Archives for March 2011
Playing Hurt by Holly Schindler
Chelsea always wanted to play basketball in college — it was her ticket to a big scholarship and it was a game she loved. She was passionate about it. But then an accident on the court her junior year leaves her wounded
and unable to pursue this dream.
She aches.
Clint is a former hockey player who works at a lake resort in Minnesota. Something terrible has happened to him — something so awful he’s quit playing hockey and vows never to play again. When Chelsea’s family takes a trip there for three weeks during the summer, her father hires Clint to help Chelsea regain some of the physical strength she’s lost during her recuperation.
Even though Chelsea’s in a relationship and Clint’s not a believer in the summer fling, their shared struggles to overcome the loss of their dreams may bring them together in surprising ways.
Playing Hurt is Schindler’s second novel, and it is a completely different story than her first, A Blue So Dark (reviewed here). Although both stories deal with loss and grief to some degree, this one focuses on what it feels like to lose the thing you love the most. For Chelsea, this is basketball. It’s ripped from her prematurely, and it’s done in a manner that is completely out of her control. It was a real accident, and it’s a moment she lives over and over, both in her mind and in person: she has a video of it. She continues watching it, hoping for some sort of solace in it. It’s aching because as readers, we know how it feels to have a dream like that and have it torn from you.
For Clint, we’re left a little more in the dark about what happened to him. We know he’s experienced pain and loss, and frankly, he’ll never tell. He’ll admit when confronted, but he won’t be the one to tell Chelsea or the readers. Since I don’t want to ruin it, I’ll say it goes back to his beliefs about love and relationships.
The book is written in dual voices, beginning with Chelsea’s and then going to Clint’s. Their voices are distinct, though I wasn’t entirely convinced of Clint’s voice nearer the end of the story. Chelsea’s is pitch perfect, though, and Schindler really grasps her pain and her need to recover. The story is well paced, and like in A Blue So Dark, it is quite literary in execution. There are moments when the language really begs to be read aloud.
One of the issues I had with this book was Chelsea’s preoccupation with losing her virginity. Although that in and of itself wasn’t problematic, it doesn’t really present itself early on. We know she has a boyfriend at home, and we know he’s gone to great lengths to arrange a date for them to have sex for the first time together after she returns from her trip. Well, because she and Clint become an item, his work will be for naught. Chelsea gives it up to Clint. The bigger issue, though, is the writing in these intimate scenes — and there are quite a few of them. I found it clunky and unbelievable, especially from Clint’s voice. It came off more Harlequin than teen, more of a voice of experience and sensuality than of two clumsy teenagers in the backwoods of Minnesota. As much as I didn’t want it to, it did mar some of the great aspects of Chelsea and Clint’s characters.
Moreover, there is nearly no remorse in Chelsea for cheating on her long time boyfriend. She’d been with Gabe for two years, but she spent no time really thinking about him while engaging with Clint. Sure, she sent him letters and checked her email from him, but in those intimate moments, it never crossed her mind. This made me really dislike her as a character, despite the point of the story being to care about her and want her to overcome the loss she’s experienced with her injury. And trust me when I say it didn’t make me like Clint anymore, either, since he knew full well she was in a relationship.
That said, this is a story focused more on character than on sport, but your maturer sports readers who appreciate stories like Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen will enjoy this one. Chelsea and Clint are relatable characters and what they go through in terms of mourning loss and accepting change will resonate with readers who’ve done the same.
Aging Middle Grade Covers
Last week, I talked about covers changing from their hardcover debut to their paperback. This week, I thought I’d talk about another trend that I’m still wrestling with, and that is the aging up of middle grade covers. Middle grade for me has always been about cover art: there’s been less reliance on stock photos — particularly of people — and more use of actual art. There’s also been a lot of straight forward stock image use with a striking color background.
However, I’ve noticed this is also changing, as more and more middle grade covers are growing up. They’re getting covers with models on them — people — and they look more teen than tween appropriate. I think this is both a good and a bad thing; for many readers this age, it’s a good thing. It makes them feel older and makes them feel like they’re reading an older book. But the reverse is true: it could be what makes many unready readers feel they can tackle a tougher teen book.
Let’s look through some recent examples:
This is one of the common covers for Zia by Scott O’Dell. I like it: I really think the colors and the artistically rendered (note: not stock photo) person really give this cover its feeling. But there’s been a change for this one, and it’s one I quite like.
Isn’t it gorgeous? I think this cover has mega appeal and has a real contemporary feel to it. The only qualm I have with it is that it’s definitely not a middle school girl on the cover. She’s certainly older. But for this particular book, I’m not sure that’s problematic. I think the appeal is still to the right audience.
Here’s another one from Scott O’Dell, and this one’s going to be a rerelease. The original cover (dated, obviously):
They did update this one a few years later to this cover, which I quite like (it has a very Face On the Milkcarton feel to it).
