What I Carry

What I Carry  by Jennifer Longo, 2020

Recommended for grades 9 and up; realistic fiction

I was excited when this book came out back in January because I loved the author’s previous book, Up to This Pointe. Here’s a link to the blog post I wrote at the time. Not only was the subject matter meaningful to me, but I enjoy Longo’s writing style. In my opinion, Up to This Pointe didn’t get nearly the amount of critical acclaim that it deserved. What I Carry has fared a little better, earning multiple starred reviews. But again, I feel like it deserves more attention than it’s gotten. So far, it’s my favorite YA book of 2020.

Muiriel is seventeen years old and about to age out of the foster care system. For most of her childhood, she’s followed a very specific personal philosophy of self-reliance, minimalism, blending in, and never staying in the same place for very long. This year, though, her social worker Joellen wants her to stay in the same placement for the whole academic year. Muiriel’s good grades and flawless behavioral record mean that she’s on track to succeed in life, despite the financial difficulties that inevitably come with aging out of the system. But her college prospects won’t be very good if she has to switch schools in the middle of her senior year. Secretly, Muiriel isn’t planning on going to college anyway. But she reluctantly agrees to do her best to stay in one home for the one year she has left.

Still, Muiriel doesn’t believe in putting down roots anywhere, so it’s almost a bad thing that her new home turns out to be so perfect. Her foster mother Francine gives her plenty of freedom and, as Muiriel quickly discovers, is sympathetic to all the hardships of life in the foster care system. Muiriel lands her dream job as an intern at an environmental education center, where she gets to walk around the woods and talk to elementary school groups about “wilderness ethics”. Muiriel idolizes her namesake, nineteenth-century naturalist John Muir, so “wilderness ethics” are her passion, and she loves working with kids. Also, almost against her will, she quickly makes two close friends, Kira and Sean. The only real problems in Muiriel’s new life are the mean-girl clique-of-two at school and a creepy coworker. Later, Muiriel successfully stands up to both of them, despite her personal policy of avoiding conflict at all costs. (That record of perfect behavior depends upon invisibility)

Much of the book revolves around the development of Muriel’s various new relationships. Francine ends up being like a mother to her after all, and Muiriel particularly bonds with the dog. She predictably falls in love with her friend and environmentalist coworker Sean, and there are a few sweet passages just about their romantic dates. Kira and Muiriel develop a friendship based upon mutual vulnerability and supportiveness. Meanwhile, Muiriel is keeping tabs on Zola, a girl she knew from her previous foster home. For most of the book, Zola seems like a fairly inconsequential minor character, but she ends up playing a pivotal role towards the end of the book when Muiriel puts her perfect record on the line to stand up for Zola.

Like many YA novels about high school seniors, the book ends with everyone figuring out the details of their own respective bright futures. In Muiriel’s case, this bright future looks very different from what she’s had in mind for the last several years. She’s undergone a lot of character development. In particular, she’s come to the realization that sometimes, it’s okay to rely on other people, if only because you care about them and want to keep them in your life. Sometimes, it’s even okay to risk your perfect reputation for the sake of helping the people you love. In other books by other authors, this positive life lesson would usually come across as being overly sappy, but in this book, it’s genuinely encouraging and uplifting.

Throughout the narrative, there are occasional passages that describe certain items Muiriel has squirreled away before leaving her numerous past foster homes. These secret treasures go against Muiriel’s personal rules about packing light and having minimal possessions, and she acknowledges that John Muir, who had the same personal rules, would disapprove. In fact, since she technically stole each of these items, they also break her rules about never doing anything that could tarnish her reputation. Muiriel can’t fully explain why she feels the need to carry these random items with her, but most readers will pick up on the fact that these items have significance beyond their practical purpose. Deep down inside, Muiriel does attribute value to objects based on how she acquired them. The passages describing these items gradually reveal episodes from Muiriel’s past and elements of her personality and mindset that she doesn’t always even consciously realize.

