious and the unseen and showing the immensity of both in affecting our lives and the way we see ourselves.  More importantly, C. K. Kelly Martin exposes the ways we hurt each other, sometimes deliberately, some accidentally, and some through negligence, and provides an upfront perspective on dealing.  Maybe that's all you can hope for.  Thankfully C. K. Kelly Martin does reassure the readers that being Delicate is not an indictment, just human.

Forever Julia

by Jodi Carmichael
Great Plains Teen Fiction
978-1-927855-20-1
262 pp.
Ages 14+
April, 2015

Julia Collins must feel like she's living her life from out-of-body. And with the life she has, I might want out too. Her much-adored dad has passed from cancer just 6 months ago, and her Mom is so grief-stricken that she can't even bear to speak of him.  They now live in a small two-bedroom flat above their bookstore and money is an issue, though Julia had never minds thrift-store shopping with her long-time best friend and creative fashionista, Annika, who understands about Julia's issues with depression and anxiety and watches out for her constantly.

But now Julia is going out with the obscenely wealthy Jeremy Thurston, a.k.a. the Third, jock and popularity icon, and he is pressuring her to have sex, though she has made it clear that she is not ready.  The gutsy Annika can’t stand Jeremy and makes it clear every time he pulls some stunt, like kicking Julia out of the ski chalet where they were supposed spend the night when she refuses his advances yet again.  Sadly, in her mind, Julia is convinced that she can have it all: the wonderful dating relationship with Jeremy who calls her “beautiful”; new friendships with the popular girls; a scholarship to USC for architecture; and the best friendship she has ever had.  Imagine thinking,

Maybe if I convince Annika to tone down her wardrobe, Jeremy would see how incredible she really is and then maybe everyone would get along. (pg. 105)

Sadly naïve, but probably not atypical for a teen who is trying to work everything out.

Then Grandma, who generally splits her time between Arizona and the cottage, arrives to stay–in Julia’s room–while being treated for breast cancer.  Now both Grandma and Mom are watching her and what’s going on around her, and they’re not always pleased by what they see.

It’s not surprising that Julia questions everything that she feels but what’s worse is that she never trusts her feelings to be legit or honest.  Whether that’s because of her anxiety or depression is irrelevant.  All that matters is that the life that was once warmed with Dad and Mom happily living in a modest home and with a reliable and loving BFF is now a life she doesn’t even recognize as her own.  Who is the girl who lets herself drink when she knows it’s verboten with the meds she’s on?  Who is the girl who kisses her boyfriend in public like there's no one else around?  Who is the girl who apologizes to a guy who thinks nothing of stranding her at a ski resort when she doesn’t want to have sex?  Jeremy may get a tattoo, even a temporary one, that reads “Forever Julia” but Julia can’t be forever when she doesn’t  know who she is, who she wants to be, or who she can be.

Jodi Carmichael gets inside of this Julia and gives her a true voice, albeit one mixed and confused with guilt, grief, envy, desire, and affection.  Julia definitely morphs over the course of Forever Julia though I suspect she hasn’t come into herself completely, yet. Forever is a long time to be someone, to love someone, to trust someone, to be friends. It may be possible but maybe not.  Not everything can be forever: not life, not love, not lust, not even family nor  friends.  And Jodi Carmichael makes sure that Julia accepts this, even if only temporarily, in Forever Julia.

Switch

by Douglas Davey

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-524-0

252 pp.

Ages 15+

2014

Back in 1988, when Sheldon Bates was seventeen, a confusing encounter during swimming practice sets him asking big questions about his sexuality. Now, through his personal notes from the time, footnoted with his current thoughts, Sheldon records that tumultuous year of discovery, fear, discomfiture, bullying, and understanding in Switch.

Though dating Jenny, to whom he is wildly attracted, Sheldon conducts a little experiment and some research, hoping to clarify for himself what he is feeling. His wish, "Please, please, please let me not be gay..." (pg. 22), suggests his ensuing stress and incomprehension, not surprising in a time when discussions of sexual orientation were verboten and information limited to a dictionary and a thesaurus. And, if he can't understand it, how will Jenny, best friend Dan or older brother Bill react? Sadly, not as he expects, and his personal issue becomes fodder for school gossip and verbal and physical abuse.

