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Pocahontas is an excellent historical fiction read for ages ten and up. Bruchac did his work in researching and writing this 147 page book that dispels many of the Disneyfied myths of Pocahontas and John Smith.

Pocahontas is told by both the eleven-year-old Powhatan girl, daughter of the Great Chief or Mamanatowic, of the Powhatan people and Captain John Smith of England. The story covers the time from the voyage to the scene in Mamanatowic’s village, in which John Smith misinterpreted what had happened and thinks he was saved by Pocahontas.

Pocahontas is her everyday name. Mataoka is the name only her closest friends and family use. And Amonute is her formal name, a name meaning favored one and a name she will no longer be known by when her father passes on. She lives in the village Werowocomoco with her father. Her mother died but her father’s sisters care for her. Her mother would not have lived in the same town as her daughter, but rather with her own family.

The Tassantassuk, or Outsiders, have arrived on the shores of Chesepiock, the great salt bay, in their big swan canoes and are building a camp in one of the worst and most foolish places to try and live. John Smith has been on board the Susan Constant as a prisoner but is released when his name is read as one of the leaders on the council.

The story then follows the two cultures as they clash against each other and learn about each other. The Powhatans keep the English alive despite the English being offensive, rude and hostile (not to mention aggressive and violent).

Mamanatowick destroyed the Chesepiock people because of a prophecy that foretold that a great nation would rise from the Great Salt Water Bay and bring an end to Mamanatowic’s kingdom. So, he made war on them and the Piankatanks and then attacked and removed the Kecough people from their land. Now, a new threat, a more dangerous threat with their powerful thunder sticks, has cropped up.

Pocahontas never meets John Smith until his capture by her Uncle and the ceremony in which her father adopts him as one of his own sons. She never goes to the white man’s camp without her father’s permission and with escorts.  Mamanatowic thinks the ceremony has obligated John Smith to honor the Powhatan leader.

Captain Smith has his hands full getting the lazy men to work and to protect themselves and recover from assundry illnesses. He also engages in some political take overs and expeditions into the surrounding country. He is not captured until Dec. 1607 (they landed in April 1607). The Powhatan call him Little Red-Haired Warrior and he earns their respect with his courage and fighting skills.

We learn what it must have been like for both of them to be who they were and to live when they did. We learn that the Powhatan recognized five seasons: Cattapeuk (spring), Cohattayough (early summer), Nepinough (late summer), Taquitock (fall) and Cohonk (winter). “Everyone knows the earth prefers the touch of a woman’s hands,” Pcoahontas is told while she helps the resting women during their time in the Moon House.

When Smith is captured, Pocahontas hopes that he will join her people and help them get rid of the worthless and rude Tassantassuk. Smith lies to Mamanatowic about why the English are there and how they even ended up there. Pocahontas impulsively rushes forth when Smith’s head is lain upon the rocks in order to be the first to touch him so that she’ll always be the first of his relatives among her people.

When Smith returns to Jamestown, he is arrested and charged (but acquitted) for the deaths of the other men on the expedition up the Chickahominy River, in which he was captured. In September 1609, he is badly injured (possibly intentionally) and then someone attempts to assasinate him while he recovers. Pocahontas has become a frequent visitor and when he returns to England in October, she is told that he died.

Brucac includes in the end both a section on Early 17th Century English and the Powhatan Language. The author used all of Smith’s accounts in his research and also accounts of others. He gives us selected words and phrases in Powhatan, place names and Native names.

How to count to ten in Powhatan:

1. necut
2. ningh
3. nuss
4. yowgh
5. paranske
6. comotinch
7. toppawass
8. nusswash
9. kekatawgh
10. kaskeke

Bruchac primarily based his Native stories (of which preface Pocahontas’s chapters) on Powhatan and eastern Algonquin traditions and the works of Helen C. Rountree, in particular her 1989 book The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture. He also had the help of Native Americans and the Powhatan’s and his own familiarity with the Abenaki language.

All of us have two ears; our Creator wishes us to remember there are two sides to every story, says Bruchac.

If you get the chance, visit the historic site of Jamestown. It is a fascinating trip. The fort was actually very small and built in a triangle and right on the river’s shore. It is definitely in the midst of a swamp.

National Book Award winner The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie was published in 2007 by Little, Brown & Company. It is a contemporary YA fiction novel about a fourteen-year-old Spokane Indian, Arnold Spirit, who leaves the reservation school system to attend a nearby public high school where he becomes the only other Indian there besides the school mascot.