I really enjoyed the writing and the character arcs in this book and would highly recommend it to teenagers who like realistic fiction. Some of the characters are more believable than others, (Sean and Francine in particular are too perfect to be realistic) but all of the main characters are so likable that this is the kind of book that leaves the reader feeling happy for the characters’ accomplishments and sorry for their hardships. Besides, this is a book that makes some meaningful points, not only the central messages about dependence and independence, but also about self-discovery, fitting in, planning your future, and, of course, Muiriel’s favorite topic, the role of humans in the natural world. Many of these topics are universally relevant for teen readers.

This book is also a poignant commentary on the foster care system. Muiriel herself has not been the victim of any especially egregious abuses of the system, but her story shines some light on the harmful misconceptions that many people have and the difficulties of life without a permanent family. The author’s note reveals that Longo’s own daughter used to be a foster child before Longo adopted her, and that Muiriel’s story is inspired and informed by interviews with numerous other people who are or used to be foster children. It’s a topic that only recently has been discussed in literature for young readers. I think it’s an important one, both for people whose life stories are similar to Muiriel’s, and for people who have never experienced foster care and wouldn’t otherwise know anything about what it’s like.

Every Missing Piece

Every Missing Piece  by Melanie Conklin, 2020

Recommended for grades 4-8; realistic fiction, mystery

Eleven-year-old Maddy Gaines isn’t supposed to call 911 anymore. The local law enforcement in her small North Carolina town is tired of all the false alarms. Nobody really blames her, they’re just “concerned”. The grown-ups all understand that Maddy’s anxieties are a response to her father’s sudden accidental death a few years ago. But after an incident in which Maddy called the police on a suspicious-looking (but innocent) man at the roller skating rink, the sheriff warned that there will be “consequences” if she keeps on “crying wolf”. So when Maddy meets a new boy who she’s pretty sure is Billy Holcomb, a kid who was kidnapped six months ago, she doesn’t raise the alarm right away.

Maddy already knows a lot about the Holcomb case. Her anxiety and her obsession with safety caused her to pay close attention to the story when it was current news. Now it’s up to her to investigate Eric, the new kid, to find out if he really is Billy. She eventually enlists the help of her best friend Cress. The problem is that Eric and his mother are staying in a trailer belonging to the Jessup family, and Maddy is in a turf war with the Jessup boys, especially her classmate Diesel. Maddy has to sneak around just to hang out with Eric, even after the two become legitimate friends. And Eric’s mother Kelsey is unfriendly and doesn’t like to let Eric socialize. Maddy just sees that as further evidence that Kelsey is a kidnapper.

Meanwhile, Maddy is dealing with the emotional turmoil that comes with a parent’s remarriage. Stan is a great guy, but he’s not Dad, and there’s an emotional barrier between him and Maddy. Stan takes her on geeky field trips every week, and sometimes Maddy actually does enjoy them, but she isn’t willing or able to have real, heart-to-heart conversations with Stan.

The story takes a sudden turn at a town event when Maddy’s mother recognizes Kelsey as an old acquaintance  just as Billy Holcomb’s father shows up. Maddy’s mother, Stan, and Mr. Jessup help Kelsey and “Eric” hide from Mr. Holcomb and the whole story comes out. Maddy was right all along; Eric is Billy Holcomb and it was Kelsey who kidnapped him. But it turns out that Kelsey really is his mom, and she only kidnapped him because Billy’s father was abusive and dangerous. Maddy is initially reluctant to trust Kelsey, especially because she knows that Kelsey had been in jail for a while. But after Kelsey and Billy start staying with Maddy’s family, she comes to the realization that Mr. Holcomb is the real danger and that Kelsey is on the right track to building a better life for herself and her son.

