The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean.

The winner of the Printz this year, White Darkness is a book that is impossible to summarize, intense, gripping, breathtaking and easily misunderstood.  It is a book that you travel deeper and deeper into, losing yourself in its coldness until nothing is surprising except for your all-encompassing wonder at the writing.

I consider this an impossible review to write.  First, this is a huge prize winner, so why am I trying and second it is truly impossible to write a summary of even the premise of the book without making it sound dull, strange and fragmented.  And while it is a strange book, it is far from dull and certainly not scattered in any way. 

OK, so I am reviewing it because I have heard from people that they either hate it or love it.  I obviously fall into the adoration category.  And I made a stink when Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian didn’t win the Printz and frankly there is no book I would rather have had beat it this year.  Though Alexie was still robbed of an Honor! 

I have sat here at the keyboard trying to summarize it, and typing, and deleting, and typing, and deleting, and taking a break, and typing, and deleting.  I can’t do it.  Let’s just say this:  This is a deeply disturbing quest into a girl’s psyche as the conflict in her body and mind are played out through a madman’s trip to Antarctica.  The language of the book, the pacing, the setting and Sym’s mental state all contribute to an icy slick of a book that is mesmerizing in its desperation. 

Confused?  Yeah, well, it’s the best I could do.  Read it yourself, and you try to sum it all up.  Anyway, the writing is flawless.  Sym is a complex character with layer upon layer of lies, self-deception, pain, and ice.  She is one of the most completely understandable and yet completely foreign characters I have ever read.  Amazingly written, she is not only the main character of the book, but the Pole of it.  The book is really all of us journeying toward Sym. 

And the writing goes beyond characterization.  At times it is breathtaking in its beauty, its ability to describe and through the description reveal a deeper truth.  Here is one of my favorite passages early in the book:

The long pink hours dyed the cloth of the tents and made them glow.  The wind rattled at the skeleton of the dead plane, tearing free the odd strut or piece of steel cladding to fall with a clanging clatter through the wreckage.

This is a book that lives in your mind, takes up its own space.  It is a book you enter into, submerge, and leave gasping.  It is simply wondrous.

Highly recommended to teens who are willing to journey deep into a character, try to survive and emerge out the other side changed.

Four Feet, Two Sandals by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed, illustrated by Doug Chayka.

This powerful picture book is a finalist in the Cybil Awards.  It is the story of two young girls living in a refugee camp in Peshawar on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Relief workers bring used clothes to the camp and Lina discovers a brand new sandal, bright yellow with a blue flower, but only one sandal, not a pair.  When Lina looks up, she sees another girl wearing the other half of the sandal pair.  The girls eventually speak together and start sharing the sandals, each wearing the pair for a day.  The sharing brings the girls closer together and they become friends.  Then one of the girls is lucky enough to leave for America, and the sharing of the sandals serves as a symbol of their friendship in the future.

The writing here is direct, simple and therefore powerful.  The destitution of the refugee camps is obvious in both the words and the illustrations, but neither are afraid to also show the humanity, the connections and the strange beauty of them as well.  At times the message of the book is a bit too strong, I think some of it could have been done with a gentler touch.  But the message is also an important one to have children understand the state of refugees in the world.

A good book to start discussions about war and its impact on children, it is appropriate for ages 7-11.