Alexie tells Arnold’s story in an engaging and humorous first-person teen boy voice. Arnold tells us right away that he has a boat load of medical problems, including brain damage (water on the brain he calls it). He had 42 teeth instead of the standard-issue 32, until the 10 extra were pulled out in one day (this is the best the local clinic can do for him). He is very skinny and nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other. But, it is very obvious that he is extremely intelligent, introspective and observant. Arnold is instantly likeable.

Arnold’s situation on the Indian reservation, on the other hand, is not likeable. It is distressing and uncomfortable and depressing. His family is poor, his parents are drunks (albeit nice ones), his angry best friend gets beat up at home, his sister lives in the basement after being one of the most promising students at Wellpinit High School. Indians simply do not go to college. His mother and father were once promising individuals only to fall into the apathy and repression they live under at the reservation.

It is a white school teacher at Arnold’s reservation school, Mr. P, that convinces Arnold to leave the reservation. He tells Arnold he will die if he doesn’t. Mr. P used to dish out the dirt to his Indian students and he feels guilty. He wants to save Arnold.

So, Arnold decides to go to Reardan High School where the kids do well in sports and academics and go to college and have hope. Hope is something white people have. His parents are supportive; although he often has to get to school on his own (his father drinks away the gas money, etc). His best friend Rowdy ditches Arnold and many people on the reservation feel he has betrayed them.

Despite the humor, this is a heavy book to swallow. Arnold’s life is fraught with tragedy and it is deeply disturbing that he feels and others feel that his only hope for a life is to leave the reservation. There is a lot of loss and death in the story.

But Arnold has some great experiences at Reardan. He becomes a star basketball player, flourishing under a wonderful coach. He makes friends and has a translucent semi-girlfriend named Penelope. The white people aren’t all that bad, after all.

There are some statements the narrator makes that struck me as not quite on the spot. He states that loving ghosts and monsters is an American Indian thing. I find it to be a universal phenomenon across race and culture. The negative effects of alcoholism on the family and its children are universal, rather than specific to any one culture.

There is some swearing and talk about masturbation in the book, not that it offended me, but each family must make its own decisions about what they are comfortable having their children read. I would recommend the novel for children aged 13 and up.

I do wish there was hope for the children as they grow up on the reservation. I hope that Alexie’s book will inspire American Indian children living on reservations to go for their dreams and work to make them come true. And I hope that for all children because I know many of you young people, no matter your race or ethnicity, feel hopeless. College costs too much money, you are struggling to make it on your own as it is, you already have children, your parents are not supportive or they are dysfunctional etc. Go for it! I believe in you. In my eyes, you might be the next President, the next Wassily Kandinsky, the next Bono, the next Meryl Streep, the next Curtis Granderson (go Tigers!), the next Sherman Alexie. You will never know if you don’t try…

Just exactly who was Forrest Carter? I asked myself this obsessively while re-reading with new eyes his book The Education of Little Tree. New eyes because for months now I’ve been looking at books from a critical standpoint in terms of their portrayal of the American Indian. I am even beginning to feel that Little House on the Prairie should not be used in curriculum of any kind for children under thirteen.

My psychic friend Patti did a reading on me several months ago. I asked her to check on my father and my grandfather and that I was open to hearing any messages anyone had for me. At the time, I had just begun my studies on the Shawnee Indians, as more and more evidence has accumulated that some of my ancestors were Shawnee.

Patti told me that a grandmother of mine was trying to tell me something. First she spoke to Patti in an Algonquin language and then in French. My grandmother said there was something I needed to know in the book The Education of Little Tree. That she wanted me to re-read the book.

You would think I’d run out and read the book, but I didn’t. Instead, I Googled it and found out that Forrest Carter was really a white man named Asa Earl Carter and that he had been a klavern head for the KKK and a speechwriter for segregationist George Wallace. He edited and published a white supremacist magazine. He created the literary hoax — The Education of Little Tree. A James Frey stunt pulled in 1976 and still largely unknown. Not only wasn’t Carter Cherokee, but he hadn’t even done his research and most of his so-called relaying of Cherokee beliefs and customs was inaccurate.

This caused me a great deal of inner panic for two reasons. It’d been on my heart to eventually write a book about the Shawnee, but about what had been vague. Secondly, I wasn’t sure we’d ever be able to prove what tribe(s) my ancestors came from. So, was my grandmother warning me to not be an imposter? I would rather not write than write something that hurt American Indians. I shot off a desperate email to Patti and she responded that no, she thought there was a real message in the book for me.

