Bradbury, Jennifer. (2008). Shift. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.
Grades 8 to 12.
The summer before college begins, Chris and Win set out on a bike trip that takes them from Georgia to Seattle. They make their way across the country “scamping” (“you know...sneak around, scam a free campsite”) and making friends with local girls. Along the way, however, Chris begins to understand that Win has a larger plan than just one last summer together as friends. Early in the trip, Chris discovers $20,000 cash in Win’s saddlebag, and, as they near the Montana and Washington border at the end of the summer, Win leaves Chris, stopped with a flat tire, in his dust. Now the FBI wants to know what really happened to Win, who hasn’t shown up at Dartmouth or spoken to his parents since the first week of the trip, and Win’s wealthy parents suspect Chris of foul play. Chris is baffled by the whole thing until he starts to get postcards from someone named “Tricksey H,” postmarked near a family farmhouse where they spent an interesting night toward the end of the summer. Chris, with the FBI on his tail, decides to track down Win to clear his own name and find out why his friend lied to him and ran away. This book is told out of sequence, with the odd numbered chapters being set in the fall, of Chris going to class and the FBI harassing him, and the even numbered chapters flashing back to the actual bike journey over the summer. Despite the nonlinear storytelling, the book has tightly structured emotional pacing to it, with the climaxes of both the stories lining up, and the flashbacks filling in the information gaps at the perfect moments within the rising and falling action. The story is, on the surface, told as a mystery, which hooks the reader in, but is ultimately about friendship, freedom, following one’s own path, and knowing what secrets to keep for and from your friends. It is a book about boys on the cusp of becoming men, and though sometimes Bradbury’s style of dialogue makes the male characters feel slightly feminized, the writer has created a solid book with cross-gender appeal.
Mitchard, Jacquelyn. All We Know of Heaven. HarperTeen, 2008.
Maureen and Bridget were best friends, the sort of friends who preferred to be called twins, though Bridget was always the dominant twin. They were the same height, had the same hair, wore the same size clothes, and both were one the cheerleading team in their small Minnesota town. They looked so much the same that when a horrible, mutilating car accident takes the life of one of them and puts the other in a brief coma, the hospital misidentifies the girls, assuming that since the car was Maureen’s that she was the one in the driver’s seat, allowing the wrong family to think that they just buried their girl. This mistake launches the now brain damaged and physically disabled Maureen in to the National spotlight, as she struggles to recover and deals with vitriol from Bridget’s family for being the one to survive. Maureen also falls into a relationship with Bridget’s boyfriend, who she had shared a moment with while Bridget was still alive, and they find comfort in each other’s arms. This rambling narrative is inspired by real events and is as melodramatic as a made-for-TV movie. It is an unstructured, rambling mess of events and emotions which takes at least 50 pages to find an ending. It spends the first 50 pages without a protagonist, since the intended protagonist is in a coma and though to be the other girl, which makes the book initially hard to follow and hard to care about, since the narrative perspective is unidentified. Maureen is an interesting and sympathetic protagonist not in spite of, but because of her aphasia and impulse control problems. However, the main thrust of the story is the romance between her and Bridget’s boyfriend Danny, which just isn’t an interesting enough love story to sustain the book, especially considering the number of times the writer allows them to break up and grow away from each other. A truly romantic teen reader might buy into the romance and enjoy that they find their way back to each other at the end, but the journey getting there for most readers is so repetitive and dull that they probably won’t read until the end.
Wolf, Allan. (2007). Zane’s Trace. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.
Grades 7 to 10.
Like the bridge Zaneville, the town for which he was named, Zane Guesswind is at his own Y-shaped crossroads. Most of his family had died off in tragic circumstances: his alcoholic father had a heart attack, his schizophrenic mother killed herself with a family heirloom riffle, and recently, his abusive grandfather died in his sleep. Zane, like Harold and his purple crayon, draws and writes things that appear to come true the walls of his room with sharpie markers. After his writing “causes” his grandfather to die, Zane takes off in his adult brother’s Barracuda and heads to his mother’s grave in Zaneville with the intention of using the riffle, “The Fool’s Fire-Hand,” to shoot himself. Along the way, he runs into many of his ancestors, who were mostly black slaves and American Indians, and picks up a hitchhiker girl who turns out to be the memory of his mother as a teen. At the grave, his brother, tipped off by the wall graffiti, waits there to meet him. This novel is written in a mix of poetry, prose, and screenplay-esque dialogue, which blend together in a somewhat nonlinear fashion to tell the full story of Zane’s situation. It is a blend of surrealism, magical realism, and metaphor, since Zane’s encounters could either be real, a poetic explanation of how his imagination processes things, or early signs of his own schizophrenia. The poetry is carefully worded and most of the poem/chapters would be effective as single poems. The screenplay dialogue bits flow naturally, and further the story in their own poetic way. The prose bits are the least effective; they are necessary to give voice to Zane’s ancestors, but the dense bits are jarring after the white space surrounding the rest of the words and aren’t quite as artfully crafted. There are many little clues surrounding the real identity of “Libba” that won’t be obvious to the reader on the first encounter of the book. This book is worth more than one read, since, at first read, the words flow pleasantly over the reader, allowing for a dip into Zane’s mind, while further readings show how artfully the narrative is constructed.
Grades 8 to 12.
The summer before college begins, Chris and Win set out on a bike trip that takes them from Georgia to Seattle. They make their way across the country “scamping” (“you know...sneak around, scam a free campsite”) and making friends with local girls. Along the way, however, Chris begins to understand that Win has a larger plan than just one last summer together as friends. Early in the trip, Chris discovers $20,000 cash in Win’s saddlebag, and, as they near the Montana and Washington border at the end of the summer, Win leaves Chris, stopped with a flat tire, in his dust. Now the FBI wants to know what really happened to Win, who hasn’t shown up at Dartmouth or spoken to his parents since the first week of the trip, and Win’s wealthy parents suspect Chris of foul play. Chris is baffled by the whole thing until he starts to get postcards from someone named “Tricksey H,” postmarked near a family farmhouse where they spent an interesting night toward the end of the summer. Chris, with the FBI on his tail, decides to track down Win to clear his own name and find out why his friend lied to him and ran away. This book is told out of sequence, with the odd numbered chapters being set in the fall, of Chris going to class and the FBI harassing him, and the even numbered chapters flashing back to the actual bike journey over the summer. Despite the nonlinear storytelling, the book has tightly structured emotional pacing to it, with the climaxes of both the stories lining up, and the flashbacks filling in the information gaps at the perfect moments within the rising and falling action. The story is, on the surface, told as a mystery, which hooks the reader in, but is ultimately about friendship, freedom, following one’s own path, and knowing what secrets to keep for and from your friends. It is a book about boys on the cusp of becoming men, and though sometimes Bradbury’s style of dialogue makes the male characters feel slightly feminized, the writer has created a solid book with cross-gender appeal.
Mitchard, Jacquelyn. All We Know of Heaven. HarperTeen, 2008.
Maureen and Bridget were best friends, the sort of friends who preferred to be called twins, though Bridget was always the dominant twin. They were the same height, had the same hair, wore the same size clothes, and both were one the cheerleading team in their small Minnesota town. They looked so much the same that when a horrible, mutilating car accident takes the life of one of them and puts the other in a brief coma, the hospital misidentifies the girls, assuming that since the car was Maureen’s that she was the one in the driver’s seat, allowing the wrong family to think that they just buried their girl. This mistake launches the now brain damaged and physically disabled Maureen in to the National spotlight, as she struggles to recover and deals with vitriol from Bridget’s family for being the one to survive. Maureen also falls into a relationship with Bridget’s boyfriend, who she had shared a moment with while Bridget was still alive, and they find comfort in each other’s arms. This rambling narrative is inspired by real events and is as melodramatic as a made-for-TV movie. It is an unstructured, rambling mess of events and emotions which takes at least 50 pages to find an ending. It spends the first 50 pages without a protagonist, since the intended protagonist is in a coma and though to be the other girl, which makes the book initially hard to follow and hard to care about, since the narrative perspective is unidentified. Maureen is an interesting and sympathetic protagonist not in spite of, but because of her aphasia and impulse control problems. However, the main thrust of the story is the romance between her and Bridget’s boyfriend Danny, which just isn’t an interesting enough love story to sustain the book, especially considering the number of times the writer allows them to break up and grow away from each other. A truly romantic teen reader might buy into the romance and enjoy that they find their way back to each other at the end, but the journey getting there for most readers is so repetitive and dull that they probably won’t read until the end.
Wolf, Allan. (2007). Zane’s Trace. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.
Grades 7 to 10.
Like the bridge Zaneville, the town for which he was named, Zane Guesswind is at his own Y-shaped crossroads. Most of his family had died off in tragic circumstances: his alcoholic father had a heart attack, his schizophrenic mother killed herself with a family heirloom riffle, and recently, his abusive grandfather died in his sleep. Zane, like Harold and his purple crayon, draws and writes things that appear to come true the walls of his room with sharpie markers. After his writing “causes” his grandfather to die, Zane takes off in his adult brother’s Barracuda and heads to his mother’s grave in Zaneville with the intention of using the riffle, “The Fool’s Fire-Hand,” to shoot himself. Along the way, he runs into many of his ancestors, who were mostly black slaves and American Indians, and picks up a hitchhiker girl who turns out to be the memory of his mother as a teen. At the grave, his brother, tipped off by the wall graffiti, waits there to meet him. This novel is written in a mix of poetry, prose, and screenplay-esque dialogue, which blend together in a somewhat nonlinear fashion to tell the full story of Zane’s situation. It is a blend of surrealism, magical realism, and metaphor, since Zane’s encounters could either be real, a poetic explanation of how his imagination processes things, or early signs of his own schizophrenia. The poetry is carefully worded and most of the poem/chapters would be effective as single poems. The screenplay dialogue bits flow naturally, and further the story in their own poetic way. The prose bits are the least effective; they are necessary to give voice to Zane’s ancestors, but the dense bits are jarring after the white space surrounding the rest of the words and aren’t quite as artfully crafted. There are many little clues surrounding the real identity of “Libba” that won’t be obvious to the reader on the first encounter of the book. This book is worth more than one read, since, at first read, the words flow pleasantly over the reader, allowing for a dip into Zane’s mind, while further readings show how artfully the narrative is constructed.