25. The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge

Hardinge, F. (2016). The lie tree. NY: Abrams, Inc. 

The book follows Faith Sunderly, the fourteen-year-old protagonist, who is reluctantly traveling with her parents to Vane so her father, the Reverend Erasmus, can help out with an archaeological site.    They begin on a bleak journey through the English Channel by boat to the island of Vane.  In Victorian England, the scientific community is still coming to terms with the theory of evolution, trying in different ways to fit it in with its Creationist religious beliefs. Erasmus has recently landed a place in the spotlight for his discovery of the fossil of a winged man.

After her family settles into their new home on the island, Faith’s own scientific curiosity leads her to believe things may not be as they seem with their father. Rather than moving solely to explore a dig site, the family has moved to evade questions about the authenticity of his fossil. Suddenly, her father is discovered dead, and Faith’s mother and uncle rush to prevent public accusations of suicide from getting to the media. Meanwhile, Faith believes he has been murdered and resolves to find out why.

Faith first traces her father’s footsteps to his most recent discovery. The specimen is a strange tree whose fruit is supposed to induce visions in the people who consume it. Even stranger, the tree only flowers and bears fruit if it is fed whispered lies, which the whisperer must then spread to other people. Sure, that her father was murdered, Faith creates a lie that his ghost is haunting the island because it is angry with the village residents who keep saying he committed suicide. In place of suicide, Faith plants the suggestion that the archaeological site is actually the site of buried treasure from a past smuggler, and that someone else wanted to get at it first. As Faith nurtures this story, it travels throughout the whole island, causing turmoil and violence among its people.

The Lie Tree soon becomes a tool for Faith to express her most malicious impulses.  Her use of the tree is justified as human given her background: she is resentful of having spent her fourteen years alive treated as incompetent, weak, and stupid whenever she tried to speak intelligently. She was forced into the sexist gender expectations for young girls to be meek and quiet. For example, Faith terrorizes a young servant girl who was the first to suggest that Erasmus committed suicide. She also blackmails a village boy into assisting with the murder mystery. Then, in one of her worst rumors, she convinces the islanders to hurt Miss Hunter, who is in charge of the post office.   Faith is causing harm to her community, but in doing so, is enabled to see and understand more about the world. She meets people she would normally never be allowed to talk to, gaining exposure to the darker parts of her seemingly polite world. As a result, she is able to change her conception of herself into a more ideal form less hindered by the oppressive gender norms of her world. This freedom for self-determination also helps her ability to recognize and call out the oppression of others: for example, her left-handed brother is forced to keep his dominant arm in a sling out of a religious belief that the right hand should be dominant.

Faith ultimately finds that the perpetrator of the murder was Agatha, a brilliant scientist and naturalist who found it impossible to succeed in her place and time despite her brilliant mind. Ironically, Faith sympathizes with her father’s murderer, having felt the same oppression throughout her young life. But, while Faith’s ultimate goal, given her condition, is to better understand and gain tools for dealing with a confusing external world, Agatha’s downfall is in her decision to get rich by committing murder and stealing the Lie Tree from Erasmus. Afterward, she contracts malaria and falls into deep alcoholism. By the end of the novel, she has committed suicide, giving Faith’s vengeful murder investigation closure that triggers her own empathy.

Agatha’s act constitutes in part a look at who Faith might become if she continues on a path of malice and resentment. Avoiding that path, Faith reconciles with her mother and brother, learning to internalize the values of the family in order to furnish an identity and gain some semblance of freedom and self-determination.

One important theme of the book is women's place in society. Faith is a bright, young woman who is interested in science and her father’s work.  Because she is female in the late 19^th century England, she can’t pursue her passions because of her sex.  There was even a ridiculous line in the book that talked about how men’s brains were superior to women’s because they were larger.   There is foreshadowing dealing with this theme as well.  Faith admires Agatha and how she seemed  to “ beat the system” and followed her dreams by studying science.  When she discovers Agatha killed her father, she sees her live becoming like Agatha’s and decides to change her path.  

This book is on the YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list.

 

24. City of Ghosts, by Victoria Schwab

Schwab, V. (2019.). City of ghosts. New York : Scholastic Press. 

Cassidy Blake is looking forward to summer vacation.  She will spend time at the beach where the pull of other ghostly activity is weak. She will hang with Jacob, who happens to be a mind-reading ghost who only she can see.  When Cass was younger, she almost drowned but Jacob, somehow, had saved her.  They’ve been friends ever since.

