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.

The Discovery of Socket Greeny (2010), by Tony Bertauski

Lately I’ve been downloading a large number of free ebooks from BookBub, or Kobo, or anywhere I can: my book budget has been exhausted. I have discovered, though not surprisingly, that my quality of reading has thus dropped significantly, and a large proportion of the free books I delete after reading the first couple of pages. Every once in a while, thankfully, one like Tony Bertauski’s The Discovery of Socket Greeny comes along to rejuvenate my joy of reading on the Kobo. The book was first released in 2010, so it was not a “straight-to-almost-free” book like so many, but at first my response was “What on earth are they doing offering this for free?” followed by “I wonder how much the sequels are going to cost me?” For there are always sequels in children’s and YA fiction these days, it seems: but I have lamented this situation before.  There are, in fact, sequels to The Discovery of Socket Greeny, although all three books were released in 2010: The Discovery of Socket Greeny in July, The Training of Socket Greeny in September, and The Legend of Socket Greeny in December. Despite the sequels, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the first book was, in fact, sufficiently self-contained to satisfy my narrative needs completely. There were directions that Bertauski could take his story, more that could be told, but it is not necessary to read more to find closure.

The conception and plot of Socket Greeny are original and engaging. Picture a YA version of Neuromancer with shades of Little Brother, Ender’s Game, and Feed. How could I not read on? Perhaps, too, I liked the immediate immersion into the virtual world of MMOGs (massively multi-player online games).  The story opens with three teens hooked into virtualmode to study, but instead hacking into someone else’s virtual world to battle. Bertauski’s description of the transitional process is both a little familiar (see Neuromancer) and yet unique.

The banter between Socket, Streeter, and Socket’s girlfriend, Chute, about the wisdom of their enterprise reveals the closeness that exists in this triad of friends:

“What are we doing here?” I asked
“We’re going to get our kill on.”
“I just got pardoned for fighting. We get caught, just stamp my suspension.” …
I looked at Chute. “Did you know we were doing this?”
“He didn’t tell me. If you were in class on time, he wouldn’t have told you, either.” …

I have listened to the teens upstairs: Bertauski’s characters are real.

Hacked into the Rime world, something goes terribly, unexpectedly wrong. Their sims are almost destroyed: a shadow forms that only Socker can see (“You’re brain damaged. Shadow sims can’t stabilize in this environment”); he begins to feel his sim; and time stands still. Cut to the three of them in detention for misuse of virtualmode time, when Socker is pulled away by his mother for a “family emergency.” His friends don’t see him again for 8 months.

The discovery of Socker Greeny—who and what Socker is—underlies the remainder of the novel. But it is not the mystery that grabs the reader so much as our affection for the character: his combination of youthful bravado and insecurity, his compassion, his need for love, his anger, and even his outright fear. His internal monologue sits comfortably beside his descriptions of all that he sees and experiences in the new reality he finds himself in.

Ultimately Socker does discover who he is, essentially, as well as learning the truth about his broken family, and his mother’s disinterest and even coldness towards him. Starved of affection for so long, it is no wonder that he clings to his friends just that little bit, emotionally. His need is mirrored in his unswerving commitment to the friendship, though, and in the end it is the combination of their talents that helps them to fight for their lives almost successfully… Not that everyone dies, of course, but it honestly is not obvious that they will all survive. Bertauski does give us the satisfactory happy ending (of course, we knew that Socket lives on, or there wouldn’t be sequels), but the danger feels real, and the escape from it uncontrived, if expectedly fortuitous. The world has changed irrevocably for Socker and his friends: they will never again be the team that they have always been, but they—and we—are okay with that.