I still didn’t run out and read the book. I watched the movie again when it came on cable and said, “Oh, yes, I need to read the book.” And then one of my writer friends listed it as one of her all-time favorite books. I asked her if she knew about the controversy and she said she kind of did, but it’s still a great book.

Is it? It was for me years ago when I first read it. But now, it’s not such a great book. Why would a white guy pretend he’d been raised by Cherokee grandparents and make up stuff about them? Well, he wanted the book to be published and having them be American Indian in 1976 was a sure hit.

But what really ate at me, despite the very moving and tender scenes of love between the grandparents, the dogs, Willow John, Mr. Wine and Little Tree, is the underlying mocking, sarcastic tone Carter uses to portray his characters.

Granpa is a doofus. And it began to grate on me as the pages went by. Granpa knows only how to make whiskey and survive in the mountains. Despite having sat through endless church sermons, Granpa doesn’t know who Moses is nor can he explain to Little Tree what Christianity is. Despite Granma reading the classics to him for years, Granpa is intellectually void and has no use for words. His little nuggets of emotional intelligence are almost overwhelmed by the characterization of him as being intellectually incapacitated.

Granma doesn’t wear underwear in the 1930’s. Pine Billy is not too bright. Willow John has dead eyes. Mr. Wine is “frugal”. The preachers are all hypocrites. The character I ended up enjoying the most this time around was Wilburn. Angry, defiant Wilburn: the outcast club-footed orphan at the horrible evil orphanage. He is the only character who escapes Carter’s mocking and subtle derision. Could Wilburn be a characterization of the real Forrest Carter?

But there are enough nuggets of EQ scattered throughout the book to continuously wonder who was Forrest Carter?

He was raised by both of his parents in Alabama. He ran for governor of Alabama in 1970 on a white supremacist platform. He took the name of Forrest Carter in honor of the Civil War general after losing the election and estranged himself from his family, even calling his sons “nephews”. He died in Texas in 1979 choking on food and a blood clot after having an alleged fistfight with his son.

And was any of what he said about the Cherokee truthful? Carter may have had distant maternal Cherokee ancestors, but he was raised white.

Page 57~ “Cherokees never scolded their children for having anything to do with the woods.”

Manataka American Indian Council on Cherokee Customs “…the Indians were indulgent parents. A child was allowed to nurse as long as he pleased, or until his mother became pregnant again. Although mothers were primarily responsible for their children during their first four or five years of life, they were not supposed to punish them physically, particularly their sons.  Boys fell under the discipline of one of their mother’s older brothers. Ordinarily, the disciplinarian was the oldest, most influential male in the mother’s lineage. Girls, on the other hand, remained under the supervision of the women of their clan. If physical punishment had to be administered to a boy, it was usually done by lightly scratching his dry skin with a sharp, pointed instrument. This was called “dry-scratching”. Dry-scratching was especially humiliating because it left scratches or light scars on the skin for several days or weeks so that all could see them and tease the child about them. The scratching was punishment, but it was also thought to “lighten” or lessen the child’s blood, and it was believed that this made him healthier and less troublesome. …The usual way of punishing less serious instances of misbehavior was by ridicule, a device which can be an especially powerful sanction in a small community.

Page 58~ (Granpa) showed me how the Cherokee walks, not heel down, but toe down, slipping the moccasins on the ground.”

Beginning on page 59~ “Granma said everybody had two minds.”

Granma explains that we have a body living mind and a spirit mind.

Page 60~ “Granma said your spirit mind could get so big and powerful that you would eventually know all about your past body lives and would get to where you could come out with no body death atall.”

I could not find any information via the Internet as to whether or not the Cherokee believe in reincarnation. This sounds New Age to me.

Page 138~ “There is a sign for everything. Granpa, however, didn’t need an almanac. He went by the stars d’rect.”

Granma plants with a Cherokee planting stick and saved the marriage stick of Little Tree’s Pa and Ma (and her own).

The wedding ceremony from the Cherokee By Blood Society: A priest escorts the groom to one end of the open space in the council house (north or south) A priest escorts the bride to the opposite end of the space.

