Now that school is out for summer, teens can enjoy their freedom and relax with some great reads including these titles from their local library. Each of the following titles addresses a separate issue of freedom: freedom to dream and to fly, freedom to live with respect , dignity and love, and freedom to speak out for intellectual freedom.
Wings by Julie Gonzalez, Delacorte Press, New York, 197 pages
Flying in dreams is a wonderful fantasy. A boy in a new book, Wings, takes the fantasy a soaring leap beyond that. He believes one day wings will pop out of his shoulders. No one can talk him out of that belief, including his parents, who fear he will kill himself jumping from high places.
They have reason to worry. So sure is their son of his innate flying ability that he renames himself Icarus. In Greek mythology Icarus and his father fashioned wings of wax and feathers to escape from a labyrinth. Ignoring his father’s warning, Icarus flew too close to the sun. The wax melted and he plunged to his death in the sea.
Throughout the short novel Wings, the question floats out there: will this modern-day Icarus plunge to his death, too? In her first young adult book, author Julie Gonzalez describes the desire to fly with both imagination and realism. If there is a flaw in Wings it is that this fantasy is not written as a fantasy. It is meticulously constructed to convince one and all that the hope of flying by this second young Icarus is actually a possibility. Of course, the moment comes when he wants to leap off a railroad trestle over a high gorge to meet his destiny. Does he fly, or fall? The answer seems inevitable, rising somewhere as in a dream. But this is no dream.
Gonzalez, it is easy to conclude, has written a modern myth. Yet in all myths there should be unexpected truths and wisdom. The difficulty with Wings, and perhaps its failing, is pinpointing what truth, if any, it offers for young teens.
--Reviewed by Bonnie Taylor, author and Trustee of the Mid-Columbia Library System Board.
The Simple Gift by Steven Herrick, c2004, Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon and Shuster, New York, 188 pages.
Life hasn’t been kind to Billy Luckett. Fed up with his abusive, alcoholic father, sixteen-year-old Billy leaves home and hitches a ride to a small town where he finds shelter in an abandoned railroad car. Here, he makes the acquaintance of Old Bill, a transient with a tragic secret and Caitlin, a girl who works at the local McDonald’s where Billy scrounges for leftover food. Although worlds apart socially and economically, they form a ragtag sort of family.
Billy has an innate dignity and treats those around him with kindness. He gently forces Old Bill to give up his cheap alcohol for more nutritious foods. In return, he discovers a true friend and surrogate father. Caitlin sees beyond the poverty of Billy’s thieving for food and recognizes the potential in a boy who reaches out to others.
When the police and child protection authorities threaten to destroy Billy’s new-found independence, he receives a simple gift and the hope for a future with his new family and friends.
Herrick writes Billy, Old Bill and Caitlin’s story in a series of free verse poems. With clear imagery, we see Billy escape the oppression of physical abuse and failure at school for the freedom of learning to survive on his own. He makes mature choices and helps those around him as much as they help him. He’s willing to work to make his own way and soon progresses from stealing garbage, to sharing his bounty with Old Bill and his love with Caitlin.
--Reviewed by Marsha Bates, Information and Children’s Services, Kennewick Branch of the Mid-Columbia Library System.
The Sledding Hill by Chris Crutcher, c2005, Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, New York, 230 pages.
In his latest novel for young adults, Chris Crutcher, has written an endearing story about an issue near and dear to the heart of most authors and librarians…intellectual freedom.
Young Eddie Proffit is dealt a double blow when he loses his father and his best friend, Billy Bartholomew, to freak accidents within weeks of each other. The shock leaves him mute. But Billy isn’t about to let Eddie suffer, even if he has to haunt Eddie to prove it. When Reverend Tarter draws Eddies’ mother into the church family, Eddie goes along with it, until a sermon about the mark of Cain disturbs him with it’s overtones of bigotry.
In Eddie’s Really Modern Literature class, the librarian/teacher, Ms. Lloyd, assigns a novel, Warren Peece by Chris Crutcher (!) The members of Rev. Tarter’s church youth group voice objections to the frank language, homosexuality and abortion issues raised in the assigned novel. Soon a real war is taking place between the divided school board members, the student body and the members of Rev. Tarter’s church.
With his guardian angel’s help, Eddie realizes that he is in the unique position of hearing both sides of the story. He continues his Bible lessons with Rev. Tarter and in private, breaks his self-imposed silence to discuss the forbidden book with Billy’s dad, the school janitor. His involvement in the effort to keep the book from being banned lets Eddie move beyond his profound grief. In the climactic confrontation between both sides, Crutcher inserts himself as a character in the novel, a witness against censorship and for intellectual freedom, but one who allows the young people who enjoy his writing to eloquently explain why.
At first glance, this novel might seem self-indulgent on the part of Crutcher, but a closer look shows all the familiar elements we expect in his writing: subtle and not so subtle humor, over the top teen angst and rebellion and a quiet desperation from young people who are hurting. Certainly Crutcher’s work has faced many challenges over the years, almost as many as the number of awards his writing has received. In The Sledding Hill, he conveys a fairly balanced look at some real people, not all evil, not all good and does so with no frank or objectionable language, sex scenes, drug use or abuse.
--Reviewed by Marsha Bates, Information and Children’s Services, Kennewick Branch of the Mid-Columbia Library System.