Cape Town (2012), by Brenda Hammond

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

Cape Town

The mother of my best friend growing up was a ballet dancer in South Africa before immigrating to Canada. The stories she told came back to life as I read Brenda Hammond’s Cape Town, so similar are the feelings the protagonist Renee has towards her art. But while dancing is Renee’s raison d’être, it is not the central theme of the novel, which spans the year between February 1989 and February 1990: a time when all nations’ eyes were on South African politics and the issue of apartheid. In September 1989, F.W. de Klerk was voted into power; on 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela was finally released from 27 years in prison; on 8 June 1990, the state of emergency was lifted; between 1990 and 1993, de Klerk’s government systematically ended over 40 years of legislated apartheid. The hope that Renee and her boyfriend Andrew feel in the new Prime Minister’s commitment “to creating a new South African free of oppression and discrimination” (323) resonates strongly at the conclusion of their story. We have lived through the struggle, seen through Renee’s naïve Afrikaans eyes. So carefully depicted is the balance between political struggle and Renee’s own internal struggles that even readers who did not live through that historical moment will understand both the horrors and the hope that surged through South Africa in the early 1990s.
Renee Pretorius is the ideal character to explore the issue of apartheid from a psychologically safe perspective, rendering the horrors of apartheid moderately accessible to a young adult audience. Renee is a young Afrikaans girl, from a traditional rural family, recently arrived in Cape Town to begin her studies at the School of Dance at the University of Cape Town. Her conservative religious and social attitudes sit uncomfortably with her innate humanism, and she soon finds herself not only communicating with, but befriending a Coloured student as well as falling in love with a young political activist of British descent. Renee and Andrew’s relationship is adeptly handled: their conflicts are based on a real social chasm, and the reader is never quite sure whether their feelings for one another will be enough to overcome the vast differences in their cultural backgrounds. Underlying all of her experiences and expressions of discomfort, though, are Renee’s strong feelings of social justice and philia, most powerfully expressed in her unquestioning love of her family’s Black servant, Kokodais.
While the dilemma Hammond creates for her characters is alleviated in the final pages, the providential political moment comes after Renee has made her decision regarding her path in life. We are thus left with both a happy ending and a firm belief that Renee has developed a strong social and political consciousness: she knows who she is, and who she wants to become.

Devil’s Pass (2012), by Sigmund Brouwer

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.

Devil’s Pass

In the vein of Monique Polak’s excellent Middle of Everywhere (2009), Sigmund Brouwer’s Devil’s Pass takes a young urban Torontonian on an adventure of a lifetime in Canada’s wild north. Both novels are poignant investigations into how culture shock and isolation can be powerful motivators in identity formation, but where Polak’s protagonist learns a lot about himself and his place in the world, about cultural values and what really matters, there is a sense of security in his life that is noticeably absent from 17-year-old Webb’s experiences in Devil’s Pass.
Webb is a street kid—by choice. He has run away from an abusive step-father and a mother he loves but who remains in ignorance of Webb’s reality, an ignorance Webb painfully perpetuates to protect her from her borderline psychotic husband.  Upon the death of his beloved grandfather, Webb is thrust into an adventure—orchestrated by his grandfather as part of his legacy—that takes him to the Canol Heritage Trail in the Northwest Territories in search of answers to a mystery from his grandfather’s youth. The quest itself is interesting enough to engage the reader immediately and consistently: Brouwer feeds us clues little by little, artfully reeling us in to the tension that Webb feels both within himself and in the world around him. Webb’s street-smarts come into play when he runs foul of a local troublemaker in Norman Wells, where the hiking portion of his quest begins.  The combination of the social problems Webb must deal with (poverty, homelessness, abuse, police harassment), the grief he struggles with at the loss of both his mother and his grandfather, and his need to complete the task his grandfather has set for him, drive Webb forward with a determination that readers will not only admire, but understand. Webb is not a strong, self-assured hero; rather, he is a troubled, angry young man, sometimes scared, and certainly seeking for a home and security in an unfriendly world. In the end, we are not know certain he will manage the road he has chosen, but we applaud the choices that he ultimately makes.
Devil’s Pass is one of seven novels written by seven separate authors, about the seven grandsons of David McLean, each of whom is sent on a quest as part of his inheritance: Webb’s journey will certainly inspire readers to seek out the other novels in the series, in the hope that they are as satisfying in term of both intrigue and emotional veracity.

Samantha’s Secret Room (1963), by Lyn Cook

I can well understand why Samantha’s Secret Room is one of the best loved of Lyn Cook’s works. It contains not only a loving, hard-working family, but a number of classic elements of childhood that will grip young readers and carry them into Samantha’s world: an old family mansion, a message sent in secret to a stranger, family lore of hidden books and secret rooms, an older cousin Samantha admires, and a best friend to share it all with.

Samantha Wiggins lives in Penetanguishene, Ontario, on the shores of Georgian Bay. Her great-great grandfather had been a lumber baron, and built the mansion that is now mostly shuttered, but still their family home. As children in a farming family, Samantha and her two younger brothers have a number of responsibilities in the family, which of course they moan about and try to get out of; but the family work ethic is strong, and certainly modern readers could learn a thing or two about respect and commitment from the family dynamics that Cook presents.

Once again, Cook has done her research. If you check google maps, you can find exactly where Samantha’s home was, on the point looking toward Beausoliel Island, on Champlain Road. Cook has a knack, too, of weaving historical facts seamlessly into her narrative. When Samantha’s new friend, Kim, comes to visit from London, Ontario, the family show her their home, relating the colourful history of Penetanguishene in fluid, natural dialogue.