They’re re-releasing this title in April this year with another new cover. You can guess what made me want to talk about this one a little.
I’m not sure how I feel about this one. The girl doesn’t work for me in this cover — too much attitude. I don’t know whether she’s appealing to readers; she’s a bit off putting. I do like what they’ve done with the newspaper ad as the background for the title and author, as it plays off the last cover.
Now, let’s take another well-known middle grade author and look at some of the cover make overs she’s had.
This is one of Bauer’s titles that leans a little more teen than middle grade, to be fair. But the cover is an artistic one. And it’s been remade.
There’s a couple other of her titles that have had such a makeover, too.
I don’t care much for this cover. It’s a little too technicolor for my tastes. I do like the makeover this one’s gotten, and I think it ups appeal too (but maybe for older readers more than middle grade readers):
Let’s look at another of Bauer’s cover make overs before talking about the last two books that have come out.
A little too much red for my taste. This one has gotten a mighty makeover, though:
This cover reminds me of a million others. I’m actually a little torn, though, since I think it increases appeal to the middle grade audience more than the prior cover. Part of that is, of course, simply because of the dating issue. But let’s look at the last two books released by Bauer. They’ve been released with stock photos first, and I think both make a real statement.
I love this cover. This is a book I’ve read, and I think it’s perfectly fitting. The story takes place in an area where apples are a big deal for the economy and tourism, and there’s also a big aspect of the story involving newspaper reporting. Definite middle school appeal on this one.
This is her latest book, and again, I consider it middle grade, but this cover reads older to me. I think that it will appeal to both the middle and high school readers. I’m also noticing a food trend on these books. Hmm…
Here’s another original release, and this one is quite recent.
I don’t think I care a lot for this cover. The girl definitely looks older than the target audience. And actually, the thing probably bothering me the most is the dumbest, and it’s the unbuttoned side of the overalls. I get what it’s trying to do but it doesn’t work for me. I’m curious about the appeal of this one — I think it will work for middle grade. I think the font and off-centeredness of the title and the girl are appealing and give this cover just enough difference to stand out on a shelf. But man, I wish she’d button the side of her pants!
A cover make over I really like this is one, and I think it will give this book an entirely new, fresh middle grade audience.
Dated, no? But original art, if nothing else. Fortunately, they’ve updated it. Sure, it’s a stock photo, but they’ve done enough manipulating to it to really jazz it up.
It’s got just enough creepiness to it, too. I think this is a fantastic middle grade cover, as it has loads of appeal to the target readership and it doesn’t try too hard to mimic covers of books meant for older readers.
One last one that stuck out to me for a while is this one:
This is the original cover of Erskine’s Mockingbird. It’s not bad and it’s not great. It’s quiet, which is what I understand of the book itself. This is the kind of cover that will let the reader find it; the right reader will know. I like it, since it doesn’t really age the book at all. It gives it a classicness but it does feel middle grade — I think that’s in the font use.
Naturally, the paperback gets a makeover, though.
Notice a few things with me. First, most middle grade novels do not have a blurb. They will include book subtitles or notes about the author’s prior works and awards. But this one? It gets the Publisher’s Weekly review blurbed on the front. Middle grade readers probably don’t care it’s “a moving and insightful masterpiece.” They want a good story.
They’ve kept the font for the cover, which I like, but they’ve ramped up the color a bit. I will say, though, I think the girl on the cover is the right age. But what’s she saying to the middle grade reader here? The cover is, no doubt, attractive and appealing, but this is where I want to talk a bit — for me, middle grade readers are less about the feelings conveyed by the cover than teen readers are. They want to know the story more. For me, this cover is almost off putting, since there is so much feeling conveyed in the way the girl is positioned, in how her back is to readers. She’s not inviting. It’s here where I begin questioning why books aimed at middle grade readers are looking more and more like teen books and almost more like they’re targeted at adults than the kids themselves.
For me, the clincher on this is the PW quote. There is nothing about the story in that comment, as it’s written to adults for adults. Why is it there?
I’m not sure this is a trend I like or dislike, as I’ve seen both sides. I know there are plenty of other covers that are doing this, so if you know of any particularly good ones, share them in the comments. I’m also interested in your take on this trend. Do you like it? Do you find it as a way to turn off readers or perhaps lead them into other books that they’re not ready for?