Conklin deals tastefully with the complex and sensitive issues of childhood trauma, grief, and child abuse, as well as the more commonplace issues of middle school social life. (Cress is more interested in boys and makeup than Maddy is, and when Maddy starts keeping secrets because of Eric/Billy, it causes rifts between the two girls. It doesn’t help that Cress has a crush on Maddy’s nemesis, Diesel Jessup.) There’s also Kelsey’s troubled past. While the book doesn’t go into the details very much, Kelsey’s story does involve drugs and incarceration. Again, these issues are approached with the tact and sensitivity to make them appropriate for a preteen audience.

Maddy is a believable character who experiences understandable emotions and worries. The other characters are likewise believable, generally well-developed, and notably different from one another. A few of the adult characters, such as Stan and Maddy’s teacher, seem almost a little too good to be true, although Conklin smooths this out by emphasizing that Stan is a hopeless dweeb and that Maddy’s teacher was an aspiring actress who chickened out on following her true dream. At the same time, characters who initially seemed like bad guys aren’t actually so terrible. Kelsey is a well-meaning mom with a troubled past, and even Diesel Jessup isn’t really such a bully. He thought that his war with Maddy was just a game all along. The only real bad guy in this story is Mr. Holcomb. At one point, Stan told Maddy that he hoped there was hope even for people like Mr. Holcomb. A major theme in this book is the idea that people are basically good and that there’s no flaw or mistake so great that a person can’t overcome it. (With the possible exceptions of child abuse, stalking, and violence)

The other major theme is recovery from grief. The book’s title apparently refers mostly to the holes left in Maddy’s life by the loss of her father. Stan isn’t just a “missing piece” that can fill Dad’s role, nor can friends like Cress and Eric/ Billy make Maddy’s life whole again. But that doesn’t mean that Maddy and her mom can’t find a happy life for themselves now. By the end of the book, Maddy has finally started to bond with Stan, and she has found out that her mother and stepfather are expecting a baby. I thought that the story ended a little abruptly, but it ended happily, with Maddy and Billy both looking forward to much better times to come.

Don’t Turn Out the Lights

Don’t Turn Out the Lights: A Tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark edited by Jonathan Maberry, 2020

Recommended for grades 3-8; short stories, horror

Not yet published; this review refers to an Advanced Reader Copy from NetGalley

The subtitle and a somewhat lengthy editor’s foreword at the beginning of this book introduces it as a tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, and as such, it’s sure to attract a lot of eager readers. Although the book as a whole is much longer than the immensely popular Scary Stories books, and most of the individual short stories are longer than Schwartz’s stories, too, it’s still similar enough in genre and appeal factors that I would absolutely recommend it to children who’ve already read (and thoroughly enjoyed) all of the Scary Stories books, especially if they’re ready for something slightly more advanced. The foreword also implied that this book is not just for kids, but since the protagonists are mostly preteens and the reading level is at an upper-elementary-school level, I expect that this book will be most popular with fourth and fifth graders.

As you would expect from a multi-author short story collection like this, the thirty-five stories vary widely in style and tone. They even vary a little in terms of target audience and sub-genre. For example, there are several stories like The Skelly-Horse by T.J. Wooldridge that describe a scary, ghostly creature without including much of a plot, but other stories like The Green Grabber by D.J. MacHale, The Neighbor by Amy Lukavics, and Lint Trap by Jonathan Auxier are much longer with detailed plotlines and, in some cases, twist endings. There are stories about cursed objects and stories about haunted houses, but then there are a few with sci-fi vibes like The Open Window by Christopher Golden and The Tall Ones by Madeleine Roux. Umbrella Man by Gary A. Braunbeck and In Stitches by Michael Northrop almost sound more like urban legends than literary short stories. And Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board by Margaret Stohl is based on the common slumber party game, but told in a narrative story fashion with its own characters.

My personal favorite was probably Pretty Girls Make Graves by Tonya Hurley. The main character Mona is an unpopular middle school girl who talks the cheerleaders into coming over for a sleepover by promising that they’ll do makeovers. Her mom is a professional makeup artist. She’s been forbidden to ever use her mother’s work makeup, but, lured by the promise of popularity, she sneaks it out of her mother’s room and uses it on all of her guests. But it turns out that she didn’t know as much as she thought she did about her mother’s job and what that makeup was for.

