Poetry Friday: The Wild Book

The Wild Book Margarita Engle

Homework Fear

The teacher at school
smiles, but she's too busy
to give me extra help,
so later, at home,
Mama tries to teach me.

She reminds me
to go oh-so-slowly
and take my time.
There is no hurry.
THe heavy book
will not rise up
and fly away.

When I scramble the sneaky letters
b and d, or the even trickier ones
r and l, Mama helps me learn
how to picture
the sep--a--rate
parts
of each mys--te--ri--ous
syl--la--ble.
Still, it's not easy
to go so
ss--ll--oo--ww--ll--yy.
S l o w l y.
SLOWLY!

I have to keep
warning myself
over and over
that whenever I try
to read too quickly,
my clumsy patience
flips over
and tumbles,
then falls...

Why?
Wwhhyyyy?
WHY?
¡Ay!

The doctor hisses Fefa's diagnosis like a curse-- word blindness*. She'll never read, or write. It's why she hates school so much, why the other kids taunt her when she has to read OUT LOUD.

But Fefa's mother has the heart of poet and doesn't accept the prognosis. She gives Fefa a blank book (one of the most terrifying things Fefa has seen) for her to fill with words as she gets them, slowly.

Fefa deals with the bullying and taunts of her classmates and siblings and slowly fills her book and slowly learns to detangle the letters.

Y'all know I'm a huge Engle fan. I'm most familiar with her YA stuff, but this one is more middle grade. There's a lot less politics and history**, as the main focus is Fefa's struggle with the written word. It's based on Engle's own grandmother and the stories she told of her own struggle with dyslexia.

Of course, one of the things that I like so much about Engle is how she weaves stories around Cuban history, so this wasn't my favorite one of hers. Also, there's only one narrator, while I'm used to her work being told in multiple voices. THAT SAID, it's still really good.

I like how Engle works with free verse and structure in this one to really capture Fefa's voice, especially when sounding words out and trying to figure out syllables. It's one that younger readers will enjoy and will cause them to seek out more of her work.

Today's Poetry Friday Round-up is over at... A Teaching Life. Be sure to check it out!


*Apparently, this is actually what they used to call dyslexia.

**Although it is set in 1912 Cuba and there is still some historical drama, it's just not the focus like it is in her other work.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Friday: Tropical Secrets

Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba Margarita Engle

Islands belong to the sea,
not the earch.

All around me
the world is blue.

Above, more blue,
like a hot, melting star.

Music is the only part
of Cuba's heated air

that feels like something
I can breathe.

Regular readers know I am a huge fan of Margarita Engle's verse novels. Each one deals with some aspect of Cuban history and is told in multiple voices. In this one, the main voice is Daniel, a Jewish teenager from Berlin, whose parents could only afford to get one person out, him. They said they'd meet him in New York, but his ship wasn't allowed to land in New York and ended up in Havanna. Paloma is a Cuban girl who helps the Quakers with the refugees. Her mother ran off to Paris with another man, her father charges huge fees and bribes for entry visas and then sometimes rejects the ship anyway. Her father has a few poems, too. The last voice is David, an old Ukranian Jew who fled to Cuba decades before.

It's the story of David trying to come to grips with life on a tropical island, his hope that he'll see his parents again, his growing knowledge that he probably won't. It's the story of Paloma coming to terms with the sins of her father. It's the story of their friendship.

It's a slight book, both in page count and also because of the verse format, but instead of leaving holes in the story, it makes it uncluttered and it never feels like there's too much going on. We just get brief glimpses into the lives of these people as they try to make sense of a world gone crazy. Engle's poetry really shines when describing Cuba-- how it feels, how it sounds, what it looks like. It helps make Daniel's initial disorientation all the more real, but we also see how he falls in love with the island.

It's also different than many of the WWII/Holocaust books out there. This is the first time I've read about the Jewish refugees in Cuba and it's not a part of the diaspora that is well covered, even in Jewish circles.

It's more personal and less sweeping than some of her other books and I recommend it.

Today's Poetry Friday round up is over at Random Noodling. Be sure to check it out!

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Friday: Under the Mesquite

Under the Mesquite Guadalupe Garcia McCall

señorita

Mami said life would change
after I turned fifteen
when I became a señorita.
But señorita means different things
to different people.

For my friends Mireya and Sarita,
who turned fifteen last summer,
señorita means wearing lipstick,
which when I put it on
is sticky and messy,
like strawberry jam on my lips.

For Mami señorita means
making me try on high-heeled shoes
two inches high
and meant to break my neck.

For Mami's sisters, my tías
Maritza and Belén, who live in Mexico,
señorita means measuring me,
turning me this way and that
as they fit me for the floral dresses
they cheerfully stitch together
on their sewing machines.
For the aunts, señorita also means
insisting I wear pantyhose,
the cruel invention that makes
my thick, trunklike thighs
into bulging sausages.

When my tías are done dressing me up
like a big Mexican Barbie doll,
I look at myself in the mirror.
Mami stands behind me
as I pull at the starched
flowered fabric and argue
with Mami's reflection.