The secrecy in the novel springs from a number of sources. Samantha’s friend Colette has a Christmas tree farm, and Samantha ties a note to a Christmas tree, in lieu of the traditional message in a bottle (after all, the lake would be ice until spring, and who wants to wait?). The result is a new best friend, Kim. Samantha, as the title (misleadingly) suggests, has built herself a secret room in the old root cellar: a room that no one knows about but her, where she hides from her family and writes her diary. When her cousin Josh writes from Connecticut that he is coming to visit, he asks if they have found Samantha’s secret room, and Samantha wonders how he knew… but his secret room is not hers. Samantha’s great-grandmother, who lives in her girlhood room in the tower of the house, is also Samantha, as was her mother, born in 1833. The secret room Josh writes about belonged to one of them. Great-Gran, too, provides a bit of mystery, as she keeps asking the children to look for her “book … the one with all the flowers in it” (25). The family is convinced that no such book exists: after all, everyone has searched the house, high and low. Great-Gran is almost ninety, forgetful and a bit crotchety, and is therefore humoured by her family.

With Christmas, Kim’s visit, Winterama, and a family reunion in the summer to celebrate Great-Gran’s ninetieth birthday, life in the Wiggins household moves from one small excitement to the next. Calves are born in a blizzard; the family dog runs away to have her pups; Samantha makes friends with their reclusive neighbour… and through it all Great-Gran demands that Samantha reads the Bible to her, and that they find her book. Despite her demands, it is obvious to readers (if not to Samantha) that Samantha is Great-Gran’s favourite; she knows—as Samantha does not—that Samantha’s courage and feisty spirit has been passed down through the female line. The theme of connection and continuity is accentuated in other relationships, too. Kim’s father is an antique salesman, and Josh is a budding archeologist: together they provide a sense of the importance of history—in a broader sense—that reinforces the novel’s message of the importance of family and tradition. Overall, the story creates a powerful feeling of peace, of belonging, even in the midst of changing circumstances and relationships. In the final scene, when the mysteries have been solved, Kim has returned to London, and Josh has left to pursue his career, Samantha climbs the stairs to her Great-Gran’s room and begins, again, to read to her the Twenty-Third Psalm…

Outcasts of River Falls (2012), by Jacqueline Guest

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.

Outcasts of River Falls

The Red River Resistance (or Rebellion) of 1869, the North-West Resistance (or Rebellion) of 1885; these are pivotal moments in Canada’s history. In the first act of resistance, Métis leaders Louis Riel and Gabrielle Dumont succeeded in establishing a provisional government and treating with the Canadian Government (although it ultimately did not go so very well); in the second, the Métis were completely defeated, and Louis Riel was hanged for high treason. So much is well known, but after the North-West Resistance the fate of the Métis people slips into the fog of history, silenced by a loud English-speaking voice from the politically powerful East. In Outcasts of River Falls, Jacqueline Guest creates a strong voice for the Métis people, telling a small part of their history in a way that young readers will not only learn from, but enjoy.
In Belle of Batoche (2004), Guest introduces us to Belle Tourond, who during the North-West Resistance comes to recognize her own fortitude and abilities. In Outcast of River Falls, Belle helps her young niece Katy discover her own strength and establish a pride in being Métis. Raised in Toronto without any knowledge of her Métis heritage, the orphaned Kathryn is sent to Alberta to join her Aunt Belle. Landed in a strange and hostile environment, Katy must not only learn a new culture, but adjust her sense-of-self to incorporate her new social position as one of the Road Allowance People: the Métis, who were not permitted to own land and so lived on the government-owned road allowances (that is, until someone White or otherwise privileged wanted the land). Katy’s confusion, the mistakes she makes, the questions she has but is afraid to ask: all ring true. Her position as not-visibly Métis complicates her experiences, and helps her—and the reader—truly understand the evils of prejudice and bigotry. The plot involves a mysterious Robin Hood figure who has been righting some of the smaller injustices perpetrated against the Métis people. Add in a crooked, offensive police officer, and a murdered bank guard, and you have the recipe for a culturally sensitive situation to which, ultimately, Katy must actively contribute. In acting to save her Aunt Belle, Katy finally accepts her true heritage: she ends with her Toronto dreams of being a lawyer firmly reestablished, but now altered: she will not only be a female lawyer on the vanguard of Canadian social progress, but a female Métis lawyer, bound by conscience to fight for the rights of her people.
Outcasts of River Falls comes with an effective Novel Study Guide, which includes synopses of the chapters as well as activities (for example, a 1900 Eaton catalogue to price purchases Katy might have made) and thoughtful study questions. This very engaging novel combined with the study guide will help elementary school teachers of early Canadian history immensely.