A close second was Tag, You’re It by N.R. Lambert, in which a boy is repeatedly tagged in online photos with a creepy doll-like creature. At first, he thinks the pictures are bizarre recreations of his own photos, but then he realizes that he’s in the background in all of them. The doll is stalking him and posting pictures of him. This continues happening even when he thinks he’s alone.

I can’t honestly say that I loved each and every one of the stories, but that’s beside the point. I can appreciate that this book contains enough variety that any reader who likes spooky stories will find at least a couple that match their personal favorite flavor of horror. While this book certainly won’t be topping my Best of the Year list, it’s well worth reading and absolutely deserves a space on the shelf in a library’s middle-grade fiction collection.

Grown

Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson, 2020

Recommended for grades 10+; realistic fiction, thriller

Not yet published; this review refers to an Advanced Reader Copy from NetGalley

Seventeen-year-old Enchanted Jones is an aspiring singer and songwriter with lots of natural talent but no formal vocal training. Her parents aren’t encouraging her musical career; they want her to focus on school, swimming, and helping care for her younger siblings. So it’s a dream come true when Enchanted catches the attention of superstar Korey Fields at an audition. He gives her singing tips, invites her to his private recording studio, and eventually even suggests that she come on tour with him. Enchanted’s parents initially don’t want her to go, but they do reluctantly sign the necessary paperwork with the understanding that she’ll keep up with her schoolwork and that Korey’s staff will care for her as the minor that she is.

What Enchanted’s family doesn’t know is that her relationship with Korey isn’t just a mentorship. Despite the eleven-year-age difference, they’re in love, just like in the Disney movies that Enchanted loves so much. They’ve been exchanging flirtatious text messages since the audition where they first crossed paths, and they’ve even kissed. Enchanted doesn’t mind that Korey is an adult. After all, her best friend Gab is three years younger than her boyfriend Jay. If Enchanted is at all concerned about the age difference, it’s only because she’s afraid Korey sees her as an immature child. But he’s been treating her as an intellectual equal and Enchanted is flattered.

While they’re on tour, though, Enchanted discovers that the beloved musical genius has a darker side. Sometimes, he’s still the sweet, romantic man she met back home, but other times, he’s angry and controlling. On one occasion, when Korey sees Enchanted talking to a boy at a party, he confines her to her room, forcing her to go without food and to go to the bathroom in a bucket for over a day. He also cuts off all communication between Enchanted and her family, takes away her phone, forces her to wear a wig that she hates, and breaks his promises about helping her record her own album. For a while, they stay at Korey’s lavish house in Atlanta where his rules are even stricter. Enchanted is a prisoner in her bedroom. But when the police come to do a welfare check, she tells them that everything’s fine. She’s too indebted to Korey to leave him.

Earlier, Enchanted heard that Korey has been accused of abuse and sexual misconduct, and now she’s gradually coming to the realization that it’s probably true.(Enchanted hasn’t had sex with him herself, but she knows that he’s having sex with a girl named Amber who is even younger than her.) Although Korey still characterizes their relationship as a romantic one and even talks about marrying Enchanted once she turns eighteen, the dynamic between them has changed. Enchanted lives in fear of upsetting Korey, not only for her own safety but also because he seems so emotionally fragile and has threatened suicide if she leaves him. He also tells her that her family is reliant on the money he’s been sending them, leading her to believe that they’d be in trouble if she were to fall out of Korey’s favor.