"Why do I have to wear this stuff/
This is your style, not mine!
I like jeans and tennis shoes.
Why can't I just dress
like a normal teenager?
En los Estados Unidos girls
don't dress up like muñecas."

Señoritas don't talk back
to their mothers," Mami warns.
When my aunts aren't looking,
she gives me a tiny pinch,
like a bee sting on the inside
of my upper arm. "Señoritas know
when to be quiet and let their
elders make the decisions."

For my father, señorita means
he has to be a guard dog
when boys are around.
According to my parents,
I won't be allowed to date
until I graduate from high school.

That's fine with me.
I have better things to do
than think about boys--
like prepare for my future.
I want to be the first one in our family
to earn a college degree.

For my sisters, señorita means
having someone to worship:
it is the wonder of
seeing their oldest sister
looking like Cinderella
on her way to the ball.

But for me, señorita means
melancolía: settling into sadness.
It is the end of wild laughter.
The end of chewing bubble gum
and giggling over nothing
with my friends at the movies, our feet up
on the backs of the theater seats.

Señorita is very boring
when we go to a fancy restaurant
decorated with Christmas lights
for the upcoming Posadas.
We sit properly, Papi, Mami,
and I, quietly celebrating
my fifteenth birthday
with due etiquette because
I'm trying my best
to be a good daughter and accept
the clipping of my wings,
the taming of my heart.

Being a señorita
is not as much fun
as I'd expected it to be.
It means composure and dignity.

Señorita is a nina,
the girl I used to be,
who has lost her voice.


HEY AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS! Did you know that you're allowed to have a book about a high school girl with NO romantic plot or subplot? Did you know you can have a book about a Mexican-American teen where immigration isn't an issue, that she can travel freely between countries (and often does?) Did you know you can have a book about a Mexican-American teen where race and racism and fitting in aren't plot points? Did you know you can do all those things and still have A REALLY GOOD BOOK?

So, if this book isn't about boys or race, what is it about?

Cancer.

Freshman year, Lupita's mother gets uterine cancer. Despite the fact that she's the oldest of eight, Lupita and her mother have a close relationship and it grieves her to see her vibrant and wonderful mother struggle with the disease. Following Lupita through high school and beyond, we see her and her family deal with her mother's illness. It's beautifully written and such a change of pace.

I loved the exploration of how Lupita tries to hold it together-- both herself and her family. Her relationship with her parents and her siblings and how these change, both because of age and because of the what the family is dealing with. I loved the family-- they're close while still being realistic. Siblings and parents fight, but they make up. Relationships change, but the underlying love doesn't.

The verse format allows for some wonderful imagery and metaphor, as well alluding to the fact that Lupita is a writer and writing poetry (but not the poetry we're reading) is one of the ways she tries to sort out her thoughts and feelings.

It was a Morris finalist and the Bel Pre Author winner and it's not hard to see why.

Today's Poetry Friday round up is hosted by Anastasia over at Booktalking!

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Friday: Hurricane Dancers

Quebrado

Safety.
Such a small word.

The cave bristles
with sharp crystals
shaped like beaks and claws,
and flowing ones that resemble
glassy waterfalls...

If I am not dreaming,
then perhaps I am dead,
wandering along the paths
of an afterlife
filled with wildness
and beauty.

Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck Margarita Engle

I picked this one up mainly because it was a Belpre Honor book this year, but also because I've loved the other Engle books I've read.

Like most (all?) of her work, this is Cuban historical fiction, told in verse. There are two stories here-- the first is the (true) story of Bernadino de Talavera, a disgraced landowner who steals a ship to escape debtors prison and becomes a pirate. He then kidnaps Alonso de Ojeda, the governor of Venezuela. They get shipwrecked in a hurricane and land on the South Coast of Cuba. The second story is of Caucubu, the daughter of a chieftain, who fell in love with Narido, a fisherman. In order to escape an arranged marriage, Caucubu ran away from home and hid in a cave. This is also a true story and one that has been told and told and told throughout the centuries by Cuban authors. The link between the stories is the (fictional) Quebrado, a half-Taino, half-Spanish slave who survives the shipwreck and is rescued by Narido and must warn them of what de Talavera and de Ojeda are capable of.

These five voices narrate the book in this short tale of contact. The main thread of the story is Quebrado's escape and fragile freedom and how he grows and discovers himself. The problem is it's too short-- the other stories aren't fully realized or told and steal focus away from Quebrado. I wanted so much more. The juxtaposition and intertwining of the two stories demands something a little more... epic and sweeping than this sparse and slight tale.

Today's Poetry Friday Round up is over at Gotta Book. Be sure to check it out!

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

National Poetry Month: Make Lemonade

Make Lemonade Virginia Euwer Wolff

There are 2 poetry posts today because I missed one earlier this week (oops!)

I am telling you this just the way it went
with all the details I remember as they were,
and including the parts I'm not sure about.
You know, where something happened
but you aren't convinced
you understood it?
Other people would maybe tell it different
but I was there.