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
June 14, 1941. Fifteen-year-old Lina Vilkas is sitting in her bedroom in Lithuania, ready to compose a letter to her cousin Joana, when a violent pounding on the door startles her. With that noise, her life is upended, as officers of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, barrel into her family’s house and take Lina, her mother Elena, and her brother Jonas prisoner. Separated from her father, a university provost, Lina and her family are forced onto a caravan of train cars, then sent on a perilous journey across Lithuania and Russia, all the way to Siberia and the Arctic Circle. While enduring starvation, abuse, and excruciatingly difficult labor picking beets in a work camp, Lina nevertheless manages to endure these hardships through the few things she has left–her family; her desperate belief that her father, sent to a Soviet prison, is still alive; the kind boy, Andrius, that she meets along the way, and her love for art. As Lina witnesses the horrific treatment of her fellow prisoners, fears for her younger brother’s heath, and desperately wishes for the life she has left behind, she continues to draw the atrocities that are happening around her and the people she has met along the way. This art both sustains her, serving as a record of her experiences, and gives her hope: as she passes her drawings through other prisoners’ hands and through the mail, she retains the hope that her father will somehow find them, and realize that they are still alive.
I am ashamed to say that before Between Shades of Gray, I had not realized what happened to the residents of Lithuania and other Baltic region countries in the 1940s, where the ‘educated’ and ‘professional’ citizens were listed as anti-Soviet, and were rounded up to be sent as slaves to Siberia. Wrested away from their homes, which were seized as Soviet possessions, these citizens were treated as criminals, separated from their families, and sentenced to hard labor, little food, and utter cruelty.
Sepetys based Between Shades of Gray on her own family’s history, which lends an extra sense of gravity to the plot unfolding in its pages. While Lina does get to stay with her mother and younger brother as they journey the 6,500 miles from Lithuania to Siberia (a map depicting their journey is included at the beginning of the novel), this is only because of her mother’s sacrifice, who bribes a guard with a precious family heirloom to prevent him from taking Lina’s brother Jonas away. As Lina states simply, “Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning, my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.” Sepetys depicts the familial bond so strongly in this novel, as the reader can feel the devotion that Lina’s mother has for her children, and the desperation that Lina has to keep both her mother’s and Jonas’ spirits alive.
The other supporting characters, who the Vilkas family meet when they are first herded into a stuffy, cramped, and unsanitary train car, also become their surrogate family. The bald man, who injured his leg trying to escape, and whose complaints become a cantankerous soundtrack to their journey, is nevertheless treated with never-ending compassion by Lina’s mother. Ona, who was dragged from the hospital minutes after giving birth, struggles to breastfeed her newborn child. And Andrius Arvydas is a gentle, yet often infuriating, voice for her to talk to. The community this group forms, which tragically diminishes throughout their incarceration, is strong and inspiring.
While Lina does meet Andrius, a boy her age, there is no sweeping romance that overwhelms the utterly serious narrative. And this is as it should be. The history presented in this novel needs to stand on its own. Yes, it is humanized by Lina and her family, who give us a window into the lives that Stalin’s regime destroyed. But these characters and their humanity can, and should, be enough, should not be overshadowed by stolen kisses or angsty crushes.
Sepetys’ writing is spare and beautiful, full of simple descriptions that utterly fit the serious subject matter. Lina’s brief flashbacks to her life before the Soviet raid are well-placed, complementing the present-day narrative and giving the reader an emotional juxtaposition to the carefree, well-to-do life that the Vilkas family enjoyed prior. Well-researched and well-plotted, this book does not simply end, as there were no happy endings for these citizens, whose entire lives were transformed. As Sepetys noted in her Author’s Note, the prisoners who lived spent ten to fifteen years in Siberia, returning to a transformed Lithuania, where they were still treated as criminals, evildoers who were forced to keep their imprisonment and abuse a secret.
And a secret it was, to so many people. Between Shades of Gray brings a horrific period of history to the forefront, imbuing it with emotion, humanity, and hope. This book will not let us forget. As Lina noted with horror, “Two Soviets pulled a priest down the platform. His hands were bound and his cassock was dirty. Why a priest? But then…why any of us?”
Copy received from Pam at Iwriteinbooks.
Illegal by Bettina Restrepo
I read and book talked a book a couple years ago by Will Hobbs called Crossing the Wire which still sticks with me today — it’s one of those books where the story and the character just won’t leave. It’s about 15-year-old Victor who crosses the border from Mexico into the US illegally, in hopes of finding stable work to make money for his family back in Mexico. It’s not an easy story to read, and it’s one where you as a reader must set aside any of your political feelings in order to really grasp at the stakes.
When I heard about Bettina Restrepo’s Illegal — a story of a soon-to-be 15-year-old girl’s decision to cross the border from Mexico into Texas to find her father (and a way to make money to save their struggling farm), I was immediately intrigued. We need more stories like Hobbs’s, and while this story does compare nicely, I think it let me down a bit in execution and development. However — and this is a huge however — I think that Restrepo might be opening up a whole new world to readers and to writers. I think she’s offered up a ton of interesting fodder to work with, and that in and of itself is a huge accomplishment.
