After a year of hiding, we are emerging from the underground. Well, out from our respective pile of books. Having spent the year on the Alex Committee (Mom) and Newbery Committee (Me), we will be resuming our reviewing in February.
And we know that you are just thrilled to bits! Seriously, try and contain your excitement, we just cleaned up in here. 
So, come visit us again in February when we’ll have new books, reviews, and opinions galore for our faithful readers!
Well, we promised to pick our own winner and it was a unanimous decision (meaning both of us picked the same book). My mother and I both agreed that our favorite is…drum roll please…
Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine!
And the National Book Award committee seems to have agreed with us as Erskine and her lovely book were awarded the National Book award.
Alrighty, now that we’ve shared our opinions on the National Book Award Finalists for Young People’s Literature, we’d like to hear from you–our faithful readers! Below is a handy-dandy poll (which will be active for a week) where you can participate in the first ever Matilda in Time vote. You can also sound off in the comments. Tell us what you think!
Dark Water
By Laura McNeal
Alfred A. Knopf, September 2010
Crystal’s Thoughts:
As Naphtali and I promised to read all of the nominees for the National Book Award Young People’s Literature, I finished this one. Really I did. The previous books Laura McNeal wrote with her husband Tom have been on my list of favorites but there was something about this one that did not make it a personally pleasurable read. Yet, I can honestly say it is well-written.
In Dark Water, we meet Pearl who has moved with her mother to her uncle’s avocado farm in Fallbrook, California after her parent’s divorce. Gradually we learn more of Pearl’s story colored with her growing romantic fascination with an illegal Mexican worker, Amiel. While we seemingly learn quite a bit about Pearl and her family, we learn little about Amiel primarily because his voice box has been damaged and their communication is verbally limited.
Ever present in the text, and sometimes overwhelmingly present, lies an ominous foreshadowing. Pearl’s cousin Robby suspects his father (Pearl’s uncle) of having an affair but this revelation does not alleviate the tension. Clearly the tension lies with Pearl’s growing relationship with Amiel and then with the decisions she makes that leads to tragedy. The ending feels realistically open-ended but unsatisfying for this reader. Maybe if I was more fascinated with the darker side of life…
Naphtali’s Thoughts:
Okay, I’m going to do something that I said I wouldn’t do on this blog. I’m going to review a book that I haven’t finished. So, I give you all full permission to not read this review. It’s okay, I understand.
Here goes.
Dark Water is the story of fifteen-year-old Pearl, a young girl who lives with her mother is a small cottage on a avocado farm owned by her Uncle Hoyt. Pearl’s parents have gone through a particularly nasty divorce and resentment still seeps from everyone. Pearl has a close relationship with her cousin, Robby. Robby and Pearl come to believe that Hoyt is having an affair. Then, Pearl sees Amiel, an illegal migrant worker. Amiel can’t talk as his vocal chords were damaged in an accident but he seems to have a language all his own. Amiel and Pearl embark on a relationship that will have tremendous consequences for their own lives and the lives of Pearl’s family members.
The thing about this story that made it difficult for me to read was the tension under the surface. The author does not allow the reader a chance to settle into the story. There are constant interjections on the part of Pearl-as-narrator which hint at horrible fires and broken familial relationships. After a revealing conversation and sweet moment between Robby and Pearl, it is revealed to the reader that they no longer speak. Their wonderful friendship is irreparably damaged. The author carefully eliminates or alienates everyone in Pearl’s life so that it is reduced to her relationship with Amiel.
And, simply put, I wasn’t intrigued enough by Amiel to find merit in Pearl’s obsession with the boy. From the minute the young girl sees Amiel miming on a street corner, she is consumed with thoughts of him. She’s obsessed to the point of breaking everything else in her life. At the climax of the story, when Pearl has a choice between Amiel and a family member, that family member loses. I simply couldn’t shake my disappointment in Pearl.
I am sure that this book has great and profound literary merit. It’s been getting fantastic reviews. It just wasn’t my book.
Ship Breaker
by Paulo Bacigalupi
Little, Brown, May 2010
Crystal’s Thoughts:
Ready for a fast-paced ride through a dystopian Gulf Coast? Bacigalupi delivers that and more. Small-for-his-age Nailer works salvage on tanker ships from an age when fossil fuel was plentiful. He crawls through duct work pulling copper wire and scavenging anything worth anything. His crew headed by the young-but-strong Pima constantly meet quota allowing for a meager living, but a living nonetheless.
Life doesn’t stay this brutal-but-simple as this science fiction plot moves rapidly through Nailer falling through a duct and nearly drowning in an oil reserve just before the town is hit by a massive city-killer storm (Katrina revisted?). Left behind by the city-killer is a beautiful new clipper ship wrecked on the teeth of the drowned city below the coast where they live. For a brief moment Nailer and Pima think they may be set for life with this found salvage until the young girl on board, originally presumed dead, opens her eyes. And, with that Nailer’s adventures have only begun.
I read this out loud to my husband on a drive from Columbus (where he lives) to St. Louis (where our daughter lives). We finished the last few pages sitting in her apartment listening to it rain. This YA debut from Bacigalupi brings more than action – we also get character development especially for the young man Nailer while we wrestle with issues of self-worth, family, money, poverty, environmentalism, survival, and much more. Ship Breaker expands this fairly new genre of dystopian novels while giving us a great story – at the very least a story that captivates us across the flat lands of I-70.
Naphtali’s Thoughts:
Teenaged boy, Nailer, spends his days working on the light crew where he crawls through the rickety ductwork on the decaying oil tankers that line the beaches like giant fossils from the era when fuel was still abundant. He’s unsure of his own age. He lost his mother to a curable sickness that his family couldn’t afford the medication for. And his father is lost in a haze of drugs that only intensifies his rage and the beating he give Nailer.
One day, a city-killer storm rolls onto the beach, which leaves a wake of destruction. After the storm, Nailer and his friend Pima find a clipper ship loaded with luxurious items that will ensure a comfortable life. But amongst the wreckage of the ship is a young girl. If she lives then Nailer and Pima will have to give up their salvage. If she dies then the friends are set. But Nailer can’t kill the girl and he can’t let her die. Thereby setting the young boy on an entirely new course in life that will take him to new cities and back.
Paolo Bacigalupi’s debut Young Adult novel is exciting and engrossing. Bacigalupi brilliantly constructs a dystopian society with a heritage in our own contemporary society. We, the readers, see the wreckage of our world buried beneath and holding up Nailer’s. And it’s a scary world where Nailer must fight for everything including his own life. Within the context of this frightening existence, Nailer is compelling. This world and each character may seem brutal but all are layered, complex, and credible.
I do have one small gripe. It’s a conversation Nailer had with two other characters while on a train. It’s the only moment when Bacigalupi enters an overt territory is his world building. Most of that is subtle and the lines between his world and our own come through inference. With this one conversation on a train, Bacigalupi inserts an agenda/lesson/moral. As a result, the conversation plays as condescending, which does a disservice to the rest of the skillfully crafted novel.
Having stated that, I also must state that I greatly enjoyed this book. In the growing field of dystopian literature, Bacigalupi’s debut is a true standout.
Lockdown
by Walter Dean Myers
Amistad (HarperCollins), February 2010
Crystal’s Thoughts:
Progress – a juvenile detention facility in upstate New York. Reese – a young man at Progress for stealing and selling a physician’s prescription pad. That would be the core of this slim volume telling Reese’s story and yet there is so much more because people are usually more than their circumstances. And, Myers gives us that picture once again.
Reese’s mother abuses substances; probably any substance she can get. His brother seems on the road to major prison time. But his younger sister Icy (nickname for Isis) lights Reese’s life. She’s smart, she’s funny, she cares, and there is hope for her.
Reese, himself, cares deeply, almost too much. In attempting to rescue a very young inmate from an older more violent inmate, Reese gets solitary which is almost like the whole of prison movies like Shawshank Redemption. Fairness doesn’t seem to be a part of the Progress world. At times, the director of the center seems to believe in the possibility that Reese is worth caring about and at other times, it seems the director only believes in the survival of his work release program. Which is also probably realistic.
The work release allows Reese to work at a nursing home. One of the nurses’ aides puts him to work in one room of a rather racist elderly Dutch-born man who we learn spent time in a Japanese prisoner of war camp as a child. The comparison of survival and imprisonment brings a bit of enlightenment to Reese about his own situation.