It's like a bird. One minutes it's picking up something
off the sidewalk
and you recognize it all together as a bird eating.
The next minute it's gone into traffic on the street
and you try and remember how that bird was,
how its pointy feet were strutting
and its neck was bulging back and forth
but its gone and you're the only one can tell
it was there in front of you.

This is like that.

Make Lemonade is one of the earliest verse novels*-- it came out in 1993.

Often, when I read a ground-breaking book, after the ground has been well broken and things have grown up on it, it's hard to see what was so special about the original. I just have to remember that if it hadn't been for X, everything else that has come since wouldn't have happened.

I did NOT feel that way about this book.

LeVaughn wants to go to college. She'll be the first in her family, the first in her building to go. Her entire life has been about keeping up the grades she'll need and trying to make the money for tuition.

She gets a job babysitting for Jolly. Jolly's 17, a high school dropout, and works in a factory. She has 2 kids LeVaughn would watch after school.

It's harder than LeVaughn thought it would be to balance watching Jolly's kids and her school work. Jolly doesn't know what she's doing and LeVaughn needs to remind her about basic things like buying new diapers. Then Jolly gets fired and can't pay LeVaughn anymore, but at that point LeVaughn's not walking away and will do whatever she can to help Jolly and her kids out.

I liked LeVaughn's inner strength-- not just in how she's pushing herself for a better life, but also in how, when Jolly loses her job, she stands up to her mother to continue doing what she thinks is right. She also struggles with her situation-- is it wrong to take money from Jolly to ensure that she will never end up like her?

AND, most of all, I love how LeVaughn knows she's better that Jolly, but Jolly still has a lot to teach her about the world and that even though they both live in poverty, LeVaughn has no idea how dark things can be.

A wonderful book that still remains relevant and popular 18 years after its debut. (18 years!!!! 1993 was NOT that long ago. Please tell me my calculator just lied to me!)

In other poetry posts this week, I reviewed Inside Out and Back Again, Karma, shared a song for Passover, discussed A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing and Shout, and reviewed The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba.

Today's round-up is over at Book Aunt. Be sure to check it out!

*you know, besides epics like Beowulf or the Illiad. ;)

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

National Poetry Month: The Firefly Letters

The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba Margarita Engle

Elena

The castle where Fredrika
spend her childhood
was haunted.

In the attic, there was a sword
that had beheaded a nobleman
during a war.

There were bloodstained clothes
beside the sword.

None of the servants would climb
up to the attic to fetch boxes or trunks
that had been stored
next to ghosts.

*********

This house where I live
it haunted too.

It was built by slaves
who rebelled, and buried an overseer
inside the walls.

Papa has never been able to find
the skeleton,
but sometimes at night
I hear pitiful moans
and rattling chains.

It is either the ghost
of some poor child
from the slave ships
being driven
to market.

In 1851, Sweden's first female novelist journeyed to Cuba. Drawing extensively from her journals, Engle writes a verse novel based on Fredrika Bremer's time there.

The book is mostly told in three voices-- Fredrika's, Elena's (the daughter of the rich family Fredrika is staying with) and Cecelia's (a slave belonging to Elena's family, who acts as Fredrika's translator and guide.)

Although I found the CONSTANT parallels drawn between a woman's role and actual slavery to be a bit much and overdrawn (yes, you had no freedom if you were a rich man's daughter, but you weren't in actual chains) overall, I did really enjoy this book. I also think it makes an interesting companion to Engle's other book on Cuban slavery, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom. I especially enjoyed seeing Cuba through three different sets of eyes-- a slave who still remembered life in Africa, a Swedish aristocrat, and a Cuban aristocrat-- they had such different opinions and noticed such different things, it gives reader a more complete picture of daily life.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

National Poetry Month: Tofu Quilt

Tofu Quilt Ching Yeung Russell

Secret Wish

I remember Mr. Hon
once said that
a person should see more things
and open his eyes
if he wants to write a good story.

Ma cannot afford to send me off
to see things.
So I decide that
when I grow up,
I will not marry a doctor,
or a lawyer,
or a teacher,
or a businessman.
I will marry
a bus driver,
who can drive me everywhere
to see the world
and it will be
free.

And he must look like
Mr. Hon.


Tofu Quilt is a semi-auto-biographical verse novel about growing up in Hong Kong in the 50s and 60s and wanting to become a writer. Most of the poems focus on her relatives insisting that she shouldn't have big dreams or so much education, because she's a girl (her mother very much disagrees and insists that boys and girls are the same), reading books, or her trails and tribulations with various writing teachers over the years.

There isn't much of a plot, but it is a nice book especially for its pictures into day-to-day life in mid-century Hong Kong. The book shines when Ying is listening to the old ladies gossip at the end of the day or describing the flower market or the foreign tourist taking photos of drying laundry.


ARC Provided by... the publisher for review consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

National Poetry Month: Karma

Karma Cathy Ostlere

Dear Diary

Nah. That's lame.
(Be creative, you idiot!)