I ate. I slept. I went to class. I watched TV. I looked like I was awake but in fact I was sleepwalking through life with no clue how to wake up or get out. After a while, the terrible flow of days became a gray smear. (pg. 79)

Two things change everything. First, Sheldon is invited to join several other students at lunch in Room 115. There in Mr. Aiden's classroom, Sheldon feels safe. He can access a cupboard of relevant informational books and pamphlets. He can also choose to interact with a handful of students grappling with their own sexuality. Secondly, his English teacher, Mrs. Piedmont, assigns her students speeches, and Sheldon thinks about focusing on what he's going through as a possible topic. That decision will bring Sheldon both tragedy and deliverance.

I, for one, would never want to return to my high school years. Even without the aggravation of questioning your sexual orientation, teens have so much with which they must deal: puberty, body image, independence, career choices, responsibility. And not every teen has resources available to help them navigate those complicated treks. In the late 1980s, with no internet, with the AIDS crisis, and the secrecy virtually mandated by societal discrimination, the topic of bisexuality was still taboo, and kids like Sheldon would inevitably be left floundering for support. How he was able to survive, emotionally and physically, is both remarkable and gratifying. Douglas Davey, who was able to evoke that same trepidation and confusion in M in the Abstract (Red Deer Press, 2013), keeps readers repeatedly wondering how Sheldon will address his latest dilemma, or whether he will expose himself to more abuse by speaking publicly of his bisexuality, or when he will ask for the support of the school's administration or his parents. It is hard to believe the youthful Douglas Davey could present the 1980s of Sheldon's story so completely but that grey haze of being exposed to public scrutiny and discrimination is subtly exposed as a sign of the times and hopefully one that efforts have been made to rewrite.

Switch should belong in the 2015 version of Mr. Aiden's cupboard or, better yet, in high school libraries where everyone and anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, could share in the emotional turmoil of Sheldon Bates. Douglas Davey is providing us with the insight that, with greater awareness, could help us become more empathetic to those struggling with issues of sexual orientation. Let's hope we all accept Switch as that tool for learning.

The Almost Truth

by Eileen Cook
Simon Pulse
978-1-4424-4019-7
248 pp.
Ages 14+
2012

Sadie has big plans.  Now that she's finished high school, she's determined to leave her trailer park life on Bowton Island and head to Berkley to study architecture.  Although she's most upset about leaving her best friend, the very hot Brendan, she's been saving her money–often from small cons she pulls, as learned from her father who is currently in jail–and finally has enough.  That is, until her mother, a hotel maid who is always pinching pennies, guiltlessly tells Sadie that she took it for Dad's lawyer.  (Nice parents, eh?)

A poster of a three-year-old child, Ava McKenna, who went missing 15 years earlier gives Sadie an idea for a con that would help her get the money she needs for school.  The wealthy McKenna family who is offering $250,000 for information about Ava's disappearance from the island is slated to attend a big fundraising event for their McKenna's Children's Foundation and Sadie, with Brendan's help and information she gleans from hotel staff, devises a way to get close to the family.

While working to insinuate herself close to Chase Parker, the young man in charge of organizing the charity event, Sadie finds herself at a crossroads with Brendan and navigating her own family obstacles, including her mother who has difficulties with the truth.

For years I thought I was going crazy, since I didn't remember all these things, but then I realized she just made them up.  Cut out any parts of her life she didn't like and squished in a new and better memory to fill the gap. (pg. 59)

The mystery of what happened to little Ava becomes wrapped up in Sadie's desire to know herself better, though she's running from Brendan and can't trust her parents to think about anyone but themselves.

Though the reader might be chagrined by some too-obvious coincidences, the story of Ava McKenna's disappearance is a true mystery that is not solved until the very end, so don't be so sure that you've got the whole truth at any time before then.  Often the truth is tailored for those receiving it and can be interpreted far too many ways.  The Almost Truth makes it clear that sometimes the truth is hidden by a strong desire to make that truth a reality, rather than as a result of omission or outright lies.  But when untruths are piled upon untruths by different parties, it is vey difficult to discern the truth under the burden of imagined realities.  