When Nora’s father left her family three years ago to find work in Houston, he promised to be back in time for her quincenera. This is a huge deal to Nora, who, along with her mother and grandmother, live in a remote area of Mexico, in a down that dies a little more each day with its poverty. Fortunately, her father’s been good about sending money regularly. That is, until just before her 15th birthday and suddenly, her world is turned upside down. Why did her father stop sending money? Is he coming back like he promised? Or did something much darker happen?
Nora decides she and her mother need to investigate, and she convinces her mom they should pay a coyote to get them across the border, into Houston. And this is where the story begins, as we see these two learn to navigate a new city, a new country, a new language, and a new way of doing things. Not only that, but they’re there to find Nora’s father, and it’s through the underground network of people in their neighborhood they are able to find him — and that’s about all I can say without spoiling the story.
Illegal didn’t really convince me. I thought that the story was good and I liked the plot of it, but the actual execution of the story never came together. There were a lot of elements going into the story, and there was a lot of really interesting fodder to pull from, but it didn’t seem to me a lot of the strings that could have been explored were. There wasn’t enough emotional thrust behind the story — despite knowing what Nora and her mother were doing was incredibly dangerous — to make me connect to them at all. When I read Hobbs’s book, I immediately connected with Victor. I wanted him to succeed and I really cared about what he was doing and why he was doing it. In Illegal, I didn’t. It seemed too convenient that the entire adventure would transpire immediately before her 15th birthday and no time sooner or later. I know why this birthday was so important to her, and I wanted her father to be there with her. But the fact he disappears at that time worked too well for me. Perhaps I would have appreciated it more had the birthday been an incidental, rather than a key plot point in the story. I also didn’t get enough trepidation when Nora and her mother snuck across the border. Rather, I got more of Nora’s anger with the coyote. I wanted to smell and feel the fear, but I couldn’t.
Nora as a character read really young to me, which might have been part of the challenge I had connecting with the story as a whole. She makes a lot of very adult decisions — something I appreciate — but her voice feels very young. In convincing her mother to follow her (much less let HER cross the border), I feel like she should sound older and wiser, but she doesn’t. When she comes to Houston, she again asserts her decisions and power via more fist force than voice. As a reader, I wanted more insider knowledge of Nora, but I’m not given the access. Even though the story’s told in her perspective, I still needed more. It makes sense to me why she is almost 15 in the story (she needs the maturity to rationalize and make these big decisions), but I wanted a voice to match. Part of this had to do with the writing, as well, as the sentences and descriptions came off choppy and uneasy in parts.
I was also a little frustrated by the appearance of another character in the story, as if by magic. As a reader, I was forced to believe in this happening without much back story, and I didn’t. I didn’t want to suspend my belief in this story once because it is based in so much reality and there is such an audience for these books, but I had to do it a little too much.
What worked for me though was the use of the underground system. Even though Nora and her mother are dropped off in the middle of Houston, a city where they do not speak the language or know a soul, they’re immediately accepted into a community. They’re given jobs and they’re given insider information for survival. Even though they’re foreign and everything should be horrifying to them (which it is, don’t get me wrong), there is a built-in support system for them in their neighborhood. This is reality, and I think it’s something that’s not explored a whole lot in fiction. In her author’s note, Restrepo thanks some of the people she met at Fiesta (a Texas grocery chain that caters to a Mexican patronage); I love this because it’s clear she’s done her researched and talked to people, and she’s worked to make this as honest and realistic as possible. It’s through this underground system, too, that Nora and her mother learn about her father. It’s also through here that Nora and her mother begin to meet people, and it’s here Nora can pursue some of the things she’s only heard about from the girls she’s met at the local pool, like school.
As I alluded to, though, something Restrepo does with her book is open the doors to future stories like this. She’s opened up a ton of interesting threads for books that I’d love to read — I want to know the immigrant experience that Nora has. I want to see a whole book of her navigating the school system. I want a whole book of her crossing the border. I want a whole book of her learning how to speak English and how she could possibly determine for herself if what she did was the right thing or wrong thing. I want a whole book, too, on what she does when she reaches 18 and realizes she has to figure out how to get a job. These are the stories that happen every single day and yet don’t get much attention. Politics aside, they’re incredibly rich with real emotion and real decision making, and there is a well of potential characters and stories waiting to emerge.
That said, while this book didn’t work for me, it will reach many readers. It’s one I’m glad we have out there, as Nora’s voice and story will resonate with people. I’d hand this to those who liked Hobbs’s story, but I’d also hand it to anyone looking for a good story about contemporary events. The book is appropriate for tweens through older teens, and I think it’s one that can be book talked exceedingly well, particularly to middle school students or early high schoolers. There’s not a lesson to be learned here, and readers will appreciate that they’re not being lectured to while reading the story.
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