Fly

Written by Alison Hughes

Kids Can Press

978-1-5253-0583-2

200 pp.

Ages 10-14

October 2022

 

...my body is not all that I am. (pg. 40)

Fly is what 14-year-old Felix Landon Yarrow (a.k.a. Fly per his initials) dreams of doing. In his dreams, he is no longer trapped in a wheelchair by cerebral palsy. He is free to spread his arms and soar.

            My disability,

                         my difficulties,

                                               my pain–

often on public display–

are

in fact

all my own.

                                       Private. (pg. 59)

But, Felix is in a wheelchair. And though he feels very much like his pain is often on public display, whether he is working with his aide Levi or being driven in the "special" school bus, he knows that he is invisible to many, especially his peers. Still, that invisibility becomes his superpower, with Felix becoming a "Fly on the Wall" and ready to emulate his literary guide, Cervantes's Don Quixote, and follow truth and justice. His quest: to save his classmate and damsel in distress, Daria, from the arrogant and dangerous Carter.

As Felix watches and learns, he becomes Knightwatch and emails warnings to Daria about Carter and to Carter that his heinous and potentially criminal behaviour has been observed. But, like Don Quixote, along with battles with enemies come inner battles of understanding of self. 

Fly, a novel in free verse, may have a contemporary setting but its story is as classic as that of Don Quixote. It's about finding inner strength and fighting against injustices. But author Alison Hughes makes sure the reader realizes that much of this is also about perception. Told in Felix's voice, the reader will sympathize with his constrained physical nature and applaud his courage to pursue chivalrous goals of protecting first Daria and then others from oppressors. Going after Carter gives Felix purpose, though he doesn't realize until the end that his manner of attack may leave others vulnerable. His goal is outward, to help others, but the learning he takes from his endeavour is all about him and what he needs to do to be fair. The growth that Felix experiences, moving from annoyance at how others judge and treat him to appreciation for efforts others make, is a monumental one. And Alison Hughes takes the readers along on that epic journey through her elegant free verse. The writing flows and has shape that comes with self-discovery, engagement with others and context of circumstances. Felix's story takes a form not unlike his own body, both vulnerable and combative, and we're there for the moment of battle, within and externally, when Felix realizes that some of the limitations to the freedom to fly may be those he's imposed on himself.

Cold

Written by Mariko Tamaki

Roaring Brook Press

978-1-62672-273-6

240 pp.

Ages 12-18

February 2022

He was already getting used to being so much less than he was when he was alive. Maybe because there's something in death that makes being nothing feel natural. Maybe because he had somehow always been a sort of figment. (pg. 49)

On a cold January night, seventeen-year-old Todd Mayer died, naked except for a pair of hand-knitted pink mittens, and found in Rosemary Peacock Park by a dog the next morning. Now a ghost, Todd watches and remembers as his death is investigated by Detectives Greevy and Daniels, seemingly disregarded by classmates at his private boys' school, and considered by Georgia Walker who never even knew Todd. 

 

Georgia hears of Todd's death from Carrie Harper, a new friend who was the former friend of the uber popular Shirley Mason. The girls are still negotiating their newfound friendship and one thing they spend time talking about is Todd's death. In fact, they go to the scene of the crime, discuss alibis and such. But Georgia begins to get a bad feeling when she realizes Todd went to school with her older brother Mark and may have even visited their house. So, as Georgia starts to question her brother and others to learn more about Todd and perhaps his death, Todd, as a ghost, watches as detectives question his virtually-silent peers and his teachers, including Mr. McVeeter, a social studies teacher who offered Todd support and refuge from bullies. But, as he watches and recognizes the mistakes he made and the complexity of his choices and of his feelings, Todd remembers all that led to his death and those involved.