The couple meet at the center, near the sacred fire ( the sacred fire is the gift of light, knowledge, heat … the bedrock of civilization) The priest stands, facing the east, toward the door of the council house ( groom on one side, bride on the other)

The groom’s mother stands beside the groom. (children belong to the mother, and her family) She holds the gifts of venison and a blanket (food and a warm bed for his wife - symbols of his ability to support her)

 The brides mother stands beside the bride. She holds the gifts of corn and a tanned skin (food and clothing for her warrior/husband to be)

The brides brother stands behind his mother. The brother accepts responsibility for his sister and her children (he will be the godfather if the husband is killed)   The bride and groom wear blue blankets over their shoulders (traditional symbol of their Old Ways - single life) 

The priest says a prayer blessing the sacred fire and the marriage union. (thanks to God for his blessings)  The priest asks the Great Spirit for a long and happy life for the couple.

The bride gives the groom a red and black (cloth) belt that she has made. The groom accepts and puts on the belt.  (accepts the union) (replaces the wedding ring in modern society)

The mothers give their gifts to their children.  The bride and groom exchange these gifts. (marriage is acceptable by the mothers)

The bride and groom join their blankets, symbolizing mutual support ( both under the double blue blankets) The bride and groom share a corn drink from a double sided vessel. (Share the fruits of their labors - crushed dried corn and water) 

They drink East, West, North, South (declaring their marriage to all the earth)

The priest drinks Up toward the Heavens, Down to Mother Earth, and toward the couple (Only the priest can ‘address’ the spirits of Heaven and Earth to bless the union.  After the spirits of heaven and earth have been asked to bless the union, the priest directs the spirits attention to the bride and groom.  They are the ‘center’ of the union, and must constantly reflect on their inner thoughts to make the marriage work. )

The vessel is thrown down and broken, to seal the wedding vows.  The broken fragments are buried (returned to mother earth)

The blue blankets are shed and a white blanket is wrapped over the shoulders of the couple, symbolizing the union. (symbol of happiness)   A wedding feast is held (traditionally by the whole village, but not practical today) 

The couple walk silently and alone to their dwelling place, among the bride’s family (the groom  goes to live with the wife’s clan and the house belongs to her. The children also will belong to the wife’s clan, having her brothers more responsibility and control over them than the father).

Page 143~ “My birthday being in the summer made it my season: that is the custom of the Cherokee.”

Page 148~ “Oncet, after we taken our seats, I found a long knife laying where I set. It was as long as Granpa’s and had a deer skin sheath that was fringed. Granma said Willow John gave it to me. That is the way Indians give gifts. They do not present it unless they don’t mean it and are doing it for a reason. They leave it for you to find.”

Not the Shawnee though, according to my studies. They presented their gifts. As you can see in the above wedding ceremony, many gifts are presented.

Code of Right Relationship as given to the People by the Pale One:

1: Speak only words of truth.

2: Speak only of the good qualities of others.

3: Be a confidant and carry no tales.

4: Turn aside the veil of anger to release the beauty inherent in all.

5: Waste not the bounty, and want not.

6: Honor the light in all. Compare nothing; see all for its suchness.

7: Respect all life; cut away ignorance from one’s own heart.

8: Neither kill nor harbor thoughts of angry nature, which destroy peace like an arrow.

9: Do it now; if you see what needs doing, do it.

from “Voices of our Ancestors”, by Dhyani Ywahoo - Etowah Band, Eastern Tsalagi Nation

Did I find the message my grandmother wanted me to hear? I’m not sure. Maybe it is in the part when Little Tree can telepathically communicate to his grandparents and Willow John via the Dog Star. Maybe she wants to communicate to me this way and I’m not listening. But after all is said and done, I am fairly confused as to why this book.

This is what I say to her sometimes at night, “Grandmother, I would like to hear what you have to say. I want to know who my family were. Please speak to me.”

I read The Darkness Under the Water as I am a follower of Debbie Reese’s eye-opening blog American Indians in Children’s Literature. There is a great deal of warranted controversy about the accuracy of the historical picture Kanell paints in her book and the accuracy of her portrayal of the Abenaki people.  There is no way for me to assess either, as I know nothing about the Vermont Eugenics program in the 1930’s nor about the Abenaki people. So, read the information on Reese’s blog but I do know a good book when I read one.

There is no other reason to read this book other than to teach yourself how not to write a book. If I hadn’t known from Reese’s blog about the gory, horrifying kitchen scene to come, I would have never finished the book. It does not engage the reader, it is poorly written and it is scattered. Scattered in theme and composition. It is frankly, boring.

There is far too much narrative exposition in this book. It often reads like a diary rather than a piece of fiction and Kanell has a problem making the narrator disappear when it is necessary. She writes far too many sentences telling us what Molly sees or hears, when we know it is Molly hearing and looking, “She chatted with Mrs. O’Connor, and I overheard part of it.” Instead of showing us what Molly sees, Kanell tells us Molly sees it, using those kinds of words, “I saw…” This is a critical mistake according to all of the critique groups I have ever been in and this type of writing slows the pace. 

That is until, the reader gets to the gory, horrifying kitchen scene that I could NOT believe was put into a children’s book.  Don’t use with me the YA cover, and justify allowing this scene to be published in a children’s book because “it is for teenagers”. My daughter has been reading YA since age eleven. I could not have stomached this scene at age sixteen and I don’t want my daughter to have it put in her mind.

Sixteen-year-old Molly Ballou lives in Waterford, Vermont in 1930 and tells the story of her Abenaki family dealing with the damming of the local river and how the lake created will then cover over their family home with water, their need to hide their Native heritage, the sick disgusting nurses who butcher her mother in the kitchen because of the Vermont Eugenics program, Molly’s ghost sister’s hauntings, Molly’s friendship with a Catholic Irish girl and the predjudice against Catholics, her attraction to an Abenaki boy named Henry, the burning down of their family home, her own lack of maturity and selfishness and her strained and difficult relationship with her mother who becomes pregnant again and then loses the baby. And to top it off, the nurse falls down the stairs at the end of the book and is killed. The body must be disposed of, so no one will suspect murder and THEN mother dies anyway. This is what I mean by scattered. Put all this into a short novel and you get a slamming of issues with no depth. A book this scattered has nothing to say. It is a book written to get published.

Molly sums up her shallowness with this statement about the deaths of her family members, the “passing felt like the seperation between a tree and its leaves in autumn…” What? There is no pain involved when a tree sheds its leaves.  There is no end in the natural act of autumn. The leaves come back just six months later. A loved one is gone until we are reunited, sometimes for many many decades and we are not reunited here on earth. How can anyone compare death and grieving to a tree and its leaves? That is not what the death of a loved one feels like, but this strange and inaccurate metaphor is placed at the end of the book.

It is also a book of characters that made me wince. Molly complains incessantly when she has to help her mother with chores and responds to nearly everything with no empathy. Her voice is very immature for her supposed age of sixteen in 1930. Her mother is often mean and psychologically unhealthy; she cannot move on from the loss of her five year old daughter when she drowned in the river (years ago). The irritating ghost of the drowned child has no insight and haunts Molly. It is annoying. And even though Molly lives with her Abenaki Grandmother who practices the customs of their people, Molly knows nothing about what it means to be Abenaki.

Molly’s friend Katy has an “Irish temper” and an “Irish laugh” and we read that others believe it is not American to be Catholic. Growing up with an Irish Catholic grandmother, I had no idea there is an Irish laugh or that all Irish have a temper. My Grandmother was twenty-seven in 1930 and she lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and never once told me she had a problem with others because she was Catholic. Not in Iowa nor in Detroit where she moved in 1940.  Here we go with the cliche stereotypes.

Where is the true purpose of the art of fiction played out in this story? What is the purpose of writing in graphic detail a scene about an Abenaki woman who gives birth too early on a kitchen table and one of the visiting white nurses brings out a knife and chops out the mother’s uterus so she can have no more babies? And then leave the reader (and some of the characters too) with wondering if the baby died naturally or was smothered by the nurses since he was Indian?

Why does the mother have to end up dead? Why does the little sister have to be in a place of no rest, a trapped miserable wandering spirit even though she received a proper burial. A relieved Molly tells us when the dead nurse is found by the authorities that her spirit won’t speak from the river as it will have a proper burial. Then why did the little sister speak from the river?

What is the purpose of this book? What hope does this book impart? Is it historically accurate and so we can trust our children will learn about the Vermont Eugenics Program? Does it accurately portray the Abenaki people and their customs?

Hey, if we can pull all of these memoirs off the shelves because we have learned that they were really fictional, like James Frey and the couple who really didn’t live through the Holocaust, why can’t we pull off the shelves a book that butchers the truth and in the process leaves us nothing but scenes of horror?

Rebel in Blue Jeans is a YA contemporary/romance story written by my friend, Beverly Stowe McClure, author of several YA novels including Listen to the Ghost – also reviewed on this blog.

Rebel in Blue Jeans is the story of nearly seventeen-year-old Rebel and how she learns to cope with her mother’s seperation from her father. Rebel and her father stay on their Texas ranch while Rebel’s mother travels around the country with her new rock musician boyfriend. Naturally, Rebel is angry and confused.

Luckily for her, she has two of the best friends a girl could ever hope for in Will and Sully, Rebel’s companions throughout her childhood. A tad bit overprotective, they are kind, loving and generous in their relationships and are a refreshing view of young men.

Not surprisingly, Will has feelings for Rebel but she is not sure what it is she wants anymore. She ends up on a date with a guy both Will and Sully warn her about and in a tense and fairly frightening scene, the guy, without too much resistance, gets Rebel drunk at a party. He then takes her into a bathroom, removes her dress and nearly date rapes her. Rebel is able to fight him off and flee.

McClure is courageous in her attempts to present a realistic world view in her book. Rebel’s father drinks every night to cope with the loss of his wife. Teenagers drink at a party and Rebel succumbs to peer pressure. But then we meet the mother’s boyfriend’s rock band and the musicians refrain from substance use, not what Rebel had expected.  What I like about Rebel’s story is that she learns her lesson, quickly and cognizantly. That McClure recognizes how very difficult it is to be a teenager. Teenagers need to surround themselves with a good support system, such as Will and Sully, and they need to be open to understanding the issues the family faces. Rebel comes out a much better person in the end, having dealt with her parent’s marriage ending.

The author recommends this novel for ages 12 and up, but I would caution parents on this. My nearly eleven-year-old tried to read it and didn’t want to after the first several chapters. She said she wasn’t old enough yet, and she is very mature for her age. Her recommendation is for 14 and up. But you know your child best, and whether they could handle reading the party scene and the intensity of Rebel’s emotions in dealing with her mother’s abandonment.

When I was 12 I was reading adult fiction. There really wasn’t this whole category of Young Adult novels. As a teenager and under the circumstances I lived in, I would have gravitated toward McClure’s books and found in them support for what I faced.

Rebel in Blue Jeans  is fast-paced and full of adventure and romance. A quick and exciting read.

Passion and Poison: Tales of Shape-Shifters, Ghosts, and Spirited Women was written by Janice M. Del Negro and published in 2007 by Marshall Cavendish Corp. The awesome cover art was done by Vincent Natale, and his illustrations enhance each story. The publisher recommends the book for ages 10 and up, but I am going to recommend it for ages 12 and up due to the violence in the stories. There are 62 large print pages in 7 chapters (poorly printed in China- faint and missing print), and so it would make a good reluctant reader book for teenagers.

These are story-telling stories, good for reading aloud as the author states. There are bizarre stories of shape-shifters, involving women and cats. And several good ghost stories.

A humorous ghost story involves a recently departed mother still residing in her house with her living son. She still drives him crazy with nagging until a resourceful and very calm young woman resolves the ghost mother’s dilemma.

The Severed Hand is a frightening story of a serial killer and how his fiance discovers his crimes and gets revenge for all his victims.

In Rubies, passion for jewels and poisonous deeds kill Giovanna’s younger beautiful sister, until Giovanna deceives the murderous lover Rafael unto his own death.

Sea Child, my favorite in the book, is about a mother who lost her son to the sea at Cliff’s End and then rescues the live baby girl of a recently drowned mother at the very same spot. The ghost mother “defying death” to save her baby from the incoming flood tide.

Hide and Seek I could relate to personally. It is the story of a little girl who is bullied by another girl (much as my daughter was). Del Negro writes, “Thanks to Debbie’s poison, Jane was shunned by the other children and left to play by herself. With that sneaky cleverness some children know so well, the names and the nastiness were kept to secret whispers the grown-ups never heard.” Yes, so true this is. It takes a special teacher to believe the tormented child is being truthful about the torment. Jane has supernatural friends though, the topiary animals at her house come to life, and Debbie is snuffed out by them the day she decides to bring her torment right into Jane’s yard.

Good spooky stories!

Little (Grrl) Lost is a YA urban fantasy story written by Charles De Lint and published in 2007 by Viking.

Fourteen-year-old T.J. has just moved from her beloved farm to the Newford suburbs. She left her horse and her friends behind and she feels out of place in this suburb, very close to a big city. So close, she can easily get there on a bike. Not really a suburb according to our way of life in Michigan, but okay, everywhere is different. T.J. is miserable as we all would be or have been when our parents do/did this to us.

Living in the walls of this suburban house is Elizabeth and her family. They are Littles and Elizabeth is tired of her overly strict, repressive Littles parents so she runs away. This is classic Who Am I? story. What kind of Little am I and do I want to be able to change into a bird and fly? Elizabeth is quick-witted, spunky and intelligent. Now, for all Elizabeth’s parents’ worries, once she runs away, they ditch her. She broke the rule of trusting a Big (TJ) and the parents move away with no forwarding address. They only love Elizabeth, I guess, when she meets up to their standards and does what they say she should and this too, is a common experience for many of us. Unfortunately.

The novel shifts between third person, limited in TJ’s voice to first person, present in Elizabeth’s voice and I never did acclimate myself to this. Every time it happened, it felt awkward for several pages. I think it was the shift in tense. There were also times when I felt something was described as being such a size and then it seemed to be described as either smaller or larger in another scene.  Made for a ‘What?’ moment.

Littles come in three varieties — housey-folk, Rangers aka ferals, and travellers aka tinker-folk.

There is a particularly good and creepy scene when TJ is ’swarmed’ by a gang of suburban juvenile delinquents and her back pack (with the Little in it) is stolen and then a guy tries to abduct her. A bookstore employee kid (Geoff) comes to her aid. He turns out not to be the kind of person you might think he is at first.

If there are any real villains in this story, it is only the parents. They are stereotypical “because I said so” ones and don’t share any semblance of a real relationship with their children. There are some real moments in the end between TJ and her parents but only because her older brother Derek mediates. But the characters themselves never really face a villain in the classic sense of the word, just obstacles to overcome.

The novel is just okay. For most of it, I had to compel myself to keep reading it. Even though there are lots of interesting fantasy elements throughout, like gnomes, fairies, the Goblin Market, fairy doors and coins and stairways, The Place of Change where Littles can turn into birds (a children’s book author’s apartment), Ratcatchers who can talk to rats and persuade them to leave when they are causing problems, the King Rat. But the dialogue seems contrived at times and the whole story felt like a cover for preaching to teenagers. And they are preaching to each other, knowing exactly the right thing to say at the right time.

I did like this dialogue line by Mina, a short human who hangs with the fairies: “Everybody’s a big deal. No matter how big or small.” And I did like the part in the end when TJ learns about apprenticing, that as a teenager we can become an apprentice in a field we are interested in.

But in a final scene,  TJ lectures about her liberal parents describing kids according to their skin color : “If it was a white kid, his ethnicity would never even come up.” Wait a minute, how about an earlier scene when the author does this himself: TJ is helped out from the suburban thugs by a “large black teenager”.

The story ends with Elizabeth and TJ finding their ways, having paths to follow. And even more miraculous, Elizabeth manages to find TJ’s Yahoo email address when she has never seen a PDA before or even been on a computer and when it is ridiculously difficult to find anybody’s email address.

This isn’t a book to bother reading if you have a lot of others to read. I have never read any of De Lint’s other works, so I’ll have to. He is credited with pioneering the urban fantasy. 

Beverly Stowe McClure is the author of the YA Paranormal Listen to the Ghost. It was published in 2003 by Twilight Times Books.

Listen to the Ghost is about a 17 year old girl, Jade, who is haunted by a young woman, Phoebe, in Jade’s grandparents’ Victorian home in Charleston, South Carolina. Four teenagers are staying in the house for the summer while the grandparents are gone. Jade is an artist and displays her work in the local art fair; she has brought her bestfriend Elaine along with her and Jade’s older brother is in charge.

Phoebe the ghost will be a restless wandering spirit for all eternity if Jade does not find the linking wedding rings lost on Phoebe’s wedding day. A day that ended in tragedy.

Jade is also recovering from a painful breakup, and McClure does a wonderful job of crafting a tender new love story as Jade falls for the fourth teenage house sitter, Matt, one of her older brother’s friends. To make the situation more complicated, the ex-boyfriend appears later in the story as an obsessed and dangerous stalker.

Listen to the Ghost is a fun romantic ghost story. The dialogue flows clear and natural and the characters all have depth to them. Jade is not only an artist but also an athlete. But I have to emphasize fun ghost story. If you are looking for scary or realistic in terms of common knowledge about how ghosts haunt and the experiences people have when haunted, you will be disappointed with the book. While there are elements of what is known to happen in a haunting — the cold sensation, footsteps, chime-like noises, the other elements are more comical than anything else – the ghost throws food, she appears as a pink cloud, she can take on human form and speak.

The story held me though because McClure does provide us with the interesting mystery of the linking rings and the marriage that never was because of the tragedy that unfolded. And while at times the characters speak and act as if they are significantly older, they are likable and interesting. I would do anything to have teenagers like these ones in my house; they clean up, get up early in the morning, and are amazingly responsible and level-headed. The ideal of what we all hope our teenagers would be when on their own. 

I recommend the book for younger teenagers or those looking for a clean, safe teen paranormal romance. There is a lack of technology in the characters’ lives, no cell phones, home computers, lap tops, etc but it retains a contemporary feel to it. And it is well-written and well paced.

Beverly Stowe McClure is from Texas. She was an elementary school teacher for 22 years and mother to four sons. She is a great-grandmother.

Other published works:

Caves, Cannons and Crinolines- a civil war YA historical fiction available in trade paperback in 2008

Secrets I Have Kept – YA adventure story, available as e book or paperback

Rebel in Blue Jeans- YA fiction available as an e book from Twilight Times

I am very lucky to have Beverly in one of my critque groups and she is kind enough to answer some questions for me: 

1) When did you start writing to get published?

I started writing around 1990 when I took a writing course from The Institute of Children’s Literature.

2) You won “Conservation Teacher of the Year” in 1988?

In Texas we have districts for Soil and Water Conversation. Each year the state holds contests for students. Older students write essays, while the younger children make posters on some form of conservation. The best posters win ribbons. The districts also select a Conservation Teacher of the Year. In 1998, our Wichita S.W.C.D. chose me. I felt honored and still have my engraved plaque.

3) How would you suggest someone begin writing to get published?

I think this would be up to each individual. What works for one person might not work for another. But for most everyone, I believe you should learn as much about writing as possible. Read books about how to write young adult or picture books or whatever your preference is. Read books for enjoyment: fiction, nonfiction, books for all ages. Read more books. See what keeps you turning the pages? Then write what’s in your heart. Write your story. Have it critiqued. Make it the best you can.   

4) What advice would you give writers trying to break into magazines?

Read back issues of the magazines you’re interested in submitting to. Study their writers’ guidelines. Make sure your story or article is what they publish. Polish your short story. Make every word count because word limits are usually between 500 – 1000 words, maybe more or less, depending on the age of the readers of the magazine.

5) You said you’ve discovered many interesting ancestors in your genealogy research. Would you share with us about some of what you have found?

Well, a distant cousin I met in Tennessee informed me we were of royalty. (See my head swell.) She had traced our family back to King John, who signed the Magna Carta. Okay, that wasn’t so good since he was a very bad king. He tried to take the throne away from his brother, Richard 1 (Richard the Lionhearted), without success. But then Richard died, and John became the king. (My head shrunk a size.)

Then my cousin informed me we went back to Charlemagne. Now that was good, right? He was the first ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. He’s well known in history. However, I discovered that probably half the world descended from Charlemagne, since he lived so many generations ago. (Head is back to normal size now.)

The best things I discovered in genealogy were old photos of my grandfather and great-grandmother and other family members.

6) How were you able to cope with the loss of your son (and a granddaughter)?

My faith in God is strong, and I know that someday I’ll see our son and granddaughter again. This doesn’t mean it was easy. We grieved. Every time I saw a baby, I was sad and wondered why. I still don’t know why; God does.

7) Why do you think you hated reading and writing as a child and how did that impact you as a teacher?

To this day, I’m not certain why I hated to read and write. Books were not a priority in our home, but my sister read, so I guess that’s no excuse. I did love to listen to “fairy tales” on the radio. Yes, this was before TV. I loved to play the piano, and I loved music and being a majorette in the band. Maybe I just didn’t have time for reading and writing.

My love for reading started when I read Dr. Seuss to my sons. Who could not love his stories? Then my students and I read Newbery winners. Wow! Such great writing. I wanted my students to enjoy reading instead of being like I was at their age—clueless to the excitement found in a good book. So we read together and discovered the joy of reading.

You say it took 12 years to really get something published, what do you think held your writing back from being published during that time? What was the key to changing that around?

In truth, my writing was bad at first. But I kept at it and improved until one day I sold an article. The key was never giving up and working hard.

Thanks, Beverly!!!