Unfortunately, Cass’s parents, co-authors of books about the paranormal, have other plans for the summer.  They have landed a TV show about their passion: finding ghostly activity.  Rather than head to the beach, Cass finds herself traveling to Edinburgh, Scotland (aka the City of Ghosts) for the first shoot.  Jacob trails along.

When Cass feels the tug of a ghost, she has a need to find it and see how it died.  She can pull aside the veil between the living world and the “in between” and step through.  She fancies herself a photographer and uses a vintage black and white film camera when she travels to the in-between.  Sometimes Cass can see shadows of the ghosts when she develops the photos.  While in the veil, there is a bluish light that shines brightly in Cassidy’s chest.  Jacob refuses to tell Cass the rules about the veil.  She does know, however, that if Jacob sees himself in a mirror, something happens to him.  He sees himself as he is, dead, and can’t function normally.

Cassidy and her family stay in a flat called Lane’s End. Cass and her mom go for a sight-seeing walk and enter a famous graveyard where tours are given. They split up, and Cass is pulled through the veil against her will.  While there she witnesses an execution, but the strange thing is that, unlike the other ghosts who ignore Cass, there is a woman who watches her.  The woman wears a red cloak, and she begins to hum a song. Cass’s feet walk toward her without Cass’s permission.  Jacob rescues her and pulls her back into the land of the living. Later Cass learns that the woman is the Raven in Red and she is connected with many missing children’s cases.

As the story goes, the Raven in Red’s son went out into the snow and never came back.  She went out to search for him, putting on a red cloak so the boy could see her.  The Raven called and sang for him, but he never came.  Something broke inside her, and she began to sing for other children and take them.

At her flat, Cass meets Lara Jayne Chowdhury, a British girl about her age.  The girl wears a necklace with a mirror pendant.

When the film crew shows up the next days, Cassidy and her parents are introduced to Findley, their official guide.  They tour Mary King’s Close, and Cassidy is again pulled through the veil.  The ghosts approach her, but she uses her camera flash to distract them and get back through.

When they are back in the land of the living, they see Lara. The girl disappears into the veil, so Cass and Jacob follow.  Lara uses her mirror to freeze a ghost and pull the dark thread of his soul from his chest.  When she does the man crumbles to ash.  Jacob is livid and warns Cass against being around this girl.  Lara is a ghost hunter and says that Cass is too.

Against Jacob’s advice, Cass meets up with Lara, and she explains that they are meant to help ghosts move on.  Lara doesn’t understand why Cass hasn’t sent Jacob on to the afterlife.  Jacob is connected to Cass somehow, which is why he can pass between the living world and the in-between.

Lara takes Cass on a ghost hunt and explains about using mirrors to show ghosts their true selves.  Cass teaches Lara about empathy and listening to what the ghost wants first.  Cass sends her first ghost to the beyond and realizes that, yes, this is what she is meant to do.

Lara warns Cass to stay away from the Raven in Red.  She tries to steal the thread of life from children.

Cass and Jacob visit Edinburgh castle where her parents are filming.  While there Jacob is pulled into the in-between by some of the Raven in Red’s children.  They trap him so that they may lure Cass to them.  The Raven plunges her hand into Cass’s chest and steals her light—her life.

Cass and also Jacob are now trapped in the in-between.  They cannot pass through the veil, but the Raven in Red does.  They find Lara, and she agrees to help them steal Cassidy’s life back.  She tells them the Raven in Red will dig up her own body and put Cassidy’s light in it.  After that, there will be no turning back.

They travel toward the graveyard where the Raven in Red was buried.  They have to fight off many of her stolen children on the way.  These children are shells, and they don’t have a former life within them, preventing Cass from sending them on. The Raven has even promised other ghosts on their path that she will set them free if they stop Cass.

Cass and Jacob fight them off, and Cass distracts them with her camera flash. They climb over the wall and into the graveyard. In the real world, the Raven in Red has enchanted two teenagers to dig up her grave.  Jacob creates a diversion, and Cass hides in the Raven’s coffin.  Cass pulls on the thread of light that is her life when the Raven tries to put it into her own body.  It rips in two. Cass has one half, and the Raven has the other.  Lara shows up, and she brought help.  In the world of the living, their guide Findley holds the Raven in Red, pinning her.   

The Raven then steps back through the veil and into the in-between with Cass and Jacob.  She calls her children to her, and they attack.  The Raven goes for Cass, but Cass uses a shard of her broken camera lens to freeze the Raven.  Cass pulls at the thread of the woman’s life and finds that it is thick like a rope.  She has stolen the life of all these children and put them into herself.  Once free, the rope vanishes and so does the Raven and her children.  They are sent on.

The two halves of Cass’s life mend back together leaving a small crack where they were once two pieces.  When the life is returned to her chest, she wakes up in the land of the living in the locked graveyard.  Sirens sound in the distance.

Cass is in a heap of trouble from her parents and is charged with minor vandalism.  On her palm is a thin red line, not a cut, where the lens shard sliced her in the in-between.  She takes her camera to Bellamy’s Photo Store, and the worker gives her a new lens that has a minor defect, a small smudge on the glass.

Before Cassidy and her family leave for home, Findley warns Cassidy that there is a mark on her now.  She needs to be careful.  Lara also warns her that the longer Jacob stays tethered to the world of the living, the stronger he will become.  Lara gives Cass her mirror pendant necklace, and Cass flies away from Scotland with her parents.

This was a good book for paranormal fans.  There is little violence, and it is more ‘thrilling” than “scary”.  I found it on the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults list.  There are two more books in this series: Tunnel of (#2), and Bridge of Souls (#3).

One main theme of the book is friendship.  Cassidy and Jacob have a true friendship.  There are no romantic feelings or no family relations between them.  It is difficult to find books about strictly friendship that you can recommend to YAs.

This book also has strong female characters.  Cassidy and Laura are heroes of the story. It would be good to recommend if a student wants strong female lead. 

 

23. Royals, by Rachel Hawkins

Hawkins, R. (2018). Royals. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The main character is  Daisy Winters. She’s an offbeat sixteen-year-old Floridian with long red hair; a part time job at a grocery store, , and a perfect older sister Ellie, who’s engaged to Alex, the Crown Prince of Scotland. Daisy has no desire to live in the spotlight, but relentless tabloid attention forces her to join Ellie in Scotland. 

When Daisy arrives, she meets Sebastian, Alex’s younger brother.  He seems to kick up scandal wherever he goes and tries his best to take Daisy along for the ride.  Daisy does ends up in the tabloids, accursed of going after Sebastian,  which is not true.  This gossip attracts the attention of the queen.  She wants the rumors stopped, so it is decided that Daisy and Miles, Sebastian’s closest friend, will begin to date only for the benefit of the press.  

Daisy is going between weekends in the country and balls “pretending” to be dating Miles.  Sometimes during the “pretending”, things became real.  Daisy and Miles don’t want to admit it. 

Just before Daisy and her parents return to the States, Sebastian confesses to Daisy that he is “in love” with Ellie.  Daisy freaks out at this admission but keeps his secret.  In the end, Sebastian tells Alex about his feelings for Ellie and Alex proceeds to cold cock him.  Daisy decides to break things off with Miles because she is leaving.  She and Ellie have a heart-to-heart talk and patch things up between them.

When she returns home, Daisy is sad and afraid.  She Misses Miles, and she is afraid to leave her house because of photographers.  Her dad drags her out and takes her to get her old job back at the grocery store.  After being back to work for a couple of weeks, she has a visitor, Miles.  He tells her he has missed her, and he decided to “visit the colonies” for a bit.  They kiss over the conveyer belt of her checkout line.

This was a fun book.  It was light, and very funny. The dominant theme is the strength of the bond between sisters.  Ellie and Daisy live in different worlds and are constantly butting heads, but they manage to work things out in the end.  Ellie apologizes to Daisy for dragging her into that lifestyle.  This book was re-released with the title “Prince Charming”.  There is a second book about Flora, Alex, and Sebastian’s sister.  It is titled “Her Royal Highness”.  This book was on the YALSA’s Quick Pick list. 

 

22. The Rag and Bone Shop, by Robert Cormier

 

Cormier, R. (2001). The rag and bone shop. NY: Delacorte Press.

 In this novel, Trent is a famous police interrogation officer working in Vermont. He is known for his 100 percent confession rate on all of the cases he works as a police interrogation officer. While he is employed by a police station in Vermont, police stations from around the country call him in for help on important cases. When a seven-year-old girl, Alicia Bartlett is murdered in Monument, the lead detective on the case, Braxton, calls Trent in to help obtain the confession of the last boy, Jason Dorrant, to see Alicia alive. Even though the police do not have any physical evidence that connects Jason to the murder, he is their only suspect, and they direct their efforts into getting a confession from him.

At first, Trent is worshipped as the best interrogator in the country. Even the senator in Monument, whose grandson is a classmate of Alicia Bartlett, takes an interest in getting Trent to obtain the confession from Jason Dorrant. The senator offers Trent an opportunity to "write his own ticket" in his career if he obtains the confession. While Trent has good intentions when he first enters the interrogation room with Jason Dorrant, when Trent realizes the boy is innocent, Trent uses leading questions, techniques, and tactics to obtain a false confession from Jason. By the end, Trent only cares about maintaining his 100 percent confession rate and furthering his career.

Trent's plan backfires on him when Sarah Downes tells Trent that it is impossible that Jason Dorrant confessed to the crime when they have a confession from Alicia's brother, Brad Bartlett. After Brad's alibis fell apart, Brad confessed to murdering his sister and leaving her body in the woods. Trent obtaining a false confession from Jason Dorrant has the opposite effect on his career, most likely obtaining a demotion, and wrecking his 100 percent confession rate, rather than furthering his career. 

The experience for Jason is devastating.  He can’t sleep, he has panic attacks and be begins seeing a therapist and taking medication.  The end of the book implies that the trauma Jason endured from the interrogation drives Jason to commit the very offence he was forced to falsely admit to.

I want to begin with a rant.  I know this is just a story, but what kind of mother allows her child to go to a police station alone and be questioned, no matter how insignificant?  

The main theme of the story is guilt.  Trent manipulates Jason to confess to a crime he didn’t commit.  Trent knows Jason is innocent but pushes Jason anyway so he can keep his 100% confession rate. Trent feels the guilt of what he is doing to Jason through the whole interview, but he ignores it.

I found a discussion guide from Penguin Random House.  The link is below.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/32033/the-rag-and-bone-shop-by-robert-cormier/9780440229711/readers-guide/

21. Salt to the Sea, by Ruta Sepetys

Sepetys, R. (2016). Salt to the sea. NY: Philomel Books.

Salt to the Sea takes place in January 1945, during the final days of WWII. The Russian  forces are gaining ground both to the west and the east, and so German civilians are evacuating, fleeing violence, and running towards the Baltic Sea where the German navy will transport them to safety.

The story is told from four points of view: Joana is a Lithuanian refugee who was allowed to resettle in Germany; Emilia is a pregnant teenager who escaped the genocide that wiped out many of her fellow Poles and is trying to remain off the radar of roving German soldiers; Florian is a former art restorer from Prussia who is smuggling a priceless statue he has stolen from the Nazis as revenge after they killed his father; Alfred is a delusional Nazi soldier working on the Wilhelm Gustloff..

Emilia meets Florian in a potato cellar, where he saves her from a Soviet soldier’s attempted assault. Emilia becomes attached to Florian, whom she sees as her “knight,” and begins to follow him on his journey out of East Prussia. That evening, the two hide out in a barn, where they meet Joana and her fellow travelers—Klaus, Eva, Ingrid, and a man called “the Shoe Poet.” Although the other refugees distrust Florian, Joana is a nurse and feels obligated to help him. She removes shrapnel from a wound on his side and stitches the site closed. In the morning, Florian slips out, and Emilia follows him.

The next day, Florian and Emilia accidentally run into Joana again when they all decide to spend the night in the same abandoned Prussian mansion. Although Florian’s wound has begun to heal, Emilia is now clearly sick. Joana examines her and realizes that, although only fifteen, she’s almost nine months pregnant. Joana worries the pregnancy is the result of rape, but Emilia assures her that the father of her child is a man named August, whom she loves and is on her way to meet.

The two groups decide to travel together. They walk for another day until they reach the coast, at which point they must cut across a frozen bay. As they begin to cross the water, Soviet planes shoot through the ice and Ingrid, who had been the first to cross, falls into the water and drowns. Shocked by the death of their friend, the group nonetheless makes it across the bay, where they encounter a German soldier. Florian has altered his identification papers to make it look as though he is on a personal mission for Erich Koch, and so the soldier offers to take him by boat wherever he needs to go. Joana and the rest of the refugees convince Florian to let them tag along, and so the group is transported to the city of Götenhafen, a port town where they will be able to board a ship and, they hope, sail to freedom.

In Götenhafen, the group meets Alfred, who is working on the Wilhelm Gustloff. Everyone but Eva manages to get a boarding pass for the same ship—Joana by trading her expertise as a nurse for safe passage, Florian by forging his. Joana begins to work in the maternity ward. There, she cares for Emilia, who gives birth to a baby daughter, Halinka. As she goes into labor, Emilia reveals that Halinka is not August’s child, but the result of rape at the hands of Soviet soldiers. Initially unable to face the prospect of motherhood, Emilia eventually warms to her daughter with the encouragement of her friends and fellow travelers.

Two days after boarding the ship, it finally sets sail. That same day, however, Allied torpedoes pierce the hull and cause the Wilhelm Gustloff to begin to sink. Joana, Klaus, Florian and Halinka make it onto the deck and onto a lifeboat. Emilia asks Florian to carry her baby into the lifeboat. Meanwhile, Florian asks Alfred to briefly hold his pack (which contains a priceless stolen artifact, the Amber Swan, but then the lifeboat is lowered into the water, and Emilia is separated from her child, and Florian from his belongings.

Joana and Florian are eventually rescued by a boat that comes to save the drowning and freezing refugees, but Emilia and Alfred, although they manage to board a raft, remain adrift at sea. Alfred, who has been scripting letters to his beloved Hannelore for much of the novel, reveals that Hannelore was Jewish, and that he turned her into the Nazis when she spurned him. Overcome by rage, delirium, and hypothermia, Alfred first confuses Emilia for Hannelore, and then lashes out when he realizes she is speaking Polish and therefore belongs to a group Hitler has deemed “undesirable.” As he advances on her, Alfred falls into the water and dies. Emilia also freezes to death on the raft, but the final chapter implies that she is reunited with her family and friends in the afterlife.

In a final letter that serves as an afterword, a woman named Clara Christensen writes to Florian about how, twenty years earlier, she found Emilia’s body washed up on the shore by her home. She explains how she buried Emilia, and hopes she is at peace. She adds that she also buried Florian’s backpack, along with the Amber Swan, and hopes that he is at peace as well.

The theme of family shows up to the entire novel, as all families, regardless of nationality, were critically affected by the war. Given the vast number of children who were orphaned or displaced, and the number of babies born as a result of rape, traditional family structure was fragmented, and individuals were forced to create new family units—or reject family and intimacy altogether. This is the dilemma for the characters in Salt to the Sea. All have lost family, in one way or another, and together they must figure out how to repair old wounds and create kinship with strangers. 

Shoes are mentioned often in the story. Heinz is an old German shoemaker who insists that “The shoes always tell the story.” He is called the "shoe poet" because he contends that it is possible to glean everything you need to know about a person from their shoes. Thus, shoes become a symbol not just for the true character or hidden secrets of others, but also for the trust that different characters put into their own ideas and methods for determining the value of others.

This book would be a good novel to study in an upper high school social studies or English class.  I did not find any good free resources, but Teachers Pay Teachers has several different choices.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Browse/Search:salt%20to%20the%20sea

 

20. The Whydah, by Martin W. Sandler

 

Sandler, M.W. (2017). The Whydah. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

 The Whydah was once captained by the fearsome Black Sam Bellamy, a pirate feared both by other pirates as well as the merchant ships he sought to plunder. This time was considered The Golden Age of Piracy.  The American colonies were young, and the tensions between Britain, Spain, and France offered pirates plenty of easy targets. The Whydah began as a slave ship.  It was captured by Black Sam and his crew and made the flagship of his fleet.  They loaded it with all of their plunder thinking it was the most secure.  Bellamy didn’t anticipate running into what is known as a “perfect storm” off the coast of Cape Cod. The storm sinks the ship not far from shore.  Through the centuries, treasure hunters tried to pinpoint the location and  recover the treasure from the wreck.  The general area of the wreck was known, but the condition of the sea  in the location made it impossible to search further.

The wreck was finally located in  1984 by Barry Clifford and other marine archaeologists.

The remainder of the book talks about the recovery of the artifacts.  It discussed what was found, and how it changed our perception of what a pirate was.

Throughout the story, the author includes plenty of supplementary material that is equally fascinating: the history of the Jolly Roger, the articles a pirate might have signed aboard ship, the strict democratic rule of law aboard pirate ships, myths of pirates, a brief history of diving, and more. Primary source documents in the form of notices, maps, and similar artifacts also occur frequently.

I thought it interesting the way democracy worked on board the pirate ships. It almost parallels growth of similar democratic principles in the American colonies. Pirates became pirates to escape backgrounds and oppression, similar to the early colonist.  When studying democracy, you could bring in the parallels of pirate ship life to better grab the attention of students.

This book was an Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction nominee.  The link below is an interview with the author about his research for writing the book.

 https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=rogues-and-riches-on-the-sea-martin-w-sandlers-the-whydah

19. They Went Left, by Monica Hesse

Hesse, M. (2020). They went left. NY: Little, Brown and Company.

After World War II, the rem­nants of Europe’s Jews were forced to find a place to start a new life in a broken world. The novel fol­lows the expe­ri­ence of Zofia Led­er­man, a sur­vivor from Poland who lost almost every­one in the Auschwitz-Birke­nau death camp. The book’s title refers to the noto­ri­ous sep­a­ra­tion of the camp’s inmates into two groups, those who would be sub­ject­ed to slave labor, depri­va­tion, and tor­ture, and the oth­ers who were imme­di­ate­ly mur­dered. When the nov­el begins, that process is long over. Zofia has been lib­er­at­ed from the Grosse-Rosen camp by Sovi­et forces and is set­ting out on a jour­ney from her native Poland to Ger­many. Her only goal is to locate her younger broth­er, Abek, but she is only one among many on a dev­as­tat­ed con­ti­nent hop­ing that some­one from her past is still alive.

Zofia flashbacks to her life before the war and the destruc­tion of her fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty.  Her memory is spotty, so she is trying to construct her past, especially the days between when her and her family were taken from their home, and when she was alone in a camp.  Until she remembers she can’t move through the present to the future.  A skilled seam­stress, she sews words into the lin­ings of gar­ments.  Arriv­ing at the dis­placed per­sons camp of Foehrenwald in Allied-occu­pied Ger­many, Zofia meets oth­er young Jews, some plan­ning to set­tle in Pales­tine. Although her brief return to Poland had exposed her to con­tin­ued anti­semitism, she can­not com­mit to an alter­na­tive future until she finds Abek.

Zofia becomes roman­ti­cal­ly involved with Josef, a fel­low res­i­dent of the camp; their rela­tion­ship is char­ac­ter­ized by ambiva­lence and grief. Nei­ther one trusts the oth­er, while Zofia’s friend, Breine, who has lost her first fiancé, is prepar­ing to mar­ry a man she has known for only five weeks ​“because he’s here, I’m here, and we’re ready to not be lone­ly togeth­er.” Zofia is unable to adjust her expec­ta­tions and to com­pro­mise, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for her to accept that the post-war life of sur­vivors is defined by crushed expec­ta­tions and the inevitabil­i­ty of loss. The descrip­tions of Zofia’s strong sex­u­al attrac­tion to Josef are tinged by the vio­lence of their past. In one trou­bling scene, as part of their inti­ma­cy they exchange evi­dence of the phys­i­cal abuse they’ve both endured.  In the story, characters that Zofia meets aren’t always who she initially believes them to be. 

The book is a work of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, as well as a mys­tery and an explo­ration of the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of sur­vivors of the Holo­caust.  ​It includes “A Note on His­to­ry and Research,” with use­ful infor­ma­tion and context.   The website The Nerd Daily said:  “Truly, all of Monica Hesse’s books have had this effect on me. Her books look into parts of history that most don’t think about. Her author’s notes are worth reading for the historical relevance to the places Monica chooses to focus on. There’s so much respect in her research, and it reflects into her writing. I look forward to her next book, wherever that journey takes us.” (DeFelice, 1)

The way Zofia hides the notes in the garments she sews is fascinating. She is a skilled seam­stress and sews words into the lin­ings of gar­ments, a metaphor for her abil­i­ty to pre­serve her own sto­ry and those whom she loves.  The dra­mat­ic ten­sion of the nov­el encom­pass­es Zofia’s search for Abek as well as the fate of oth­ers with whom she inter­acts in a com­plete­ly altered world. The book’s cen­tral mys­tery is the ques­tion of how and when Zofia will assem­ble the frag­ments of her past and cre­ate a vision for her future.  They Went Left is a New York Times best seller and is the best I have read in a while. 

This is a link to an interview with Monica Hesse about the book.https://bookpage.com/interviews/25091-monica-hesse-ya#.YGoxSOhKjIU

 

1.       DeFelice, N. https://thenerddaily.com/review-they-went-left-by-monica-hesse/

 

 

18. We Are Okay, by Nina LaCour

LaCour, N. (2017). We are okay. NY: Dutton Books.

This is the story of an 18-year-old girl, Marin’s, experience with grief, loss, and sadness. Marin’s mother dies in a surfing accident when she’s almost 3; she is raised near that same beach in San Francisco by her grandfather, Gramps. The story is divided between Marin’s present in New York and her past in California. The present-day events occur in December during the winter break of Marin’s first year in college; the past events cover the summer before Marin’s grandfather disappears and is presumed to have drowned. After Marin’s grandfather dies, she flees to New York without talking to anyone or retrieving any of her possessions from their house. For months, she refuses to respond to or contact any of the people from her life in California.  Marin’s best friend and former girlfriend, Mabel, is coming to visit; the visit marks their first communication in four months.

Over the course of Mabel’s visit, the flashbacks reveal what happened after her grandfather’s disappearance.   Though her grandfather cared deeply for Marin and provided a good life, it becomes clear that the loss of his wife and daughter irrevocably changed him. Gramps suffered from an unknown mental illness; he was hospitalized once for it when Marin was a child and.  Toward the end of his life, he began behaving oddly with angry outbursts and paranoia. Along with the mental health problems, Gramps was also coughing up blood and seemed weak, suggesting he was ill. For many years, Gramps had a pen pal named Birdie with whom he exchanged frequent letters. After his disappearance, Marin discovers that Birdie is her late mother and that Gramps has been writing letters both to and from her for years, either pretending they were real or delusional enough to believe it. He had hoarded Birdie’s possessions and photographs but had never shared any of them with Marin.  Marin feels betrayed.  She had always struggled to recall even a single memory of her mother and believed there were no remaining pictures of herself as a baby or with her mother.

 During Mabel’s visit, Marin is able to open up and reconnect with her friend, allowing her to begin the process of healing. Though talking is at first difficult, Mabel persists, and Marin tells her friend more of her secrets and fears. Mabel tells Marin that her parents want to unofficially adopt Marin; they’ve prepared her a bedroom of her own and want to be her new home for school holidays and beyond. Marin is deep in grief and loneliness, is unable to accept this offer, though she grows to want to accept it as the days pass. After three days, she says goodbye to Mabel, her healing coming along enough that she’s able to call one of Gramps’s friends to check in. Hours after Mabel has left, she reappears at the dorm with her parents. With Marin unable to say yes to returning home, they have come to her and brought Christmas with them. Their loving presence and sincere desire to have her as a daughter allows Marin to begin to move forward in her grief and she is finally able to remember a moment with her mother.

 Denial and Grief is one of the main themes of the book.  the protagonist Marin experiences strong denial, in that she cannot accept her past as it was.  Her grandfather’s betrayal by keeping her mother’s memory from her, and his death pushes her over the edge with grief.  She wants to erase her history as a person altogether and become a totally new individual, so she runs.

 One symbol in the book is ghosts. All through the book  ghosts symbolize things Marin does not want to think about. She felt that Gramps’s ghost was haunting her when she was staying in the motel. Marin is also a big fan of the novel Jane Eyre, which features several ghosts. Marin is curious about the nature of hauntings, whether ghosts themselves or something else are the perpetrators of what individuals feel haunts them.  Another is the  color yellow.   Yellow represents love and new life.  Marin mentions yellow butterflies, which in many cultures symbolizes new life or transformation.  In a memory Marin recovers involves her as an infant grasping her mother’s yellow shirt.  She buys yellow bowls from the pottery shop as one of her first purchases after leaving. In all of these, yellow evokes feelings of warmth and love.

 The novel is the winner of the 2018 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.  This book is not appropriate for teaching in the classroom.  I would recommend it to an older student who was experiencing loss of a loved one.   The link below is an interview about the book, with the author Nina LaCour.

https://www.popsugar.com/love/Interview-Nina-LaCour-About-We-Okay-43169629