DEAR LOST GIRL
Who are you?
Whence have you come?
Will you tell me your secrets o voiceless one?
O yuck.

DEAR GODDESS GIRL
If illusion be your given name
and mystery wears your opaque veil
then I, Sandeep, with pen as sword
will scribe your silence
till you are cured.
(or till I'm bored)
(till I'm adored?)
(till I am gored)
(or deplored)
(or suitably and deservedly well ignored)

Rhyming diphthongs. How pathetic.


In 1984, Maya's Hindu mother commits suicide. Her Sikh father takes Maya and her mother's ashes from their Canadian home to India. Shortly after they arrive, Indira Ghandi is gunned down by her Sikh body guards. The country erupts into Hindu/Sikh violence. Maya is separated from her father and has to depend on the kindness of strangers to survive.

I love the language of this one. Many poems are told in two columns, to simulate dialogue or inner commentary on events. I also really like dual narrators. The poetry works in this one. I couldn't guarantee the formatting would work right in a blog post for some of my favorite poems, so I went with a funny poem instead.

But, I'm not sure on some of the plot details. People keep trying to give Maya away in marriage to strangers, even people who don't know her. Ostlere was traveling in India when Ghandi was assassinated, but I'm not sure on the authenticity of parts of the plot, especially when strangers promise a girl into marriage. Parts of it seem to be playing up the "exoticism" and "backwardness" of the location. But I don't know that much about modern India, so I don't know.

Has anyone with more background info than me read this? What did you think?

I loved the language and the poetry. I loved the sweep of the story and the voices. But, some of the plot details niggled a bit.

ARC Provided by... the publisher at ALA midwinter.

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

National Poetry Month: Inside Out and Back Again

Black and White and Yellow and Red

The bell rings.
Everyone stands.
I stand.

They line up;
so do I.

Down a hall.
Turn left.
Take a tray.
Receive food.
Sit.

On one side
of the bright, noisy room,
light skin.
Other side,
dark skin.

Both laughing, chewing,
as if it never occured
to them
someone medium
would show up.

I don't know where to sit
any more than
I know how to eat
the pink sausage
snuggled inside bread
shaped like a corncob,
smeared with sauces
yellow and red.

I think
they are making fun
of the Vietnamese flag
until I remember
no one here likely knows
that flag's colors.

I put down the try
and wait
in the hallway.

September 2
11:30 am

Inside Out and Back Again Thanhha Lai

I got to review this wonderful novel for School Library Journal. My full review is here.

If you don't want to click over and read, here's the takeaway:

1. It got a star
2. Sensory language describing the rich smells and tastes of Vietnam draws readers in and contrasts with Hà's perceptions of bland American food, and the immediacy of the narrative will appeal to those who do not usually enjoy historical fiction


Book Provided by... School Library Journal, for review

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

National Poetry Month: Orchards

everyone knows
Lisa didn't mean it
everyone knows
when a person says
certain things
they don't mean
the words
they say
really

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

and on the polished stone
I place tiny piles of
rice and minced eggplant
nourishment
for spirits

I think of how in New York
all we ever do is take flowers
to the grave of Dad's mother
and place small stones on the top
of the grave
once a year
maybe twice
that's all

I think of you, Ruth
and I think of me
just bringing flowers
and placing stones

and how that shouldn't
be all I do
for you

Orchards Holly Thompson

Last school year, Ruth hanged herself from a tree in the Osgood's orchard. When her suicide note was found, the community was in an uproar about the cruelty of eighth-grade girls. How could they have been so cruel? How could they have been so cold to one of their classmates?

That summer, Kana and her friends are sent in different directions. Kana is shipped off to Japan to spend the summer helping her maternal relatives with their mikan orchard. Separated from her friends and family, surrounded by a culture she understands but doesn't fit into (it doesn't help that her body has decided to take after her Jewish-Russian paternal side instead of her smaller, thinner, and quieter Japanese maternal side) Kana is left contemplating Ruth's suicide and what she could have done, if anything, to prevent it.

Here's what I liked about this book:

Kana's fish-out-of-water issues have a lot less to do with Japan and more to do with her family. I think it would have been easier to do the cultural isolation thing instead of familial isolation. I appreciate that not only did it NOT take the easy route, but it did the hard route really well and making her not fit in with her extended family gave a lot more emotional depth.

Most verse novels are a series of short poems. This is more like each chapter is a poem or a series of poems, but it all flows into one narrative, almost one long poem, more than most verse novels do. I liked the change-up and how it used poetry slightly differently to tell the story.

I really liked the visual detail-- the mikans that marked each chapter, the swirl design on the chapter pages, and the corner sketches that linked previous chapters to later ones, as well as illustrating an important part of the story. It's really subtle and doesn't detract, but we so rarely see visual elements in a purely text novel for teens. It was a very nice (and surprising) addition.