Told in the alternating voices of Georgia and Todd as Todd's death is revealed and investigated, Cold takes a hard look at how the lives of two teens unknowingly come together. Both had recognized they were gay and were finding ways to deal with it for themselves, sometimes with support from others. Still, they were struggling: Todd at a private boys' school where those who were deemed different were persecuted, and Georgia with her mother, a children's book author who tactlessly used her children as the basis for her stories. That may be their only obvious commonality, other than seeking to fit in and avoid harassment, a goal of many school-age young people, but it's their endeavour to find the truth and share that truth that supersedes all. Georgia needs to find out what happened to Todd and how her brother may or may not be involved. Todd needs to take responsibility for his actions which may or may not have led to his death and make things right for those who had trusted him. In Cold, Mariko Tamaki, who has never shied away from weighty issues of young people coming of age, including conflicts in friendship, questions of sexuality and balancing family with friends, tells a complex mystery wrapped in a story of trying to survive challenging social circumstances. While the solution to the mystery of Todd's death is never fully realized until the end, Mariko Tamaki has kept the teens' circumstances so familiar and common that her explanation sadly makes perfect sense.

The cold, hard facts of Cold are that a teen died because he was perceived as different while he was determined to make positive connections with others. He did what he could but others made choices that were ill-considered at best and thoughtless and despicable at worst. And Mariko Tamaki shows us, with hindsight, choices made, independent of intentions, have consequences and we can only hope that they hurt no one and can be endured and even survived.

A Box of Bones

Written by Marina Cohen

Roaring Brook Press

978-1-250-17221-1

288 pp.

Ages 8-12

May 2019

Sometimes people need lies. Little lies to help them deal with truths that are too huge and too difficult to face. (pg. 273)

Twelve-year-old Kallie is only interested in facts and the organized and logical world that she and her father, who works in risk management for an insurance company, live in. She has no appreciation for the arts, turning her nose up at music and seeing stories as "ugly little lies wrapped in pretty packages" (pg. 59), going so far as to refer to her dead mother only with disdain as "The Writer." Unfortunately, the world seems to want something different for her than she expects.

While at the buskers' Festival of Fools with her Grandpa Jess, Kallie is handed a small puzzle box seemingly made of bone. After much work to open it, nine smaller cubes fall out of the box, each with its own unique image. Strangely, no matter how she drops these cubes, they always land in the same order: an animal, a goblet, an oval with holes, a castle, a cylinder with flames, a coffin, a skull, a long pointed object, and a blank. Soon, Kallie's life, thrown off kilter by a new imaginative student named Anna and by secrets she is learning regarding her mother's death, is following a path based on those bone images, starting with a strange animal with amethyst eyes that appears to her.

Interspersed with Kallie's story is one of Liah, a bone carver's apprentice. In her story, distinguished to the reader by its italics font, Liah and the bone carver are heading to the evil Empress's palace to sell his carvings, travelling through an ancient forest haunted by those whose bones were buried without ancestral care. Heedless of the bone carver's warnings, Liah removes a skull, hopeful of carving something special from it. But their foray into the palace becomes something dangerous for the bone carver and Liah after a Lie-peddler they meet confronts the Empress with his stories.

There is such a thing as too much truth. (pg. 272)

How Kallie's and Liah's journeys are related is only revealed at the end of Marina Cohen's latest middle grade novel but they are entwined, both learning that

...a good story never really ends. It lives on inside you forever (pg. 222)

and that truths and lies are not very different, both necessary and still tenuous.

While Marina Cohen does creepy middle-grade really, really well–do check out several of her earlier novels such as The Inn Between (2016) and The Doll's Eye (2017)–A Box of Bones tells a great mystery without worries of keeping young readers up at night. There are eerie bits, both in Kallie's and Liah's stories, but they add to the mysteriousness, demonstrating that not everything is straightforward, logical or expected, just like life, and that stories give life as well as honour it.

Watching Traffic

by Jane Ozkowski

Groundwood Books

978-1-55409-843-3

186 pp.

Ages 14-18

August 2016

Reviewed from ebook

“There are so many directions you can go, and no matter what you choose it’s going to have an effect on everything else.” (pg. 151)

It’s the end of summer after finishing high school and eighteen-year-old Emily Robinson is anticipating the departure of best friends, Lincoln and Melissa, for new adventures and locales, Australia for travel and Halifax for school, respectively.  And what of Emily, the girl whom everyone, and I mean everyone, in their small town of Cavanaugh only thinks of as the three-year-old girl whose mother committed suicide in her presence and has had to overcome so much?

