accidents

Review: Blind by Rachel DeWoskin

| Tasha

blind

Blind by Rachel DeWoskin

When Emma was 14 watching fireworks with her family, a rocket backfired and hit the crowd, burning Emma across her eyes and leaving her blind.  Emma has to learn how to live as a blind person, pitied by everyone but mostly by herself.  She learns to walk with a cane after months of sitting on the family couch not doing anything at all.  She is sent to a special school where she learns to read braille and yearns to be back with her best friend at normal high school.  After working hard for a year, Emma manages to progress enough to be allowed to return to normal high school, but everything has changed.  Not only is it difficult being blind there, but a classmate has been found dead.  Now Emma has to figure out how to process the girl’s death without becoming the PBK – Poor Blind Kid again.

DeWoskin has written a complex book here.  The heart of it, Emma’s blindness is brilliantly captured.  Readers will learn about the limitations of being blind, but also how it makes to listen differently and with more attention than before.  The small coping mechanisms are fascinating, such as always wearing a tan bra so that you know it won’t show through any of your shirts and the fact that blind girls still wear makeup, but theirs has to be labeled in a way you can touch. 

Emma is a great heroine.  Her grieving process is clearly shown as is her determination to return to normal.  She is strong but not too strong, so that she is fully human on the page.  When Emma creates a group of students who meet secretly to deal with the girl’s death, the book slows.  While it is an interesting device to show how teens can come together to help one another grieve and heal, it is far less compelling than Emma’s own journey. 

A book that will reach beyond those interested in visual impairment, this teen novel shows the resilience of a girl suddenly blinded but who discovers an inner strength she had never realized she had.  Appropriate for ages 13-17.

Reviewed from ARC received from Viking.

Review: The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider

| Tasha

beginning of everything

The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider

After finishing the galley for this book, I was surprised to find that the title has been changed.  I think it’s an unfortunate choice, since Severed Heads, Broken Hearts was a title that really reflected what the book is about.  I will also try to cope with the sunny yellow of the new cover, something that also jars me compared to the muted colors of the original cover.  But enough with my confusion, on to the real review!

Ezra was one of the popular kids at school.  Captain of the tennis team, he struggled to keep his sarcastic humor from confusing his teammates.  Then in one moment, his entire life changed.  Leaving a party after finding his girlfriend “entertaining” another boy, he was struck by a car and his entire athletic career disappeared in an instant.  Now he has to walk with a cane, has lost his girlfriend entirely, and also lost touch with his group of friends.  None of them came to visit him in the hospital or at home during his recovery.  So the first day of school after the accident has him wearing all black, pale from being indoors all summer, and sitting by himself in the front row of the bleachers since he can’t climb any higher without being a spectacle.  His childhood best friend sits next to him, someone who has also known tragedy, and who is no longer friends with Ezra.  But tragedies do strange things, close some options and open others.  The question is whether Ezra has the courage to reinvent himself.  The hot redhead doesn’t hurt things either.

Told in the voice of a John Green novel with intelligence and lots of humor, this book hooks you from the very first with its tale of a beheading at Disney World.  Schneider writes with a great deal of confidence here, taking readers on a journey of rediscovery that involves debate teams, rivalries, jealous ex-girlfriends, and lots of fun along the way.

Schneider has written teens who read like real people.  They are all complex, interesting and unexpectedly tangible.  Even the support characters are funny and intriguing, leading me to want to know more about them as well.  Though readers may see the ending coming, it is entirely satisfying to see it play out.  Schneider does not back away from tragedies, embracing them instead as moments of change and courage. 

Strong writing, great characters and plenty of puns make for a book that teens should love, no matter what the title is.  Appropriate for ages 15-18.

Reviewed from digital galley received from Edelweiss.

Review: My Life in Black and White by Natasha Friend

| Tasha

my life in black and white

My Life in Black and White by Natasha Friend

Lexi has always been known as the beautiful girl.  Her sister Ruthie is the smart one.  Her best friend Taylor is the fun one.  But that all changes when Lexi and Taylor go to a high school party.  When Lexi sees her best friend together with her boyfriend, she thinks her world has ended.  But then she is in a car accident and her face goes through the windshield.  Now Lexi has to figure out how to go on after losing the one thing that defined her beyond everything else, her beauty.  Plus she has to face it all without her best friend or her boyfriend by her side.  It’s like she lost everything in one single night, and maybe she did.

Friend excels at honesty in her teen novels.  Lexi starts out as a fairly vain young woman but after her series of disasters, readers are firmly on her side.  It is wonderful to see a book that takes the time to explore the process of grief, anger and finally acceptance so fully.  Lexi is a young woman who is strong, vital and much more than her face.  As the book proceeds, readers see beyond the beauty just as Lexi herself is discovering that there is more to her as well.

The writing here is clear and clean.  Friend explores not just Lexi’s relationship with her friends, but also how her sister is affected and how her parents cope.  There are no easy situations here, her father wants to fix everything and her relationship with her mother completely shatters.  There are sexual situations in this book, making it firmly a teen novel more appropriate for high school audiences.

There is plenty of pain in this novel, plenty of growth, but it is also smart and funny, just like Lexi herself.  Appropriate for ages 16-18.

The Properties of Water

| Tasha

63576099

The Properties of Water by Hannah Roberts McKinnon

Released October 26, 2010

For Lace, the lake she has grown up living on has been an integral part of her childhood and her life.  All of the seasons of the lake, as well as the sounds and smells of it, are the background to her days.  When her older sister, Marni, is injured jumping into the lake from a height, Lace is unable to return to her beloved lake or even to the city’s swimming pool.  Lace works to continue having some order to her life, but her mother is hours away caring for her sister, her father is grieving himself, and her grandparents dart in and out of her summer.  There is the new family care giver, Willa Dodge, but Lace sees her as an invader and perhaps even a thief.  One happy part of her summer is that an older boy is paying attention to her.  As Lace faces her first summer without her older sister, she begins to realize that everything has changed and she can do very little to repair any of it.

Written with a clear voice, this book has lustrous prose that makes Lace’s struggles come beautifully to life. 

To show the author’s skill with words, I have to share one passage, though there were many to choose from:

He sinks on the bench beside me, and we sit, shoulder to shoulder, like two battered bookends holding up all the sadness in the world.  This time I put my arm around him, and Cinder wedges under the bench beneath us, his black fur collecting our tears like gemstones.

This is a book about grief and the horrible time when grieving seems like the wrong thing to be doing, but forward motion is impossible too.  It is the story of a loving, devoted family torn apart by an accident.  It is Lace’s story and the lake’s story.  It is about the power of nature, the horror of brain injury, and the healing powers of time and love (as well as a great dog). 

This very short book by today’s standards is a small jewel.  It is dazzling as it shows emotions so thoroughly that it is like readers are experiencing it themselves.  Her prose is deep and radiant, but never leaves a young reader puzzling.  Rather her images are taken straight from the world of the lake, of summer and of sadness.

Highly recommended, this book is a great choice for tweens who will understand everything that Lace is feeling.  Appropriate for ages 11-13.

Reviewed from ARC received from Farrar Straus Giroux.