Overall though, this is just a very raw and honest account of one girl trying to come to terms with a horrible tragedy and her feelings of guilt surrounding it. I especially appreciated her moments of denial. They were painful and sometimes fueled the thoughts that the communal blame of the class may be right, but at the same time, it was so honest and raised some very good points.

I've been sharing a poetry-related post every day this month. This past week I shared some ancient Chinese poetry and highlighted some poems from All the Small Poems and Fourteen More.

Today's Poetry Friday round up is over at Random Noodling.

ARC Provided by... the publisher, at ALA Midwinter

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

National Poetry Month Poetry Friday! The Surrender Tree

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom Margarita Engle

Rosa

We experiment
like scientists.

One flower cures
only certain fevers.

We try another.
We fail, then try a root, leaf,
moss, or fern...

One petal fails.
Another succeeds.

Jose and I are both learning
how to learn.

Lieutenant Death

The witch
can be heard
singing in treetops.

The witch
can be seen--
a shadow
in caves.

I search,
and I search.

She vanishes,
just like the maddening
morning mists
and the wild
mambi rebels.

They attack.
We retreat.
They hide.
We seek.

The Surrender Tree starts in 1850, when Rosa, a slave girl with healing knowledge, is lent out to the slave hunter and his son. It follows Rosa, the son (Lieutenant Death), and a complete cast of characters throughout the next 50 years as Cuba fights multiple wars in an attempt to win independence from Spain. Throughout these years, Rosa (and her husband Jose) start field hospitals and work to heal those who are wounded or sick. Throughout these years, Lieutenant Death hunts the woman who heals the sick, the woman the girl he met years ago has grown into.

Most of the history and politics of the situation are explained in the backmatter, but they're not important for enjoying the story. The sparse language helps keep the tense mood as characters struggle for independence, survival, and a better future.

I really enjoyed the multiple narratives, clearly defined by naming each poem after the character speaking. It was very useful to see different views on the same situation-- not just different sides of the war, but what Rosa's thinking as she heals people followed by Jose's worries that she's working too hard and pushing herself too far. I especailly loved it later the book, when Silvia was introduced. The characters we started with had gone from children to older adults and the addition of a child's view of the situations was refreshing from the war-weary voices that had come to dominate.

Although I don't speak Spanish, I appreciated that this book is really 2 books in one-- the English edition followed by the complete Spanish translation. Not only does it make the work accessible to non-English readers, but I think this is a book that would work really well in a Spanish class.

And of course, it's the second Poetry Friday in April, which is National Poetry Month! This past week I featured poems from the anthology Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women, a World Poetry Anthology. This next week will be a grab-bag of things, but check back for your daily dose of poetry goodness.

Today's round-up is over at Madigan Reads!





Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Friday: The Braid

How awesomely appropriate is it that the first day of National Poetry Month falls on a Friday, which is a day that we celebrate poetry every week?

In honor of National Poetry Month, I'm planning on having a poetry post EVERY DAY (that includes weekends!) So I'll either share a poem or review a novel written in verse, like I try to do every Friday. And I'm not the only blogger doing something special to celebrate! Check out this loooooooooooooooooooooooong list of all the ways we're adding more poetry into our lives this month!

Let's get started with a review of a verse novel by my hands-down favorite verse-novel author.

The Braid Helen Frost

Letters

Holding almost a weightless warmth
(or chill) letters pass from one hand
to another, shifting borders
between the unknown and the known.
Such minute detail: a cricket
chirping by the dam and midnight;
a cracked blue plate. Someone sitting
at a table writing, absorbed in thought.



In 1850, at the end of the Highland Clearances, the MacKinnon family is evicted from their home on the island of Barra, in the Outer Hebrides. The oldest child, Sarah, elects to stay behind with her grandmother on a neighboring island. The night before they leave, Sarah braids her hair together with her sister Jeannie's. She then cuts off the braid and takes half with her, leaving the other half for her sister. The book then follows their respective stories-- Sarah's as she makes life in the small village and falls in love and Jeannine's as she and her family make the dangerous crossing and arrive in Cape Brenton, which is starving itself and has no place for strangers.

As with all of Helen Frost's verse novels, this one is expertly crafted. It alternates narrative poems told from each sister with shorter praise poems. The narrative poems read like prose, but when you read the author's note in the end, you discover that each line has the same number of syllables as the speaker's age and that the last words of each line are used for the first words of each line of the next narrative poem, braiding them together. At the same time, the praise poems braid the last line with the following first line. Like her other books, I saved the author's note until the end (sometimes knowing too much about how she crafted her work can be a plot spoiler!) and then went back and reread the story with the craft in mind. I love how her work is always so meticulously crafted but that it never, ever, ever, ever interferes with the story she's telling.

That said, while I love the story, overall this one didn't do as much for me as Frost's other work. That's not to say it's not brilliant and awesome, but just that Frost has a really high bar set for herself and this one wasn't my favorite of hers. The interspersal of the praise poems, which aren't part of the plot, broke the flow up a bit.