After finally admitting to an airplane stewardess that she does need help, Enchanted ends up back home. She’s traumatized and addicted to the codeine that Korey has been giving her. At the recommendation of a producer she met while touring with Korey, Enchanted tries to continue working towards her own music career, but she finds out that her parents were tricked into signing her to Korey’s label when they thought they were just giving her permission to go on tour. Worse than that, Korey is still stalking Enchanted. Sometimes, she gives in and goes to talk to him even though she recognizes now that he’s dangerous. When Enchanted and her parents try to talk to the police, they can’t prove any of their allegations. The police question Enchanted’s reliability, suggesting that she might be delusional. It doesn’t help that no one else remembers Enchanted’s good friend Gab. Even Enchanted starts to wonder if she just made up an imaginary friend and has been hallucinating everything.

This whole narrative is interspersed with brief chapters taking place later, in which Enchanted is at Korey’s murder scene, although she’s confused about what she’s seeing. It can’t be blood, she tells herself. It’s just beet juice. The last portion of the book shifts genre and becomes something of a thriller. Enchanted is the prime suspect in Korey’s murder and she must prove both her innocence and her sanity by finding out who actually killed Korey and where Gab is. Most reviews and plot summaries that I’ve seen of this book give the impression that the entire book is a murder mystery, but to me, the focus seemed to be on the ordeals that Enchanted faced prior to her abuser’s death.

A disclaimer at the beginning of the book mentions R&B artist R. Kelly but also distances this story from him, saying that this book is not really about his case. I wasn’t familiar with R. Kelly or the allegations against him, but from what I’ve learned from a few internet articles, it sure sounds like Korey Fields’ character is very closely based on him and that everything Korey did to Enchanted is something that R. Kelly allegedly did. That disclaimer also emphasized that the takeaway from this story should be that people like Korey are the bad guys and people like Enchanted are innocent victims. She was too young to understand the danger she was putting herself in or to recognize Korey’s manipulative tactics. Minors shouldn’t be expected to know better, but adults should. While it’s a valid and important point, it makes me question who the real target audience is for this book. Is this a cautionary tale for teens or is it a reminder to adults that teens need adult supervision and protection? The title Grown refers to the way that Enchanted sees herself, (and other characters like Amber say similar things) but to an adult reader, it’s blatantly obvious that Enchanted is a naive teenager. Perhaps this book really is intended to speak to both teens and adults about pedophilia and stranger danger, but if so, I feel like that dual message could have been better done.

In other regards, this book is pretty good. The basic story is interesting, the writing is engaging with lots of dialogue and a fast-moving plot, and the murder mystery element is intriguing. I personally found it awkward that the most pivotal plot point is so chronologically displaced, but I am guessing that’s deliberate. It emphasizes that Enchanted was traumatized and unclear on exactly what happened. In fact, even though it’s fairly clear that Enchanted was violently raped that night, that’s never explicitly stated in Enchanted’s own narrative voice because she evidently has no memory of that part. In fact, there’s some ambiguity as to whether there was sex earlier in the relationship that Enchanted doesn’t even remember due to drugs and emotional trauma. (It’s perhaps worth noting that, despite the topic of the book, it’s not graphically sexual at all.)

One element that I especially liked was the frequent allusions to Disney movies, especially The Little Mermaid. Not only is this a somewhat subtle way of underlining just how naive and romantically idealistic Enchanted is, but it also has a good deal of relevance to the plot. Enchanted and Ariel both fell in love with someone they didn’t really know, then went against their parents’ wishes to make a sacrifice that put them in an unfamiliar world where they were powerless. The difference is that Ariel willingly gave up her literal voice, while Enchanted unknowingly gave up her metaphoric voice (that is, her ability to speak for herself) in an attempt to start a career using her literal voice. “Voice” becomes a motif in the story; the last few chapters emphasize the importance of using one’s voice. While this is a very common motif in YA literature, it takes on an interesting additional connotation in the context of a story about a singer.