Awake and Dreaming (1996), by Kit Pearson

Theodora is the daughter of a single mother who is barely managing to keep herself—never mind her child—in food and clothing.  Theo dreams of having a real family, of not being a pariah at each of the subsequent schools she is sent to as her mother moves from place to place, bad job to bad job, all within Vancouver.  On the ferry to Victoria, when Theo’s mother is taking her to her Aunt’s home—giving Theo away so she can be with her new boyfriend—Theo falls into a dream of being with a family: but the dream is real.  She begins to fade in her new life, though, and awakes, still on the ferry.  Arriving in Victoria at her aunt’s, she finds that the life she knew, the family she was part of, do exist, but are not as ideal as in her waking dream. It is not until she meets the ghost of the author in whose house the family lives that she begins to understand what had happened to her.  Her new knowledge gives her the strength to stop only dreaming, and to work to make her own, real-life situation more endurable.

Despite others’ glowing reviews of this text, and an almost universal lauding of Pearson’s plot and technique, Awake and Dreaming is not—in my opinion—one of Pearson’s best. It does, however, present a unique premise and interesting relationship between the text and the real world.

Winter Shadows (2010), by Margaret Buffie

A perfect book to read right now, when shadows are lengthening so early in the day: the air is crisp, our hands thawed by warm breath that hangs in a cloud before dissipating. These days, I can easily imagine Beatrice, “huddled under a pile of buffalo robes” (1) as we first meet her. I have never lived in the prairies, being from the mountains of BC, but Buffie’s descriptions are so vivid that I can see Beatrice’s world, and Cassandra’s more modern version, and feel the difference between the two eras they lived in. I am not by nature adept at creating images from descriptive texts; I generally get a strong feeling for characters in books, but have a problem visualizing their settings. I recognize this as a failing in my role as reader, and am thus overjoyed when an author’s descriptions are effective enough for me to really see the world she creates.

Buffie’s setting carries her carefully designed plot along with it; her ability to intertwine her modern realist stories with the paranormal connections that are the vehicle for growth and learning does not seem to wane. As in her other stories, in Winter Shadows emotional support comes to Cassandra through discovering the truth of Beatrice’s life. Cass is facing the first Christmas with a new step-mother and annoying younger step-sister; she feels betrayed by her father, abandoned by her dead mother, righteous in her anger, and justified in her acting out. While we do not necessarily agree with her—from an adult perspective—we can see why she feels and does what she does… Teen readers would undoubtedly not only sympathize, but empathize with her position, her attitude, and her behaviour. Buffie contrasts Cass’s modern familial problems with those of a young Métis girl, Beatrice, in 1856. Beatrice has returned from school in the East to St. Cuthbert’s, Manitoba, to live with her father and his new wife, Ivy. Ivy, like Cass’s new stepmother, Jean, does not share a culture with her new husband. Beatrice calls her “puritanical” (20), and certainly she has no love of—let alone respect for—Native cultures, including Métis. Beatrice’s story is presented as a combination of conflicts: she suffers both as a daughter with a new step-mother, and as a Métis who loves her grandmother and her culture, yet sees it denigrated by many in her community, including her step-mother. Cass, living in her ancestral home that was also Beatrice’s, begins to see visions of Beatrice’s life, as Beatrice does of Cass. The connection between the two young women causes both of them to doubt not only their sanity, at some level, but also their instinctive emotional responses to their world. Learning of the cultural and social prejudices with which Beatrice suffers helps Cass to put her own problems into perspective; seeing visions of the comparatively strong and emancipated Cass helps Beatrice to stand strong in the choices she has to make.

Layered beneath her plot, Buffie has created a narrative of mid-nineteenth-century Métis culture that is part of a resurgence of and thus growing interest in the Métis historical narrative. Another admirable author in this vein is Jacqueline Guest, whose Belle of Batoche (2004) and Outcasts of River Falls (2012) are more straight-forward historical narratives of Canadian Métis life. I’m not sure if there are others, but these three novels speak strongly to the need for the Métis narrative to be told, to be reconstructed in a way that provides ready access for modern young readers. Winter Shadows, with its combination of carefully researched history and language, and Buffie’s as-always insightful interpretation of modern youth and the issues they face, is for me the perfect combination of reality and metaphor, modernity and paranormal history. While I do not love (understand? identify with? appreciate?) Cass as much as I do Frances Rain, I believe Cass speaks as strongly to young girls today as Frances Rain did almost 25 years ago.