But, how can you not love lines like this? (From one of Sarah's narrative poems)

In love they say, as if love is a place you enter--as if we
slice open time and find a whole new island inside one moment

Today's Poetry Friday Round-up is over at The Poem Farm.


Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Friday: All the Broken Pieces

All The Broken Pieces Ann E. Burg

My fingers stumble
through the scales
and through
"The Gypsy Camp."

They crowd the keys,
landing in two spots
at the same time.
They slip, clank, and clash
into sounds
that aren't music.

Watch, Jeff says calmly
when my fingers freeze
in frustration.

Jeff's fingers are
bigger than mine,
but they know how
to touch each key,
one at a time.
They unlock each sound
separately.

Jeff doesn't make mistakes.

His fingers brush
across the piano keys
like branches
of the tamarind
swaying in the wind.
How can such big hands
make such quiet music?

Matt is the son of a Vietnamese mother and the American soldier who left and didn't come back. He was airlifted out of Saigon without his mother or brother and adopted by an American family.

In his experiences on his baseball team, where a teammate blames Matt for a brother's death, and in working with a Veterans group, Matt comes to face the life he lived before and now only lives in his nightmares.

I've often talked about how I feel many verse novels could be written in short paragraphs and that's true here, but the sparsity of the text because of the verse format helps show Matt's isolation and confusion.

Round up is over at A Wrung Sponge!

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Friday: Brains for Lunch

Brains For Lunch: A Zombie Novel in Haiku?! K. A. Holt, illus. Gahan Wilson

Hallway

Eye poked out again
Bottom lockers really suck
"Hey Mags! Wait for me!"

"This Zs gotta pee."
"So you ARE talking to me?"
Another eye roll

Catch it, hand it back
"What did I do this time, Mags?"
A withering look

She doesn't scare me
Her wither's worse than her roll
"She's married, you know."

Mags cut to the chase
It sure took her long enough
"Who, Mrs. Fincher?"

"Who else, you moron?"
I'm putrefying again
"The way you flirt. Barf."

So incredulous
"You think she thinks that I think--"
"You're such a tool, Loeb."

"And there you have it,
Loeb's idiocy exposed,
His heart is laid bare."

"I'll lay you bare, Matt."
It's my turn to roll eyes.
Carl. "Stupid Chupo."

"Don't be a racist."
"Don't be a weird goat sucker."
Making it worse, Loeb.

K. A. Holt has taken zombie haiku and combined it with the verse novel. So, it's a story, a novel in verse, but the verse is all haiku. And the story is about zombies. And chupacabres. And lifers (like you and me, unless Biblio File has a large paranormal following that I am unaware of, although that would be pretty cool.)

The plot is pretty simple-- Loeb is a zombie boy in junior high teases and gets teased by his zombie friends. He has a crush on a life girl, but even though the school is supposed to be desegregated, the zombies and lifers stick to their own. The Chupos do, too, but intermingle more with the zombies. With the help of a lifer librarian (Mrs. Fischer) Loeb starts to think that maybe he is smart enough to join the school's poetry showcase, which tends to be lifer-only.

As you can see from the text above, it's pretty funny and gross, but the brevity of the haiku novel can make some things a little hard to understand. Luckily, Gahan Wilson has illustrated the book, to give a little more context. The above excerpt has 2 pictures. One is of Loeb talking to Mags, with his eye dangling out of his face. The other is of Loeb, Mags, Matt, and Carl, which is a very useful visual clue that there are multiple people in the conversation, which makes it make more sense.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. It's geared towards middle grade, rather than YA, which is nice. I'm so glad to have solid middle grade titles about YA trends, because the trends trickle down in terms of reader interest, but the books don't always do so...

I think my favorite bits were the small touches-- that Loeb is named Loeb,that they use Durian fruit as a quick substitute for brains because zombies think they smell good (HA!) and a when someone gives you the finger, it's only polite to give it back.


Today's round-up is over at The Blog with the Cleverly Shocking Title. Go check it out!

ARC Provided by... the publisher at ALA

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Hour 3.5/Poetry Friday

Hours Spent Reading: 3.5
Books Read: 2
Pages Read: 410
Money Raised: $594
What I'm listening to: Judas's Death (although, given the book, it would be much more appropriate if I had been listening to Mercy House. Sadly, my life is soundtracked by iTunes shuffle right now, not a well-thought out playlist.)

Please remember that I'm reading to raise money for Room to Read, which builds libraries, stocks them with books, and trains people to become their librarians.

Keesha's House Helen Frost

Keesha's house is set off the street
s if you don't know what you're looking for
you might not even see the wide blue door
half hidden by a weeping willow tree.

Using sestinas and sonnets (and even a crown of sonnets) several kids tell how they became lost, and sometimes, found. They tell of the safe place they found at Keesha's house, where people just let them live and be. Where they're allowed to exist. We also hear from the adults in their lives, the ones that care, the ones that see what's happening, the ones that don't.

There is tragedy here, and hope. Like the other books written by Frost, I'm always struck by the absolute poetic craft she puts into her work, but her words and story shine through so much that you don't notice it while reading. (Ok, so, I knew it was Frost, so after reading a first poem, I analyzed it and quickly recognized the sestina, then looked at rhyme schemes for the sonnets. BECAUSE I AM A DORK.)

Powerful wonderful stuff.

Round up is over at The Crazy Files.

Book Provided by... a giveaway at a work meeting! score!

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Friday: Diamond Willow

Diamond Willow Helen Frost

Well, I loved Crossing Stones so much, I wanted to read more of Frost's book. When Willow makes a mistake with her dogsled team, the family's favorite dog is seriously injured. In her guilt, Willow is determined to make things right, which leads to adventure and long-held family secrets, but without being as melodramatic as it sounds.

Willow lives in a small village in Alaska, and is part Athabascan. Her racial and cultural identity are very minor parts of the story, and I can't speak to the authenticity of it, but a cursory search doesn't throw up any criticism and I do like seeing modern stories about Native American characters, especially because this book isn't about being Native American.

Diamond Willow is a type of wood found in northern climates, where diamonds with dark centers form where injured branches fall away. The injury makes the wood stunningly beautiful, but one must remove the bark to find it. Willow is named after Diamond Willow and is serves as a fitting metaphor for her character. Most of the book is told in verse, in her voice, diamond shapes with bolded words to get at what she's really thinking. We also get interjections from the animals in Willow's life, all of which are the souls of her and her friend's departed family members, one of which is a character in The Braid, which has been on my TBR list for a loooooooooooong time.



What
I love
about dogs:
They don't talk
behind your back.
If they're mad at you,
they bark a couple times
and get it over with. It's true
they slobber on you sometimes.
(I'm glad people don't do that.) They
jump out and scare you in the dark. (I know,
I should say me not "you"--some people aren't
afraid of anything.) But dogs don't make fun
of you. They don't hit you in the back
of your neck with an ice-covered
snowball, and if they did, and
it made you cry, all their
friends wouldn't stand
there laughing
at you.
(Me.)



Round-up is over at Great Kid's Books!

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Year of the Historical/Poetry Friday: Crossing Stones

Crossing Stones Helen Frost

It's odd to do a verse novel review for Poetry Friday, without quoting. But so much of Frost's work in this book is visual, and I just can't get the formatting right. Also, my favorite poem, which shows how much work went into it, is a major spoiler.

Like most of this book, my favorite poem is extremely well-crafted but not in-your-face so, it's the things you find when you turn back and look after analyzing, the craft never gets in the way of the story.

Muriel graduates from high school in 1917. She has strong opinions and is caught between what she feels and wants, and what others expect her to be. Across the creek live her family's best friends. All members of the family are constantly traveling over the stones in the water, running back and forth between the houses. But when each family sends a son to the war, some things will never be the same.

But... it's about the friendship and the homefront during WWI, but it's also about discovering who you are, the suffragette movement, the wider world, Anne of Green Gables, and possibility.

I mentioned the visual nature of the book before. It's told in three voices--Muriel's, her brother Ollie, and their friend across the creek Emma. Muriel's poems are free-verse, in the shape of a meandering river. Emma's and Ollie's are cupped sonnets, in the shape of the stones that connect the families and lives. There's more structure hidden in there, all explained in the author's note, but I suggest you read that after finishing the story, because she reveals a lot of information about character relationships in the structure of the poem.

This was a near perfect book, with the exception of the blah cover and 1 historical error that has been FIXED in the most recent printing, so that doesn't even count anymore. And when the worst thing I can say is that the cover is blah?

Round up is over at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Friday

Today's Poetry Friday is an offering of a verse novel review

On Pointe Lorie Ann Grover

By now you have all probably figured out that I have a weakness for ballet novels. Someday I'd like to do some research into the changing world of ballet novels-- when they started actively talking about permanent foot damage and eating disorders. When the heroine wasn't always guaranteed to grow up to be the world's biggest ballet star.

This one follows a more modern ballet novel plot and as a frequent reader of such things, the ballet plot was pretty predictable and wrapped up a little too quickly.

Clare is living with her grandfather for the summer, taking intensive ballet classes, preparing for an audition for the City Ballet Company. Failure, for her, is not an option, but she doesn't have control over everything and may have to face the unfaceable.

As a verse novel, this one is a bit different in that it is one long poem instead of a series of poems. As a poem, it falls into the trap of many verse novels and doesn't really work on the level of poetry. The moments of poetry come when Clare is dancing, but when it's general plot and dialogue, it doesn't work as well.

But, it is obvious that Grover is a dancer and danced at the intense level that Clare does. She's gone through the auditions and competitiveness of that level of dance and writes about it in completely authentic voice. And this is why the poetry works best when it's about the dancing.

Dust.
Steamy sweat,
like a pot
of chicken soup.
Oak floors.
Pine rosin.
Sour breath
from deep inside.
We breathe it all
in rhythm.

Here is the moment
when the music flows into my bones,
and I don't have to
think of the steps,
and I don't have to count the movements,
and it really feels
like I might actually be
dancing
for a few seconds.

