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Perry was born and raised in Blue River Co-Educational Correctional Institute. His mother discovered she was pregnant after she was incarcerated. The warden had herself named as the foster parent in order to keep Perry and his mom together.
That's the thing about Blue River. Warden Daugherty believes in treating the residents fairly and with respect. The residents, most of them, return the respect and work together to overcome the flaws that landed them in jail.
Perry has attended public school his entire life. But when he enters middle school, someone decides he needs a "real" family. Finally "outside", Perry only wants to be back with his mother and his family at Blue River.
A school project on local history gives Perry a chance to get the whole story behind his mother's arrest and sentence. His research opens the eyes of at least one classmate.
When he suspects that someone who claims to be looking into his mother's case is talking through his hat, Perry devises a genius "trap".
I suggest that you locate your tissues before you get too far into this book. There are several moving melancholy scenes in here.
More than 70 years ago, psychologist Rene Spitz first described the detrimental effects of emotional neglect on children raised in institutions, and yet, today, over 7 million children are estimated to live in orphanages around the world. In many countries, particularly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the rate of institutionalization of poor, orphaned, and neglected children has actually increased in recent years, according to UNICEF.
Orbiting Jupiter. Gary D. Schmidt. 2015. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.160 pages. [Source: Review copy]
Orbiting Jupiter is a great book: an emotional, compelling, coming-of-age story with an incredible focus on friendship and family and what it means to love someone.
Jack is the narrator of the book, and I absolutely loved, loved, loved him. I loved him from the start. Here's how the book opens: with Jack and his parents getting ready to welcome a very troubled boy into their home. Joseph, Jack's new foster brother, isn't like other eighth graders. He has a daughter he's never been allowed to see. He has a history of violence. And because of the institutions he's been in, he can freak out and overreact a bit. But Jack's family, well, they are good, solid, dependable, patient, heart-wide-open people ready to love and accept. From the day he walks into their home, they see him as family. And there's nothing Jack won't do to help his brother--sometimes that means giving him plenty of space, and not pushing him to talk, sometimes that means reassuring him that he's there for him, that he has his back, that he is not alone anymore.
But not everyone in the community is ready to welcome Joseph. In particular, some of the people at schools--some who should know better, others who probably don't--are not ready for Joseph. Some are openly hostile and just MEAN. Others treat him not as another human being, but, as a spectacle, a freak. But several teachers see through Joseph's past and come to really LOVE him and see that he's more than the choices he's made, that, he is in fact, really smart and capable of good. I both loved and hated the school scenes. There were a few times I was just so angry--like Jack--in Joseph's defense. And there were a few scenes I just found sweet.
Joseph's story slowly but surely unfolds, and, it is intense. I couldn't help liking Joseph and just caring for him and wanting the best for him.
Orbiting Jupiter is a bittersweet coming-of-age story that worked for me for the most part. But oh how I wish I could rewrite the ending! Not because this one doesn't feel good-enough or that it feels completely out-of-place, but, because it's just so achingly bittersweet.
Four people with radically different outlooks on the world meet on a train and start talking about what they believe. Their conversation varies from cool logical reasoning to heated personal confrontation. Each starts off convinced that he or she is right, but then doubts creep in. During February, we will be posting a series of extracts that cover the viewpoints of all four characters in Tetralogue. What follows is an extract exploring Sarah's perspective.
The stars finally lined up correctly, and not only did I finally manage to get my book donation for Book Train pulled together and packaged, I actually got it to the post office today and mailed it.
Book Train is an organization/site begun by author Lynda Mullaly Hunt "to connect people who are advocates for children and children’s literacy with people who will get book donations directly into the hands of kids." Specifically, into the hands of kids who are in foster care.
I'd been planning to make a book donation ever since I heard about this program. I had to mail a book to another group last week, so I thought it would be time and energy efficient to create two packages at once. Or was I moved to finally do this because I'm reading The Language of Flowers with its protagonist who has just come out of the foster care system? Hmmm.
0 Comments on The Book Train Has Left My Station as of 4/8/2013 8:52:00 PM
I think it's blue because that's my favorite color.
I think it's soft like flannel sheets in the wintertime.
I think Peace is full-- like a stomach after a real good dinner-- beef stew and corn bread or shrimp fried rice and egg rolls.
Even better
Than some barbecue chicken.
I think Peace is pretty--like my sister, Lili.
And I think it's nice--like my friend Clyde.
I think if you imagine it, like that Beatles guy used to sing about?
Then it can happen.
Yeah, I think
Peace can happen.
--Lonnie Collins Motion, aka Locomotion
Peace, Locomotion is a wonderful novel, very beautiful. It's a companion novel to Locomotion--a novel that was a finalist in the National Book Awards. But I haven't read the first book, and I still was able to appreciate it. So I think it is able to stand alone. (Though reading this one made me want to read the other.)
Locomotion is a twelve year old boy in the foster care system. He is separated from his younger sister, Lili. She's in another foster home. They were not able to be placed together. But that doesn't mean that they've stopped loving (and needing) one another. The novel is his letters to his sister. They show how very much he loves her; how very important family is to him. The letters have it all--good, bad, happy, sad. They journal his emotions, his life.
A beautiful little novel about family, about life, and what it means to belong.
It is not a verse novel. Though the book does contain a few poems. (Lonnie considers himself to be a poet.) Definitely recommended!
In Wayne, PA, you either look for stories or trust that stories will find you.
Yesterday, while yielding my often ill-behaving hair to the tres-talented MacKenzie of the always -superior Cole Wellness Spa (which sits directly in the square heart of Wayne), a certain Sean Guiney walked in. "He looks like Sting, don't you think?" MacKenzie said, and when I cocked my head slightly to the left, the guy kind of did.
Soon we were joined by Liz, the receptionist, and soon stories were flying, and soon Sean was talking about this organization that he founded in April 2009, Kids and Hope Foundation, Inc. He was talking, in particular, about the families who—no longer willing to live in their cars—have taken up residency among the tall trees and wild wolves and myriad deer of New Jersey's Pine Barrens. Without running water or electricity they live. Within the plastic walls of tents. Sending their children to school, or waiting for children to be born, and hoping, most of all, for a way out.
The rain comes down, the snow falls, there are floods, there is a freeze, there is the thick dark of long nights, there is a fiesty dog keeping the wolves at bay—and this, to many families, is home. Sean Guiney, a former auto mechanic, is doing all he can to raise $30,000 a year to help those in that needy place with everything from food and school supplies to the possibility of affordable housing.
That was some story—a story that left me thinking about gifts and Christmastime.
Just a week or so earlier, I'd encountered another story in Wayne. This time I was in a boutique buying a bracelet for a friend when Sharon McGinley looked at me and said, "Beth Kephart, right? Radnor High School?" Yes, I agreed, and she reintroduced herself—a former classmate who had, as it turned out, spent some time getting to know those now too old for foster care, but unprepared for life. "I heard the stories," she told me, "about those who needed bridging between childhood and adulthood, and about all of those who fell through the cracks. It seemed like something had to be done, and so I decided to try to do it." Eddie's House: Doorway to Adulthood is the pretty amazing result.
It's a bleak day here. I've been up since shortly after midnight, working. The rain is gray and the earth is brown, and no one I know wants to be outside. But there are many out in this weather today who don't have choices like I do. There are also, thankfully, those who have decided to assert themselves against the status quo.
This blog post is for them.
6 Comments on Bright Lights, last added: 12/14/2009
Your post made me stop and reflect on how fortunate I am. If each individual person would do one small thing to help someone in need, we could really make a difference.
We can't forget our blessings. It is important to take action in any way to help those in difficult circumstances. I can't imagine what they must be feeling each day as they try to navigate through such a tumultuous, frightening life.
Holly was now placed with a family of her own after years in a residential home for teens. Fiona and Ray seemed to want her, but it might turn out the same as the last place where she was sent back. Best that she leave on her own terms and head to find her mother in Ireland where she was waiting. Holly dons a blonde wig that makes her look much older than her 15 years and calls herself Solace. From London, she hitchhikes her way across Britain. On the way, she meets kindness in surprising places and finds out more about herself and her past.
There is magic in Dowd’s writing, filled with crystalline moments and complexity and no simple answers. This road-trip novel has the essential ingredient of slow progression in self-awareness. Holly is a complicated character, filled with bravado, anger and confusion. She is portrayed with so many layers, that just discovering her is a joy. Holly’s use of an alter ego to understand herself is drawn with caring and a supreme gentleness. There are moments of stillness in the novel where insight is just around the corner, but then life intervenes and the reader must wait patiently for the next moment to come.
Dowd uses the setting as almost its own character in the novel. Readers who have never been to Britain will still find themselves picturing it clearly in their head, hearing the birds, visiting the dark towns.
This is a beauty of a character sketch created by a gifted author whose career ended way too early. Highly recommended for fans of problem novels, this book will stun with the quality of the writing. Appropriate for ages 14-17.
If you haven't read one of Nancy Werlin's books...you really don't know what you're missing. Here are the books I have read (and loved): Rules for Survival, Double Helix, and Black Mirror. I can now add Impossible to the list. (If anyone is looking for books to read during the 24 Hour Read-a-thon, I'd definitely recommend Werlin!)
What can I say about Impossible? It's good. It's a page turner. It matches my high expectations in a Werlin novel. But that doesn't really do it justice, does it? Lucy Scarborough is our heroine. She's seventeen. It's spring. She's preparing for prom. Little does she know just how at risk she is to falling prey to the old-family-curse. A curse that she, of course, has no knowledge of. She's got her foster parents. She's got her best girl friend, Sarah, and her best guy friend, Zach. She's got a prom date, Gray. She's not quite carefree. She's a bit bothered that her birth mother, Miranda, has popped up in town again. Lucy always finds it hard to deal with her mentally ill, emotionally unbalanced, and homeless mother. But Lucy is full of hope for the future...
Back cover:
From the sting of my curse she can never be freeParsley, sage, rosemary and thymeUnless she unravels my riddlings threeShe will be a true love of mine
Jacket copy: Lucy has only nine months in which to break an ancient curse.
Lucy Scarborough is seventeen when she discovers that the women of her family have been cursed through the generations, forced to attempt three seemingly impossible tasks or to fall into madness upon their child's birth. How can Lucy succeed when all of her ancestors have tried and and failed? But Lucy is the first girl who won't be alone as she tackles the list. She has her fiercely protective foster parents beside her. And she has Zach, whose strength amazes her more each day. Do they have enough love and resolve to overcome an age-old evil?Inspired by the ballad "Scarborough Fair," this spellbinding novel combines suspense, fantasy, and romance for an intensely page-turning and masterfully original tale.
Your post made me stop and reflect on how fortunate I am. If each individual person would do one small thing to help someone in need, we could really make a difference.
We can't forget our blessings. It is important to take action in any way to help those in difficult circumstances. I can't imagine what they must be feeling each day as they try to navigate through such a tumultuous, frightening life.
Unbelievable, Beth... God Bless Sean and Eddie's House...
"Never underestimate the power of a small group of people to change the world" ~ Margaret Mead
Peace ~ Rene
Being a NJ native I will give Kids & Hope space on my blog to help get the word out :)
Hip hip hooray! Lots of cheers to everyone.
Heartrendering, thoughtful post dear friend. A wonderful reminder as well this is the season of giving. (Hugs)Indigo
I'm always so heartened by stories like these, of individual people making a real difference in the lives of others.
Truly Inspiring ~thank you for sharing.