Though they’ve been friends since Grade 7 when they both were attending weekly counselling sessions, one to deal with her mother’s suicide and the other with anger issues, Melissa and Emily seem to be at odds this summer.  Emily thinks it’s because of Melissa’s relationship with boyfriend Dan but Emily, burdened by her lack of direction, just doesn’t have the time or make the effort to deal with her messed-up friend, though she’s encouraged by Lincoln and Melissa’s older brother Robert to make an effort.

But meeting Tyler, a new guy whom she meets at the pawn shop where she goes to sell the gold teeth her grandmother has gifted her–Grandma is a wonderful story in herself!–gives Emily the chance to take her life in a different direction, one where she has divorced parents and is someone she wants to be seen as.

Watching traffic from the three overpasses that cross the highway that divides Cavanaugh in two parts is a common past-time for Emily and her friends, but it’s a metaphor for divisions and acceptance, and the movement of people into, through and out of our lives.  Emily’s life may seem tenous to her, not knowing where she’s going, but it’s not unlike her friends who, though they have direction, are apprehensive about moving on, and Jane Ozkowski gets the tone right for these young people who want to move on but only know that from which they come.  Their words of wisdom are both an anathema and a propellant.

"There’s a highway cutting through the whole town, and they think if they follow it they’ll find somewhere better.  Nothing’s better, though.  You can be unhappy here or you can be unhappy somewhere else.  Being happy is more about how you see things.” (pg. 50)

Watching Traffic is Jane Ozkowski’s debut novel but her skill in giving voice to Emily, Melissa, Lincoln, Tyler and others in their perplexity and discomfiture about going forward in life demonstrates a raw understanding and proficiency at telling their stories.  Less about plot and more about characters and their development, Watching Traffic suggests that Jane Ozkowski is the one to watch and continue to read.  I look forward to see and read what’s coming round the bend from Jane Ozkowski.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I’m delighted to announce that author Jane Ozkowski is a last-minute addition to the impressive contingent of young adult authors reading at this weekend’s Eden Mills Writers’ Festival.  Come for the words!

With Malice

by Eileen Cook

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

978-0-544-80509-5

316 pp.

Ages 13+

June 2016

Eighteen-year-old Jill Charron just wants the truth.  Waking up in a hospital room without any memories of how she got there and struggling to find words because of a brain injury means that getting at the truth is not going to be easy.  As the byline to the book states, "The truth is how you tell it" and it seems the truths are multitudinous and varied.

Jill's divorced parents seem to want to keep a lot of truths from her, especially the key one that Simone McIvory, Jill’s best friend, was killed in the car being driven by Jill while on a school trip in Italy.  The police, both American and Italian, as well as Evan Stanley, her high-priced lawyer, are badgering her for the truths she can’t remember.  And everybody else, from other students on the trip, to newspaper reports, crime drama series, and subscribers to the “Justice for Simone” blog are more than willing to share their opinions as to the truth.  But what is the truth and is there only one?

While Jill, whisked back to the States by her rich and demanding father, endures rehab and counselling to help heal her body and six weeks of memory loss, the police interview Simone’s parents who portray their daughter as a confident and popular teen with old-fashioned values, and Jill as a less well-liked girl from a broken home and desperate for attention.  Though the strength of their friendship is recognized by many who knew them, different stories arise with regards to the two girls-chilly or friendly, studious or popular, jealous or self-centered–by those who knew them well or just marginally and even by those who’d never met them but nastily weigh in on the news story.

“It doesn’t matter what’s true–what matters is what people believe.” (pg. 102)

Eileen Cook brilliantly layers the multifaceted truths recounted in blog posts, transcripts of police interviews, newspaper articles, yearbooks, and other media as she intricately develops the subplots of With Malice, all with the purpose of revealing what actually happened to Simone and Jill in that car in Italy.  Below the very concrete mess of a mangled car lies a substantial mess of romance, anger, pettiness, jealously, hurt and misplaced affection.  The ultimate truth is both expected and surprising and Eileen Cook reveals it with breath-taking patience, taking YA readers on a suspenseful read all the way to the end before exposing a friendship admittedly more fragile than honest.

Remember

by Eileen Cook

Simon Pulse

978-1-4814-1696-2

320 pp.

Ages 12+

February 2015

People need to ball up.  Life isn't all sunshine and unicorns.  Now they're selling it to people our age?  What, because not getting into the college of our choice is crushing?  No date for prom causing premature PTSD?  It's not trauma; it's real life.  Life is hard sometimes.  It doesn't mean you don't face it. (pg. 12)

That's best friend Win's assessment of the Memtex treatment that teen Harper Bryne's father's company NeuroTech is now offering, with FDA approval, for the "softening" of painful memories that get in the way of living.  But when Harper's beloved horse, Harry, dies unexpectedly of colic, she is devastated and weeks later still unable to sleep or eat.  Though her parents refuse to allow her to receive treatment, Harper easily convinces her boyfriend, Josh, an part-time intern at NeuroTech–and a protegé of her father's– to sneak her in.  In recovery, Harper is thrilled to know she can still visualize Harry but without the devastating sadness and guilt, feeling like herself again.

That is, until she blacks out over memories of a woman falling and the smell of burning meat, and begins dreams of this woman.  Josh is convinced they are just false memories (he is so pro-NeuroTech).  But, having witnessed her blackout, Neil O’Malley, a college student involved in protests objecting to Memtex’s use, approaches her about the possible side effects of the treatment that he is convinced had a role in his older brother’s suicide.

Now Harper is delving into her past, doing some sleuthing around anomalous information about her horse and her mother, and getting Neil to help her with this research, while her relationship with Josh is put on hold and her friendship with Win takes a tailspin.  And then there’s her dad whom she’d always trusted to do everything and anything for her and now whom she is convinced is harbouring secrets and acting only in the best interests of his company.

Remember is a romance with a cautionary spin on the hazards of expecting lives filled only with lightness and good memories, devoid of the painful ones that help sculpt us into the persons we are.  Win is always remarking about Harper’s Mary Poppins’ positive attitude and is disappointed, almost angry, when Harper begins to be less so.  This is surprising considering she acknowledges that life isn’t all “sunshine and unicorns” (pg. 12). But, Win is not atypical, recognizing that sometimes life sucks while still preferring effusive busyness and happy demeanours at all costs.  Not surprising a lot of work related to PTSD and depression is done quietly and discreetly on the side.

Eileen Cook writes captivating realistic fiction with a hint of romance so well, ensuring some sweetness is always enmeshed in the conflict of keeping secrets and telling of lies.  Unraveling Isobel (SimonPulse, 2012)  and The Almost Truth (SimonPulse, 2012) are two more examples of her gripping YA that I’ve been pleased to review here on CanLit for LittleCanadians.  I know my young readers are as enthusiastic by Eileen Cook’s writing as I am, gripped by complex plotlines beyond their own lives and by romantic, friend and family relationships that reassure them that they are normal.  And Remember is one more YACanLit to add to that collection, albeit with a nuance of science fiction that makes us remember that the speculative may not always been that fantastic after all.

The Truth Commission

by Susan Juby

Razorbill Canada

978-067-006759-6

272 pp.

Ages 14+

For release April 2015

The truth really doesn't need any embellishments, does it?  It is as it should be. Nothing more, nothing less.  But sixteen-year-old Normandy Pale, the narrator and writer behind The Truth Commission, a piece of creative non-fiction for her Spring Special Project at Green Pastures Academy of Art and Applied Design in Nanaimo, does recognize that,

"When you tell a story, you shape the truth." (pg. 293)

And she and her best friends, Dusk (actually Dawn) Weintraub-Lee and Neil Sutton attempt to bring some much needed truth into a world overflowing with lies.  From Aimee Danes, whose new nose and chest scream to share her new truths with the world, and the snarly office secretary Mrs. Dekker to fellow students Tyler Jones, Zinnia McFarland, and Brian Forbes, the unofficial Truth Commission trio attempt to learn the truths about everything from motivations, love interests, heritage and substance abuse. But attempts to shed light on the truth are not always easy and rarely straightforward, often with unforeseen consequences.

But Normandy is having her own crisis of truths, dealing with the return home of her astoundingly successful older sister, Keira, from the California Institute of Art and Design. While still at Green Pastures, Keira had created a massively popular graphic novel series called the Diana Chronicles, about a girl who lives with her painfully average family on Earth and travels to an alternate universe, Vermeer, where she is queen.  Except for Diana, the family resembles Normandy's family in the worst possible way, exaggerating their attributes to humiliating proportions. But something is amiss with Keira and Normandy is looking to help by getting at the truth, though the family's head-in-the-sand attitude is problematic.

The truth may be out there but it may not always be ideal to seek it out.  Susan Juby's characters, both main and secondary, demonstrate the precarious nature of the truth, though some recognize that truth sooner than later.  But their interactions with regards to the truth are what makes the story so lively, particularly with Normandy bridging the extreme differences between her friends and family when seeking the truth. What to do?
 
To be honest, Susan Juby's writing is like a Disney bandage on your heart.  It has delightful colour and humour that can hide something as simple as a paper cut (still very painful!) or a deep, festering wound.  It's not until you look under the bandage that the true depth of the story is evident.  The reader is glad for the amusing cover-up because it helps manage the pain beneath.  Even though removing the bandage can be agonizing, it must be done. Not unlike the truth.  And, in my opinion, Susan Juby's truth is the quality she attributes to some authors:

"There are the truths...when some writer puts exactly the right words together and it's like their pen turned sword and pierced you right through the heart." (pg. 10)

Susan Juby's pen is both honest and piercing in The Truth Commission, and I relished it wholeheartedly.

***********************************

Two Truths and a Lie (from yesterday's post)

If you haven't guessed yet, #3 is the lie.  Norm is short for Normandy and is all girl.  Ask Neil.

The Truth Commission: coming!

To celebrate the release this month of  

Susan Juby's newest young adult novel, 

The Truth Commission

Razorbill Canada

978-067-006759-6

272 pp.

Ages 14+

let's play a little game.

Two Truths and a Lie.  Want to play?

This is the story about easy truths, hard truths, and those things best left unsaid. (pg. 11)

I'll make 3 statements, 

two of which are true and one of which is a lie.  

Can you guess which is the lie?

1. The Truth Commission includes a character called Dusk, though her name is actually Dawn.
2. Neil, in The Truth Commission, dresses in the seedy costumes of gritty 1960s and 1970s movies.
3. Norm, the main character in The Truth Commission, is a boy who dresses and acts like a girl.

Which do you think is the lie? 

Check back tomorrow when I post my review of The Truth Commission and reveal which statement is the lie.

The Whole Truth

Written by Kit Pearson
HarperCollins Canada
978-1-55468-852-4
261 pp.
Ages 9+
2011

Hidden away is the truth.  But whose truth?  Which truth?  All ten-year-old Polly knows are the rules, as itemized by her fifteen-year-old sister, Maud, about what she should or shouldn't do regarding their father.  She's not to tell anyone what happened; she's not to think about Daddy or what happened; she's not to trust anyone but Maud; she needs to be brave; and she must be well-behaved with her new guardian, a grandmother they don't know, and other family.  That's a tall order for a young girl in 1932, displaced from her home in Winnipeg to Kingfisher Island off the B.C. coast, moving in with strangers, missing her dad terribly, and soon to lose her sister to a private school in Victoria.

Polly tries so hard to follow the rules.  Luckily her new family i.e., grandmother Noni, Great Aunt Jean and Great Uncle Rand, and their son Uncle Gregor, embraces them with much love, understanding, and a very comfortable lifestyle.  Still following the rules, Polly takes comfort in writing letters, which she hides, to her father.  But nothing ever stays the same, even the truth as she has been told it.

When bits of the truth about her father are revealed, and then Polly takes on another truth that she hides from almost everyone, she finally recognizes the subjectivity of truth and its nebulous nature.

Kit Pearson takes us into the 1930's when, still reeling from the stock market crash and the consequent depression, families were forced to make difficult decisions and separation was not unusual. But life on the fictional Gulf Island seems less trying, particularly for Polly's wealthy grandmother, perhaps reflective of the smaller community and relative isolation from cities with their higher populations and few jobs.  As such, Polly often feels conflicted regarding their meager existence in Winnipeg with their father compared to their rich life (both in experiences and financially) without him, another truth that may or may not be accepted.

Although Polly's revelation on the last page about the nature of truth seemed somewhat pat to this reader, I needed to remind myself that truth can be what we need it to be and, for a young girl dealing with family secrets and disappointments, Polly reconciled the truth about truth for herself alone.