I'm a pale dust mote
swirling on a warm
sunbeam.
I leap and float,
land deep and rise
to step and spin in the shaft of light,
showing everyone
who I really am.
It's like
I'm turned
inside out.

(pages 11-12)

Round up is over at Teaching Books.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Friday

So, I know I've been pretty down on verse novels lately and haven't read one in a while that I both (a) thought was poetry and (b) liked.

But, I have to say, that I have two that I am completely enamored of at the moment! Love That Dog and its sequel, Hate That Cat, both by Sharon Creech.

Both books are poems Jack writes to his teacher, they're like letters almost, and we only get Jack's side. (If I were a creative writing teacher, I would have my students read these books and then write Miss Stretchberry's response poems.) The class is studying poetry and Jack struggles to understand some of it, to tell why some things are poems and some aren't. And some of Jack's poetry would work as prose, and some is pure poetry. There are big ideas and small ideas and humor and sadness, forgiveness and loss, all in a few pages and a few words.

I love how this book has to be told in poetry because it's about poetry. I love how it references so many other classic and non-classic poems and how those poems are in the back of the book, because while I may automatically get a reference to a red wheelbarrow, most middle grade readers won't. I also love how much Jack loves Mr. Walter Dean Myers and how he wonders if each new poet is still alive. Most of all, I loved that the poems were awesome and good but still read like they were written by a kid.

I didn't even mind the dead dog (to be fair, the dog is dead before the book starts, but it still made me cry!) I want to shout about these books from the rooftop. Love That Dog is going to be the April book for my book discussion group. I decided that as soon as a I finished the book.

And here are two poems to show why these books are awesome (both are from Hate That Cat):

October 12

Something I am wondering:
if you cannot hear
do words have no sounds
in your head?


Do you see
a

silent

movie?

October 17

ONOMATOPOEIA
made my ears frizzle
today.

All that buzz buzz buzz
and
pop! pop!
and
drip and tinkle and trickle--
the sounds are still
buzzing and popping
in my head.

And the bells bells bells
in that poem you read
by Mr. Poe
(is he alive?)
all those bells bells bells
all those tinkling and jingling
and swinging and ringing
and rhyming and chiming
and clanging and clashing
and tolling and rolling
all those bells bells bells
and that tintinnabulation
what a word!
Tintinnabulation!

... (you'll have to read the book to get the rest! Ha!)

Round up is over at Growing Up with Books.

Books Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Year of the Historical/ Poetry Friday

Snow

Had to check
yesterday morning
to make sure that was
snow
on the ground,
not dust.
But you can't make a dustball
pack together
and slam against the side of the barn, and
echo across the fields.
So I know
it was snow.

Out Of The Dust Karen Hesse

So, I wanted to read this for a few reasons:

1. It's one of Silvey's 100 Best Books for Children*

2. It's a Newbery winner! And won 80 bajillion other awards!

3. A lot of the schools that the kids I work with attend assign this, so I thought I should read it too.

So, if you're like me and haven't read it yet, it's a verse novel that takes place in Oklahoma in the Great Depression. Billie Jo likes apples and playing the piano. It's the piano that gives her most of her joy in life. Then, there's an accident that kills her mother and leaves Billie Jo's hands badly burned and mangled, making her unable to play.

I really liked the fact that while the Depression and Dust play a huge part of this book (it's a big part of daily life) it's not the actual focus of the book. The book is about Billie Jo learning to recover physically and emotionally from the accident. I also like that Billie Jo's family stayed in Oklahoma and didn't move west.

That said... eh. When this came out in 1997, verse novels were really new and cutting edge. But, there isn't a lot of poetry here. I can see why this book is assigned a lot and I can see why it won all the awards it did, but if it were to come out today, I'm not sure it would do the same.

Poetry Friday round up is over at Liz in Ink (hey did you know she wrote the Caldecott honor book this year, All the World)? How cool is that? Also, it's a poem, and as it is Friday...

*OMG. I typed "Best books for Children" in the associates search window for that link and the first hit was this. I threw up a little in my mouth. And died inside.

Book provided by... my local library

But, seems I'm talking about the Dust Bowl, let's work in another review!

Years of Dust Albert Marrin

This was a Cybil's nominee and a nonfiction book for middle grade readers about the Dust Bowl. I think it would pair well with Out of the Dust.

Most noticeably, it's visually stunning. There are many photographs, many of them full-page, of the time period, all in sepia tones that evoke the dust and landscape. I was most struck by the many photographs of huge walls of dust coming towards the photographer.

Years of Dust tries to be many things-- American history, environmental history and warning, science book about dust storms, coffee table picture book... and often, it's just trying to do too much and loses focus. I wanted it to do a lot less, so it would in the end, do a lot more. It's beautiful to look at, but a little "eh" to read.

I also suggest you read Debbie Reese's post about the book. Marrin does largely ignore Native Americans in his history of the American West. And, when he does talk about them, it isn't good.

Book Provided by... the publisher, for Cybils consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.