Addison Addley and the Trick of the Eye (2009), by Melody DeFields McMillan

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 15.3.

Addison Addley and the Trick of the Eye

Maybe it’s just my maternal self over-powering my critical persona, but I prefer my protagonists—however young—to have a little respect for those around them.  Addison Addley has a sarcastic humour that gleans its power from insulting others, and impressing upon the reader his own superiority, despite that his friend, Sam, is the intelligent one: “Sam was squinting at the house.  I guess that made him think better. … The only good thing I could say about Trent was that his hair wasn’t as puffy as Tiffany’s.  Her head looks like a lampshade, and sometimes her face gets as red and shiny as a Christmas-tree bulb.  That’s why I call her The Lamp.  Tiffany always tries to annoy me.  She doesn’t have to try very hard, though …” (22).  Granted the ideas and even the ways of expressing them seem authentic to the 11-year-old boy, but the combination of complaining tone and arrogance really did not endear the protagonist to me…
Not wanting to condemn a book without more expert appraisal, I gave it to my son (12) and daughter (11).  He didn’t finish it—although he liked the main character, which rather put me in my place—because “nothing happened” in the first five chapters; she wouldn’t read it because she “didn’t like the character; he was rude.”  Neither child finished the novel, which does get interesting and engaging a little later…
I rather thought that the action was moderate but engaging; my only problem was in narrative attitude… but that didn’t seem to bother the readers for whom the text was intended: young boys. I must conclude, therefore, that Addison Addley seems to hit the mark for its readers, despite my parental objection to the “attitude” its protagonist projects.

Hunted (2012), by Cheryl Rainfield

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 17.5.

Hunted

While I was reading Cheryl Rainfield’s Hunted, I attended a lecture by Karen Armstrong, founder of the Charter for Compassion.  Listening to Armstrong, lines and scenes from Hunted repeatedly rose up in my mind, and I thought: this is more than a dystopic novel about oppression and intolerance (which it is); it is a powerful narrative example of the strength it takes, within an oppressive culture, to maintain one’s sense of humanity.

In Hunted, Caitlyn and her mother are continually running, changing names, schools, lives… because Caitlyn is a “Paranormal,” a telepathic who can read others’ thoughts and emotions: a power that frightens those without it. In Caitlyn’s world, Paranormals of all kinds must be registered, and once registered, are removed from society and tortured, sometimes forced to hunt other “Paras.” During the uprising that led to this abusive system, Caitlyn’s father was murdered and her brother Daniel taken away; she and her mother fled. After years of running, Caitlyn finally needs to stop, to rest, to blend in. Rejoining society—as much as she is able—is difficult, dangerous, and yet rewarding. Her two new “Normal” friends are similarly, if not equally outcast: Rachel is lesbian and Alex is black. While Rachel’s lesbianism is highlighted as a consideration in her relationship with Caitlyn, Alex’s race is not sufficiently apparent to the reader. When we meet him, we are told that “his skin contrasts with his crisp white shirt” (30), but that could make him Mediterranean, or even just well-tanned. Once, later, Caitlyn mentions his “springy black curls” (148), but no other mention is made until almost he end of the book, when the term “black” is finally used. In our white-washed world, a few more hints would be welcome.

The political aspects of the plot—too complicated to delineate but solidly structured and effective—lead to a crisis for which Caitlyn’s online avatar, Teen-Para, has been made the scapegoat. In the end, sacrifices are made by individuals on both sides, and readers are left with a strong message regarding blanket assumptions about good and evil. Caitlyn’s faith in the goodness, the inherent humanity, of “Normals” is justified, as is her wariness of belief in anyone merely because they are paranormal. There are hints here of Katniss’s response to the politics of Panem in the end of the Hunger Games trilogy: a group being oppressed and thus rebellious does not necessarily equate with that group being right or justified.  What Caitlyn and the reader have reinforced is a message of tolerance of difference, and a wariness of all individuals who seek power at the expense of others.

The Charter for Compassion expounds that “compassion is not an option; it is the key to our survival” (Alastair Smith, Greater Vancouver Compassion Network); faithful to this humanist tenet, Caitlyn strives to create the compassionate world her father envisioned: “Dad dreamed of a world where we could live freely—but he also taught me that all life is precious, Normal or Paranormal, and that we’re all in this together” (294). The power of Hunted is that by the end of the novel, the reader is sure that she is right.