This book has received glowing reviews and obviously was a nominee for the National Book Award. And one reviewer stated specifically that this honest realistic book never felt preachy. I am a huge Walter Dean Myers fan and I have the greatest respect for reviewers but really? Not preachy? I felt as though the book was honest but completely a moral lesson. And, in the end it was only a moral lesson. Toward the end of the book the following words come from Reese: “I just need to stay away from people who give up on themselves. I know I am going to run into some bad stuff…I can look at that bad stuff and use it to remind me of what I don’t need in my life.”
Myers once again delivers an honest realistic portrayal of life but this time the message may overwhelm the story for his readers.
Naphtali’s Thoughts:
Reese is a 14-year-old boy serving a two-year sentence at Progress, a juvenile detention center in upstate New York. His crime: stealing a doctor’s prescription pad to and then selling them to a local drug dealer. Reese’s life inside Progress is tough but then, so is his life on the outside. His mother is an addict and can’t see past her own needs and wants. His brother is heading down a road that can only lead to prison. The only bright spot is his sister, Icy. She’s the one that makes Reese want to try harder and do better.
Initially, Reese seems stuck in the survival mode that characterized his life at home. Simply get through the day. But then he builds a kinship with one of the young inmates. Reese repeatedly tells the reader that this kid, Toon, is the outward reflection of Reese’s inner life. Toon is what Reese would look like if the world could see how he really felt. Scared and small. So, Reese sticks up for Toon and ends up in a world of trouble.
Reese is also involved with a work release program that allows him to work in a nursing home. It is at the nursing home that Reese meets an elderly Dutch man, Mr. Hooft, who spews horribly racist remarks and shares painful bits of his past. Though their interactions seem hostile and hateful at times, there is a bond that forms. Both of them want to be heard. Mr. Hooft simply wants someone to hear the stories that make up his life. Reese wants someone to see that he is more than his previous actions.
In this book, Walter Dean Myers does what he does best. He tells a truthful tale, in a truthful voice. Myers creates in Reese an idealized hurt child: one who recognizes the wrongs (both those that are his and those of others) and desperately works to move past them. Myers does venture further into moralizing than he normally does (which becomes most apparent in the unnecessary epilogue) which is unfortunate at the tale is plenty powerful without an overly apparent moral. Also, Reese’s vernacular narration can be hard to follow but does create an authentic tone for the novel. This honest novel is fascinating and true to Myers’s style.
Mockingbird
By Kathryn Erskine
Philomel, April 2010
Crystal’s Thoughts:
Every so often I am totally surprised by a book. For some reason I kept moving the advance reading copy of Mockingbird from one pile to another without any desire to read it. Then it was nominated for the National Book Award and Naphtali decided we should read these books to discuss on our blog. I was blown away. Mockingbird satisfied my soul.
Caitlin’s older brother has been killed in a school shooting and her single-parent father grieves deeply for his son. Caitlin deals with everything in absolutes; black and white; dictionary definitions. Her Asperger’s Syndrome makes it difficult to comprehend the concepts of Closure and Empathy as others understand them.
I want to meet Caitlin. Her logic and her personality made me smile as well as cry. The developing relationship between her and her father as well as the relationship void without her brother to provide guidance feels completely real. Every detail seems essential for the reader to gain a full colorful picture of Caitlin as well as her story. An example being the way she capitalizes important words as a dictionary would do. These words may not be important to everyone but they have significant meaning for her.
Kathryn Erskine has given us a special book that allows the reader to grow in understanding along with Caitlin. As I write this I have not read Naphtali’s comments yet, but I think I’ll be attempting to convince her that this one should be our fav of the nominees.
Naphtali’s Thoughts:
According to 10-year-old Caitlin, the good things in life include her dictionary, To Kill a Mockingbird, and her brother Devon. Bad things include recess, group projects, and her brother’s death. It is the last event that provides that catalyst for Caitlin’s story. As a child with Asberger’s syndrome, Caitlin lives in a world of black and white and logic. She wants her world like her drawings. Clean, neat, and without color because color complicates things. But her world is suddenly infused with color and complication when her brother dies in a school shooting. Caitlin cannot understand her father’s grief nor can she understand her own. Then she happens upon the term “closure” and she becomes determined to find it for herself and the others in her life.
I’ve read some reviews that criticized the book for Devon’s portrayal as the perfect brother and son but I think this is unfair. We, the readers, only see things from Caitlin’s perspective. Just because Caitlin does not recognize any frustration on her brother’s part does not mean that the reader cannot infer the presence of frustration in the subtle portrayal of the older brother.
But this isn’t Devon’s story, it’s Caitlin’s. Erskine provides the reader with an insightful narrator, though I’m sure Caitlin would not consider herself insightful. Merely truthful. To watch Caitlin move through life and try and interpret all its signs and mysteries was a great experience.
There are few books that I simply sit down and read, start to finish. But I did with this book because Caitlin is gripping. She’s a middle school girl. She’s trying to make friends. She’s trying to understand herself and others. She also has Asberger’s but there is so much more to Caitlin and to her story.
Erskine paints a relatively quiet portrait of this girl. Erskine doesn’t employ dramatics; she doesn’t capitalize on the school shooting. She uses delicate language and an honest tone. She shapes Caitlin in such a way that the reader really learns who Caitlin is and what her world looks like. I outright loved this book and Caitlin.
One Crazy Summer
By Rita Williams-Garcia
Amistad (Harper Collins), January 2010
Crystal’s Thoughts:
It is the summer of 1968 and 11-year-old Delphine flies to Oakland from Brooklyn with her two younger sisters for a visit with their mother. When Fern, the youngest sister, was a baby, their mother feed her, put her in the crib, and left. They haven’t seen her since. Papa decided this 28 day visit was required, their grandmother Big Ma thinks their mother is worthless and the visit a very bad idea, and their mother is not too happy about it either.
Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern traverse this summer of political volatility with a family version. Their mother’s name is Cecelia or is it her poet name Nzila? Are the Black Panthers violent like represented on TV or caring like the ones that provide them with a center in Oakland for food and activities? Why does Cecilia/Nzila seem to care for her printing press more than her daughters? Did Cecilia/Nzila leave them because she did not get to name Fern?
Questions are answered, good and bad happens to the girls and those around them, the summer brings growth and a bit of love to each one. So much happens in this slim historical/realistic/family novel during one summer. Each character is uniquely created and necessary to move the story forward. The historical significance of 1968 in the United States, particularly the effects of that year for African-Americans, comes alive in the book. Children were a part of the daily lives of Black Panthers and to have it portrayed simply and straightforward makes that portion of history real. A delightful choice from the National Book Award Committee, I hope this one is seriously considered by the Coretta Scott King and Newbery Committees as well.
Naphtali’s Thoughts:
In the summer of 1968, Delphine and her two sisters, Vonetta and Fern, are put on a plane to Oakland, California. They are to spend the next 28 days with their mother, Cecile, who walked away from her family mere days after Fern’s birth. Cecile is a mystery to her daughters, one that only intensifies when the girls arrive. Cecile has no warmth for her daughters. She has a strange house covered in green stucco, a kitchen she won’t let anyone in, and she will only refer to Fern as “little girl.” Cecile sends the girls off to a center run by the Black Panthers during the day where the girls learn about Huey Newton, Bobby Hutton, and revolution. And so begins one long summer for the sisters.
Told from 11-year-old Delphine’s engaging and honest perspective, this story is fascinating. It’s easy to understand the context of 1968 with the Vietnam War, Black Panthers, and change. It’s difficult to remember that there were children associated with those events. And while the time period is important to the story, it is not the entirety. These girls, Delphine in particular, are searching for answers about their mother. Chief among which is, “Who is she and why did she leave?” She’s a woman referred to as “Nzila” by the Panthers. She calls herself a poet. She leaves the house in a seeming disguise of men’s clothing and big sunglasses. The girls learn pieces and, in discovering these pieces, learn about themselves. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are all characters in their own right, which strong personalities and stronger voices. Williams-Garcia took tremendous care in depicting these young women.
This is a beautiful and honest tale about growing up and how learning where you come from can allow you the freedom to create yourself. The young sisters face the big, difficult questions in life and learn that what is most important isn’t necessarily the answering of those question, but the asking. It is clear that this summer will resonant throughout many lives.