Having previously reviewed Eileen Cook's Unraveling Isobel (Simon Pulse, 2012), I knew I could expect a well-crafted plot that involved some mystery, romance and teen angst, but I was impressed by the depth of the plotting in The Almost Truth.  While I wondered why Sadie could not see how much Brendan cared for her–I suspect that this is not unusual among teens–and I was convinced that the solution to Ava's disappearance was obvious, I soon realized that there was much more to the story.  And that's because Eileen Cook has established characters who choose to see circumstances that work best with their own interpretations and that become their reality.  They're not living lies, at least they don't all know they are, but they're working with the reality they see.  It can be confusing and sometimes you want to shake one of them and yell, "Don't you see it?" but it wouldn't do any good.  The Almost Truth demonstrates that sometimes the almost truth is the only truth there is, until one person pulls out a single truth that allows the burden of imagined realities to collapse.

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. 

What We Hide

by Marthe Jocelyn
Tundra Books
978-1-77049-642-2
275 pp.
Ages 14+
May, 2014

I can't imagine a freer time than the 1960's and early 1970's when there were calls for "Love, Not War", when peace symbols and drugs were everywhere, and when contraception helped support the idea of free love.  Strangely, the young people in What We Hide should be immersed in all that liberating freedom, standing up for their views, and not taking any directions from the establishment.  Yet these teens have their heads and hearts in two worlds: the traditional, even old-fashioned world more typical of  their parents and school administrators, and the experimenting, liberal explorations of their peers.  What they choose to hide is all rooted in their conflicting ideas of right and wrong, wants and needs, smart and ignorant, and childish and mature.

To help her older brother evade the draft for the Vietnam War (sadly something his best friend Matt chose not to do), Jenn accompanies Tom to England where he will attend Sheffield University and she Illington Hall, a boarding school, nearby.  The new milieu allows Jenn to become the American Jenny with the (imaginary) boyfriend Matt who is fighting in Vietnam.  Except for occasionally hearing from Tom who is heavily into smoking weed and avoiding contacting Matt, Jenny's world is Illington Hall, her new friends and misdirecting them to maintain her story.  But Jenny is just one of the narrators in What We Hide who reveal in the text that which they won't share elsewhere.

There's Robbie a local boy who knows he's gay but keeps it from everyone, especially his 18-year-old brother Simon, whose sexual exploits have already made him a father and has him engaged to marry another pregnant girl.  Robbie meets a boy from the boarding school, Luke, who never knew he was gay and, although smitten with Robbie, is still trying to discover whether he might like girls if he just found the right one. Luke and sister Kirsten come from a seemingly perfect family, or so classmate Penelope believes, until she finagles an invitation from them for the weekend.  And Penelope, whose aggressive attitude suggests that she'd have sex with anyone and it wouldn't be a big deal, has a big secret about her mother that she won't share.  Another classmate, Percy, too has a secret about his parent but one that could bring him popularity or shame.

I haven't even mentioned Nico, who is the school's heart throb and whose intimacy with his girlfriend Sarah is well known. But now that Sarah has returned home to Toronto, who is in Nico's line of sight? Jenny? Oona, Sarah's best friend?  What about Brenda, the sister of the mother of Simon's son?  She's a local but she attends Illington Hall as a day student, always straddling the line between the unrefined life of a local and the ambitious scholarship of her boarding school.

How Marthe Jocelyn, who could not have been old enough to have experienced this era, could accurately portray the thoughts and actions of Jenny, Robbie, Luke, Penelope and all their peers is astounding to me.  She has covered the full gamut from naive to promiscuous (though it is the time of free love, right?) and brash to reserved, but the confusion that seems to predominate the teen years is always there, regardless of background, wealth, family, friends, or intelligence.  These young people are all trying to find out who they are, wanting to be someone: a cherished son, a first love, a supportive sister, a sympathetic friend.  But wanting to be someone is not enough  to make it happen.

"Maybe I'd been hoping for a miracle, but I thought I'd be someone else by now.  I thought at least that I'd be . . . someone." (pg. 258)

But like all stories based on secrets or lies (misdirections, as Percy calls them), the truth will eventually be uncovered, for good or bad. Marthe Jocelyn makes it clear that the drama swirling around all these hidden truths in What We Hide is what takes the energies of these young people.  Sadly they don't know that the issues which are consuming them are real and significant as they are but creating dramas enfold these concerns just compounds them.  Some come to that realization more swiftly than others but still with heartache (Penelope recognizes that, "There is only me to blame for where I am.  There is only me." [pg. 197])

While I feel for these young people, wishing that they could trip through their teen years with more spirit and less angst, Marthe Jocelyn makes it clear that they will deal as they can, and things will work out or not, but they have the capacity to learn more about themselves through these hardships, regardless what they hide.

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.

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.