 

Echo Mountain

Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk, 2020

Recommended for grades 6-8; historical fiction

It’s 1934 and Ellie’s family has been living in a cabin on the mountain since losing their home in town due to the Great Depression. Twelve-year-old Ellie and her father are resilient, resourceful, and outdoorsy; they feel completely at home on the mountain. But Ellie’s fifteen-year-old sister Esther and their mother are townspeople at heart and miss their old lifestyle and friends. Ellie’s brother Samuel is only six, too young to help much with the manual labor necessary to survive on the mountain, but he’s eager to learn skills like fishing and foraging from Ellie. It’s up to Ellie to teach him because Father has been in a coma since an accident last winter. Everyone thinks that the tree fell on him because Ellie was in the way while he was chopping it down. Only Ellie and her father saw what actually happened: It was Samuel that was in the way. Esther hadn’t been watching him closely enough, and Ellie had had to push him out of the falling tree’s path. Ellie doesn’t want Esther or Samuel to feel guilty, so she is taking the blame until Father wakes up to set the record straight.

The story begins on the day that Maisie, the dog, gives birth. One of the puppies appears to die shortly after birth, but Ellie somehow senses it’s alive and dunks it into a bucket of water, thereby reviving it. Mother promises that Ellie can keep the puppy, which she names Quiet. Motivated by her success at bringing the puppy back to consciousness, Ellie then dumps water on her comatose father. She’s pretty sure she saw his hand move, but he doesn’t fully wake up. Ellie later follows this up with other healing attempts including a “medicine” made of balsam, her own tears, dew, and river water. She even lets a snake in his room in the hope that Esther’s scream will wake him. These schemes get her in trouble with Mother. One day while Ellie’s out fishing, Mother promises a neighbor to give him the puppies in exchange for a cow. Ellie is devastated to lose Quiet and is convinced that Mother did it to punish her.

Meanwhile, in her various errands around the woods, Ellie has encountered an unfamiliar dog several times. She comes to the conclusion that the dog must belong to a woman she knows only as “the hag” who lives higher up the mountain. When Ellie follows the dog one day, she comes to the hag’s house and finds that the woman has a serious leg wound and needs help. The hag, whose actual name is Cate, used to be a nurse and gives Ellie instructions about how to care for her wound. In her visits to Cate, Ellie also befriends Larkin, a boy who also lives on the mountain and has been carving little gifts for Ellie long before she met him in person. Although they don’t tell Ellie so right away, Cate is Larkin’s grandmother. Larkin’s father is dead, but he used to be a luthier who made instruments including the mandolin that Ellie’s own mother has. Although Ellie’s mother initially distrusts “the hag” and is angry at Ellie for prioritizing a stranger’s needs over her responsibilities at home, she undergoes some behind-the-scenes character development and eventually comes to respect Ellie’s resourcefulness.

A major theme of the story is learning by doing. There are several passages in which Ellie has conversations, either with Samuel or Cate, about the necessity of doing things you haven’t yet learned how to do. This theme plays into Ellie’s own character arc. Ellie displays realistic but subtle character development, starting with somewhat misguided trial-and-error healing attempts that sound more like magical spells than medicine, then learning actual tried-and-true home remedies from Cate, and eventually making educated guesses that turn out to work well. By the end of the book, she has gained respect for the town doctor’s skill and knowledge. But she has also earned his respect through all the care she’s given to Cate and her father.

This book falls on the line between middle grade and YA. I personally think that it’s best suited for readers about Ellie’s own age. Wolk’s writing style is intellectual and nuanced, full of quotable lines and insightful thoughts and interesting motifs. While Echo Mountain doesn’t rely as much on foreshadowing as Wolk’s 2016 book Wolf Hollow, the first few chapters of the book don’t tell the story exactly chronologically, which gives a similarly stylized effect. Besides the intellectual maturity, Ellie’s relationships with her family members, especially her mother, will sound very familiar to modern preteen readers.

In my opinion, this book doesn’t quite live up to the high standard set by Wolf Hollow, but it’s still a great book well worth reading. I would recommend it to preteens who enjoy survival stories. In some ways, it also reminds me of the 1959 Newbery Award Winner The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare.