No Cafés in Narnia (2000), by Nikki Tate

I am currently over in Victoria, BC, at a conference, and each day cycle past the gate in the hedge that surrounds the fields of Dark Creek Farm, where Nikki Tate lives with her turkeys and goats and bantams… So I really wanted, during this week, to re-read and review her No Cafés in Narnia, remembering how much I enjoyed it years ago when I first read it.

No Cafés in Narnia (2000)

When her beloved grandfather dies, Heather tries to escape into her literary worlds: the world she creates through her own nascent writing ability and the world of the books she reads. Sometimes she wants to “push through the coats at the back of an old wardrobe,” meet Mr. Tumnus, and “even find Lucy in the forest and the three of [them] could sit at a little table at the café together eating Turkish Delight and discussing how to solve all the problems of the world” (28): problems like how to manage when her mother slips into depression, and she has to face her troubling adolescent world, seemingly alone.  To top it all off, she has thoughtlessly insulted “one of the only people at school who has spontaneously said anything nice to [her]” (70). With the problems in her family, and her trouble with friends, Heather is sure: there are No Cafés in Narnia.

Heather is fascinating, very real child protagonist: her mind wanders; she can’t focus easily; she struggles with being an outsider on the little island her family has recently moved to. She articulates her world through the eyes of her own protagonist, Writer Girl. Her alter ego’s attitudes and responses actually help her to see herself more objectively, to understand the balance she must create between being the child and striving to find the maturity her family needs from her. Her imagination blossoms in her self-assessments, in her diary entries, and in her letters to her best friend in Toronto. Her narrative ability is far more vibrant in her thoughts than she is able to get down on paper—but she continues trying. Ultimately, with the help and guidance of those around her—young and old—Heather makes the right choices, and the crises in her life become manageable.

What I like best about No Cafés in Narnia is Nikki Tate’s complete presentation of her characters’ lives. Even though in general “people like to read about danger, excitement, and romance,” Tate knows that “real writers take advantage of every moment, every experience, to enrich their work. They use all the mundane details…” (90). While this knowledge does not stop Heather from trying to write a murder mystery, it does reveal Tate’s belief about a writer’s goal, and the artistry of Tate’s own fiction.

What Happened to Ivy (2012), by Kathy Stinson

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 18.2.

What Happened to Ivy

In 2000, Terry Trueman published Stuck in Neutral, written from the perspective of a teenaged boy suffering from cerebral palsy so badly that he cannot communicate at all. The novel is brilliant, causing the reader to really think about what it must be like, to be an intelligence locked in a body with no controllable outward responses. In the final scene, Shawn is about to enter a fit, unsure of whether or not his father is—at that very moment—intending to “put him out of his misery.” Kathy Stinson’s What Happened to Ivy tells a similar story, from a different perspective, and is, I think, more successful for that. While Stuck in Neutral shows the internal perspective of the cerebral palsy sufferer, What Happened to Ivy tells the equally troubling tale of Ivy’s brother, David, and the father who might or might not have been instrumental in his daughter’s death.
David both loves and resents Ivy. He feels that his parents focus entirely on her, ignoring the things in his life that matter, the things most teenaged boys can share with their parents and siblings. David, like his parents, is little more than a caregiver for the severely disabled Ivy; nonetheless, the three of them love her dearly, and work unceasingly to ensure her comfort and safety. Holidaying at their cabin, while David is walking with his new girlfriend and their mother is napping, Ivy has a seizure in the water and drowns. David is understandably traumatized by the combination of guilt and relief he feels, and this is what gives the novel its power. Reading David’s story, I felt so strongly that he really needed to talk to someone his own age, who would listen and understand and give sage advice; then it occurred to me that very few people his age would have any sage advice to give: his situation was relatively unique, although survivor’s guilt itself is not. That is a role that Stinson’s book can perform admirably. There are very few books out there that can be successfully bibliotherapeutic in the strictest sense of the term, but this I think is one. David struggles both with his own guilt and with his resentment of his father, who admits in his distress that he let Ivy go as she struggled in the water during her fit. David himself points out the philosophical difference between killing and letting die, but that is not enough to heal his own wounds. In the end, as in Stuck in Neutral, we are left not knowing what the criminal and social ramifications of the situation Stinson constructs will be, but we are given ample evidence of the possibilities. We also know the direction that David’s thoughts have taken, and we see him move towards self-healing, the final step in the bibliotherapeutic process. We watch as his family’s tenuous balance and security is wrenched apart, and we watch as his mother and father and girlfriend, Hannah, help him to slowly weave together his own revised pattern for his life. When he admits the most profound source of his own guilt to Hannah, she thoughtfully remarks, “You’re human, David” (139). Simple, honest, and non-judgmental, her comment solidifies the healing process David has begun. In the penultimate scene, David is finally able to extend that healing to his suffering father. While the practicalities are not resolved, David’s own inner turmoil has been calmed, his emotional energy directed away from his own grieving towards that of his parents. He has grown into an emotional maturity that we know will help him to survive whatever happens next.

Coming Clean (2012), by Jeff Ross

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 18.1.

Coming Clean

Coming Clean is more edgy than many of the Orca Soundings novels, even given their intent as “short high-interest novels with contemporary themes, written expressly for teens reading below grade level” (Orca website). The protagonist, Rob, finally lands a gig as DJ at the local club, but things go horribly wrong when a girl from his class—to whom he has been attracted but to no avail—is found dead behind the sound system at the end of his shift. His brother—with whom he has a complicate and not always positive relationship—is involved in the drug scene that caused her death, and Rob must decide what to do as an innocent yet not uninvolved party. The choices he makes are completely understandable, but not necessarily those that all young people would make. Jeff Ross provides his readers with a scenario that causes them to think “what would I do in this situation?” The answers—as both Rob and the reader soon realize—are neither obvious nor easy.
Ultimately, the choices Rob makes are the right ones… but they do not come without a cost. Readers will appreciate the ethical dilemma he has to struggle with, and his ultimate decisions, whether or not his choices are the same as they might have made. Good literature gives rise to such questioning in the readers: while short, and simply written, Coming Clean counts as extremely effective literature.

Truths I Learned from Sam (2013), by Kristin Butcher

Having really enjoyed Kristin Butchers Return to Bone Tree Hill (2009), I was excited to receive Truths I Learned from Sam to review. It was with a bit of trepidation that I began, though, having read the back cover, which informed me that “[i]n a story story about relationships [good] and about how bad things happen to good people [a bit disconcerting], Dani discovers that sometimes the only villain is life itself [ouch].” I wasn’t sure I was ready for another emotional rollercoaster of YA angst. I need not have been worried: my concerns were misplaced, where my excited expectations certainly were not.

Butcher’s depiction of life in rural BC shows a remarkable acumen, if not lived experience. Webb’s River is like so many small interior towns—Spuzzum, Malakwa, Yank, Moyer: little on the road but a gas station, but teaming with life in the woods and hills around them.  Dani learns to ride; she learns to drive an old standard transmission clunker. We can smell the sage in the air she breathes, feel the dust in our throats at the rodeo.

The foundation of Butcher’s novel, though, is her adeptness at character construction and development. Dani is a typical teen in a not-so-typical situation. Her mother is getting married. Again. For the fifth time, actually. We shouldn’t like her mother, and we can understand why Dani might have problems with the relationship. Throughout the novel, though, Dani’s mother shows her love for Dani—however self-centred she may be in some ways—and Dani relies on her mother’s affection and support, which she receives—albeit over her cell phone. Theirs is a sometimes-awkward understanding, but they do understand and love one another. So when Dani’s mother and her new husband go off on a honeymoon to Europe, and Dani is sent off to the Cariboo to her mother’s brother—the “black sheep” of the family whom Dani had never heard of—Dani is more worried about her six weeks in a strange place than she is upset by her mother’s seeming desertion.

Sam, Dani’s uncle, turns out to be one of the salt-of-the-earth individuals without whom the world (and YA fiction) could not survive. Sam’s obvious pride in Dani, his affection, and his hand’s-off parenting attitude help her to grow in a number of ways important to a teenaged girl. He treats her like a young adult, not a young girl, and she responds with the respect and maturity he takes for granted; it is obvious that he has never had a teenager before. When he finds Dani and her new boyfriend Micah kissing, for example, he merely asks “You kids having a good time?” (92): slightly protectively, but certainly not facetiously. Although he watches over her, he knows Dani is in a safe place, in safe hands, and he leaves her free to enjoy her youth.

We watch Dani grow into her place in this new community without the sense of dread that the back cover suggests… almost. There are just enough subtle clues for the reader to anticipate the emotional crisis that comes near the end—which I will not spoil the story by revealing. I knew what was coming, and was saddened by the inevitability. What I did not expect was the heart-wrenching yet beautiful twist Butcher throws in, causing tears of both joy and sorrow. Through the sadness, Dani is left in a calm and accepting emotional space, considering her future with hope and anticipation. While Truths I Learned from Sam provides a strong and satisfying sense of closure, I really want to know what happens in Dani and Micah’s future…

The Riddle of Stars, a trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip

It is best to review these three titles as a trilogy á la Lord of the Rings, rather than three separate novels. Series fiction has become so popular in the children’s and young adult literary world that we have forgotten the joy of a good trilogy, which combines the longevity of narrative that series fiction attempts to supply with a story that is well structured and coherent: with a beginning, a middle (climax, change of scene, rising action, another climax, another change of scene and rising action), and an end (a final climax, dénouement, and ultimately great satisfaction for the reader). Series fiction, on the other hand, often lacks the solid structure that leads to reader satisfaction: because it is written without a solid plan in the initial stages, it seldom forms as cohesive and satisfying a narrative. Don’t remind me that Dickens (among others) wrote his novels piecemeal this way, weekly, changing his plot to satisfy his readers’ opinions as he went along… I firmly believe he would have been even greater had he not suffered under such constraints!

To continue. I have not read The Riddle of Stars trilogy since I was a teen, but I cannot think why not: it was one of my absolute favourites, second perhaps only to Lord of the Rings. When I picked it up again last week, I remembered why I loved it so much. Even though I remember the essential plot, I can no longer remember the details, and the story and the world McKillip has created pulled me deep within: I ran with the vesta; I became a tree; I wept with Raederle… No trilogy or series since this—except perhaps K.V. Johansen’s Warlocks of Talverdin—has constructed for me such a complete, satisfying world, mythology, and backstory to the current narrative.

   In The Riddlemaster of Hed (1976), we meet Morgan, Prince of Hed. Morgan’s title means that he is bound irrevocably and immutably by a deep magic to his land. Not until his death—and then equally irrevocably—does his rule pass to his land-heir. But Morgan is also a Riddle Master, sent away from his agrarian homeland to study in the city of Caithnard with students from all the lands in the realm. He is torn between his identity as ruler of Hed—a land and culture that he truly understands and loves—and the three stars on his forehead that appear to mark him as something other than a ruler of cattle, pigs, and their keepers. Ultimately, he has to choose whether to pursue or abandon the riddle that is his identity. In McKillip’s world, philosophy, history, and belief are both bound and explained by the riddles the learnèd ask of each other, and their answers. Morgan has been trained in this world as much as his princedom, but there are riddles that even he cannot answer. He journeys north to Erlenstar Mountain, to seek the High One of the Realm, the only one who can answer the Riddle of his Stars, and his identity. En route he meets and befriends a number of rulers of other kingdoms; these friendships  will serve him well in his future struggles. But when he reaches the apparent end of his quest, the final words we are given are “Oh, no!” There his tale—at least in this volume—ends.

In Heir of Sea and Fire (1977), we return south to Raederle, Morgan’s intended, and the political struggles in which the world is embroiled now that the Prince of Hed has disappeared. While Raederle’s father seeks Morgan in his own way, Raederle and the two other women who love Morgan—the warrior Lyra and Morgan’s sister Tristan—abandon the pattern of their lives to seek him, and the answers to the fate that awaits their world. Parallelling Morgan’s search for identity, Raederle seeks to understand her own heritage, to learn why her wise and loving father made an oath to marry her to the man who could win a contest of Riddles with the shade of Aum of Peven, a great King and Riddle Master. She begins to comprehend her true nature, and to fear it, as much as—or more than—she fears losing Morgan.

In Harpist in the Wind (1979), while Raederle has learned her true name and nature, Morgan still struggles to determine who he is, and why the harpist Deth, whom he loved, had betrayed him so cruelly. The shape changers who pursue him to the corners of the realm, the evil Riddle Master who seeks to destroy him, even his own nature seems to battle against the peace he seeks for himself and his world. Slowly he integrates his abilities with self-knowledge, battling against self-doubt, until in the final moment—almost too late—he learns his true name, and his real place in the natural order of his world.

Treasure Island (1883), by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have recently reviewed Adira Rotstein’s Little Jane and the Nameless Isle (2013), the protagonist of which is Long John Silver’s granddaughter. Significantly, her father’s name was Jim… I knew enough of Stevenson’s story to tell where the allusions lay—and what they were to—but it struck me as oddly amiss that I had never actually read Treasure Island as a child. Finding a copy in my bedroom when visiting my cousin last week, I set about to remedy the omission.

It was strange to read—finally—a book that I have seen reproduced in both live action and animated film, as well as heard of for so long. Treasure Island is the source of so many of our cultural tropes about pirates: the peg leg, the parrot on the shoulder, “yo ho ho and a bottle of rum,” and X marks the spot. So I was not blind to the significance of Long John Silver when he appeared, a precognition that I thought detracted from my reading experience. As the story went on, though, I discovered that there is a good reason that this is one of English literature’s classics. Stevenson’s characters are as intricately developed as his plot; the narrative chicanery young Jim encounters and sometimes creates are brilliantly conceived and wonderfully executed. The language, too, is accessible and interesting: young readers will learn not only the tropes, but also some real information about life—especially sailing and navigation—in the mid eighteen hundreds.

I think I didn’t like Treasure Island as much as did Captain Marryat’s Children of the New Forest (1847), perhaps because I like camping in the forest more than life on the high seas, but I really do understand why children even now love Stevenson’s novels.

Other Bells for Us to Ring (1990), by Robert Cormier

This is the only one of Robert Cormier’s novels I feel comfortable recommending to younger readers.  While I teach a number of Cormier’s works at the university level, the issues they contain are in general too starkly expressed, and too troubling, for me to consider the experience of reading them something I want to give to those I love. Tunes for Bears to Dance To (1992), I might, as well, if the reader were looking for a troubling novel with a powerful and effective social message.  But Other Bells for Us to Ring, unlike Fade (1988) or Tenderness (1996) or After the First Death (1979), has a beauty in it that warms the soul.  The ending does not leave us mourning for the characters, but rather believing in the miracles that true friendship and faith can bring into an otherwise desolate life.

In Other Bells for Us to Ring (published in the UK as Darcy in 1991), Darcy Webster and her new friend Kathleen Mary O’Hara are inseparable. The two girls share everything, and strengthen each other in their youthful struggles. Darcy is Unitarian; Kathleen is Catholic, and shares with Darcy the new and—for Darcy—exotic world of Catholicism. In a visit to her Church, Kathleen “baptizes” Darcy with Holy Water, solidifying in her mind the bond that has grown between them, but at the same time adding to Darcy’s uncertainty about who she is, and how she fits within her family, her religion, and her community. Darcy’s father has gone to war; as Christmas approaches, he is registered as “missing in action.” Darcy’s mother sinks into depression, with migraines that cause her to neglect her child, who of course needs her mother even more, as she tries to come to terms with her father’s possible death. The only stable thing in Darcy’s life is Kathleen, who struggles with her own family situation: poverty and an abusive, alcoholic father. Kathleen promises Darcy: “I will not desert you” (152), there will be “other bells for us to ring” as adults. In the end, Kathleen’s love is shown to transcend even death. Despite negative reviews posted on amazon.com, Darcy’s Christmas miracle restores a warm glow of hope and faith and love to an otherwise troubled young girl, hope that flows into the reader, subtly echoing the faith that is the foundation of the Holy season Cormier chose for his novel.

The Willoughbys (2008), by Lois Lowry

Recognizing in their lives a certain archaic narrative quality, one of the Willoughby twins asks, “Shouldn’t we be orphans?” (28). Deciding in the affirmative, the four siblings set out to improve their existence by ridding themselves of their truly abhorrent, neglectful if not abusive, parents. This could be handled poorly, or even excessively—imagine Roald Dahl—but in Lowry’s capable hands the story seems almost parochial, which of course adds intensely to the ironic humour she creates.

“Nefariously Written & Ignominiously Illustrated by the Author” (cover), The Willoughbys is quite a departure from Lowry’s usual tone. It is primarily a spoof of Victorian “orphan-and-benefactor” novels, with a metafictional tendency to have the characters comment how their lives are like The Secret Garden, or Great Expectations, or Mary Poppins… only to be disabused of that belief by other characters.  The tongue-in-cheek intertextuality requires a bit of literary experience on the part of the reader, but even without that, the novel is great fun.  “Lemony Snicket meets L. M. Montgomery” is the overall effect; the characters are manipulated into happiness very tidily, if predictably, and the reader is satisfied with both the journey and the arrival.

Where Things Come Back (2011), by John Corey Whaley

This review is… difficult. I borrowed this book from my friend Rob, whom you all know by now, after he posted about it on facebook, and his friends all raved about how wonderful it was. With all their positive comments—such as “Oh! My! God! Where Things Come Back!!!! I think I’m in love.” from someone I have never met—I had to read it to review for this blog, and asked to borrow it. Be careful what you ask for…

Rob dutifully lent me his signed copy (and not just “To Rob, John Corey Whaley,” but with a personal message because they know each other!) last time we met, and tonight we are going over for dinner and I have to return it. So I guess I had better write something. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not a bad book: I just didn’t connect with it.  Here’s what happened as I see it…

To begin with, I think that everyone, regardless of how hard we might try to avoid it, is influenced by others’ opinions pre-reading. I recall, though, the pleasant anticipation of a fascinating, heartwarming reading experience, and was prepared to enjoy myself (and the book); indeed, there is ample reason for me to have done so. Where Things Come Back is very well written, with well-rounded, well-constructed characters, and interesting—if at times random—plot elements. The story is set in a small town in Arkansas, Lily by name, where initially things disappear… closure of a sort is achieved by the end, for the town Where Things Come Back.

The narrator, Cullen Witter (is this a nod to Twilight? I seriously hope—and think—not), introduces himself by telling us: “being seventeen and bored in a small town, I like to pretend sometimes that I am a pessimist” (5). But the truth that we are shown throughout his narration is that, as he says, he “can’t seem to keep that up for too long before [his] natural urge to idealize goes into effect” (5). This fluctuation between pessimism or sometimes downright despair and an unquenchable optimism is both honest and refreshing: we like Cullen, and we ride the emotional waves of his troubled adolescence with him, hoping—as he does continually—that his lost brother will come back, and life will return to normal in Lily.

The teens in Lily have their local mythologies, such as that dating Ada Taylor was tantamount to a suicide, as her two previous boyfriends had both died in accidents; that Russell Quitman, her current bully-boyfriend, while still breathing, would eventually succumb: another point of closure by the end. Cullen and his best friend Lucas are typical teenaged boys: interested in girls; uncertain of their futures but more concerned with their present; hanging out; being, well… adolescent boys. Cullen’s younger brother, Gabriel, on the other hand, is not typical in any way, and Cullen idolizes him. Their relationship sets the reader up for a misinterpretation of what follows, and this perhaps is what bothered me about the book… I am not sure if I felt that the author manipulates the reader, but if not, then what was the intent of the Gabriel-Benton-Alma-Cabot subplot?

This is what unfolds: the initial pages of the book are narrated by Cullen; the next section switches to Benton, an evangelical missionary set on Mission to Africa, who sees in a vision “a boy standing on the water with one hand, his left, held into the air … God’s voice introduced the boy to Benton. ‘This is the angel Gabriel’ … Just before the boy opened his mouth to speak, a large bird flew overhead and landed on the angel’s shoulder” (18). The reference is unmistakable, linking Gabriel, Benton, and the rediscovered Lazarus woodpecker, thought extinct but now claimed to have been seen in Lily only days before Gabriel Witter disappeared apparently into thin air… What is troubling about this set up is that Benton’s vision is transferred in some way to his college roommate, Cabot, who is the active agent in Gabriel’s disappearance. He studies the apocryphal Book of Enoch, following in Benton’s path, and ultimately comes to see Gabriel as an angel, although the vision was not his. His actions are motivated primarily by sexual jealousy. The religious overtones smack of psychosis, but why? And Benton’s initial vision could only have been real, in some sense, for he cannot have known about the Lazarus woodpecker, or Gabriel Witton, out there in the African village. So there is some motivation for Benton’s actions that are external to his psyche, motivations that seem to have been transferred to Cabot, but with no rationale for the transference. Ultimately, everything—everything—can be explained by rational means, and yet the author gives us visions and associations—including numerous comments by the people of Lily about how special Gabriel is or was—that suggest something more. If that is the point—that there is nothing more in our world—then I feel manipulated. If not, what connection am I missing? There is a suggestion of power in Lily, the town Where Things Come Back, but I could neither feel it through the characters’ understandings, nor rationalize it out of the narrative. So I am left wondering —as obviously others are not—despite the excellent writing, and despite the fabulous characters: what was the point?

It troubles me still… I think I will ask Rob to write a guest review, so you can have his side as well.

 

Howl (2011), by Karen Hood-Caddy

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 17.3.

Howl

In Howl, Karen Hood-Caddy has created a story that will resonate strongly with many young readers, populated as it is with psychologically realistic characters whom everyone will recognize.  The protagonist, Robin, is both strong and insecure, having recently lost her mother; Robin’s older sister is a typical teen, dealing with loss by acting out, and her younger brother, “Squirm,” is both annoying and loveable.  Her father, a veterinary, is struggling to provide support for his children and hold his own life together after the loss of his wife. The crucial aspect of his own grieving is that he moves his family from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to northern Ontario where his mother lives on a large property beside a lake. Combine the complicated (and successfully portrayed) dynamics of a grieving family with bullying neighbours and growing (and not quite legal) wild-life rescue operation, and we have a novel rich with possibilities.  It may sound like there is too much going on, but Hood-Caddy balances the different, equally important, aspects of Robin’s new rural life perfectly: we see life from Robin’s young perspective, glossed by sparse and effective wisdom from her “eccentric” grandmother, Griff.

Through her involvement in a school project on ecological consciousness, and her activities helping to heal injured wild animals, Robin eventually learns to trust in happiness again.  The threats she encounters—both socially and legally—are dealt with in ways that readers will perceive as possible in their own lives.  More than just an engaging story of a young girl growing back into strength after trauma, Howl presents the reader with a map—both psychologically and logistically—of how young people can grow towards maturity and efficacy within their world.