Wild Things, Clay Carmichael

Title:  Wild Things
Author:  Clay Carmichael
Publisher:  Front Street
Year:  2009
Pages:  241
Genre:  Realistic Fiction
Themes:  Love, Courage, Family, Mental Illness, Grief
Age Range:  5th-8th Grade

Summary:
Zoe learned to take care of herself at a very young age.  Her father left before she was born, and her mentally ill mother went through a series of boyfriends over the years.  Their treatment of Zoe went from benign neglect to outright hostility, causing Zoe to realize early in life that it's best to rely on no one but yourself.  When her mother takes her own life, Zoe is send to live with her father's brother, her uncle Dr. Henry Royston.  Formerly a surgeon, Henry now lives in the middle of nowhere, creating stormy, muscular sculptures and volunteering at the local clinic.  Henry and Zoe find that they have many things in common: grief, a mercurial personality, and walls they've constructed to keep the rest of the world at bay.  But when Zoe sees a miraculous white deer in the woods, and meets the young feral boy that takes care of her, she is thrown into a local secret that forces her to let her guard down and take a chance on asking for the help that she never thought she's need.

Review:
I adored this book!  From the very beginning, Zoe was a character that I could sink my teeth into. Fiery, temperamental, wise and naive at the same time, she is an excellent example of quality character development.  In fact, all of the characters are well-written and interesting, with qualities that will endear them to any reader.  One of the most interesting character in the book is a feral cat, which Zoe names C'Mere, who represents the wild spirit that both Zoe and her uncle Henry possess. The cat is slowly tamed by Zoe, and that experience directly mirrors how Zoe and her uncle tame each other through patient care and attention.

There are many references to Zoe's past, including some of the men that were a part of her mother's life, for whatever brief period of time they were able to stay.  It would have been easy for Carmichael to turn these characters into your typical stereotype of the nefarious "stepfather", but his treatment of them is actually much more nuanced.  Zoe's irresponsible, mentally ill mother is also treated with some compassion in the story, despite the damage that her condition and lack of adequate treatment did to Zoe.  I found myself feeling sympathy for all of them, a feeling that was only intensified from knowing of children in similar situations.

There are many, many things to talk about with this book, including use of the cat as a metaphor for Zoe, suicide and mental illness, what it means to be vulnerable and open to love, and standing up for what you believe in. The story is told in the first person, with short interludes where the cat is the narrator, making the narrative structure something interesting.  And, as stated at the beginning, this book would make a great study of author's craft in regards to characterization.

Teacher Resources: 
Rebecca Caudill Book Guide
California Young Readers Award Guide
Clay Carmichael's Website

Juniper Berry, by M.P Kozlowsky

Title:  Juniper Berry
Author:  M.P. Kozlowsky
Publisher:  Walden Pond Press
Year:  2011
Pages:  227
Genre:  Fantasy
Themes:  Greed, Family, Friendship, Courage
Age Range:  3rd-5th Grade

Summary:  (from Goodreads)

Juniper's parents have not been themselves lately. In fact, they have been cold, disinterested and cruel. And lonely Juniper Berry, and her equally beset friend, Giles, are determined to figure out why. 

On a cold and rainy night Juniper follows her parents as they sneak out of the house and enter the woods. What she discovers is an underworld filled with contradictions: one that is terrifying and enticing, lorded over by a creature both sinister and seductive, who can sell you all the world's secrets in a simple red balloon. For the first time, Juniper and Giles have a choice to make. And it will be up to them to confront their own fears in order to save the ones who couldn't. 

Review:
I picked this book up at the Scholastic Book Fair at my school in the fall, but by the time I got around to reading it I'd forgotten almost everything about it!  I did remember being drawn to the cover, which I thought seemed rather sinister for a children's book cover.

Well, sinister was definitely the right word for both the cover and the story.  Despite the fact that Juniper keeps remembering the good times with her parents, their behavior at the beginning of the book reminded me of a Roald Dahl grown-up, namely mean and cruel.  Koslowsky did an excellent job evoking loneliness, explaining why Juniper was so quick to make friends with Giles, and why she was susceptible to the monster living in her yard.  It is also what leads Juniper to a terrible choice-accept the creature's help in getting her parents attention, or destroy him in the hopes that her parents will go back to who they once were. This is a novel all about living with the consequences of our choices. I think that there are some decent discussion points in this book-what it means to be lonely, is being a celebrity worth it if you have to cut yourself off from the world, what would you do in Juniper's place-so I think this book could be used for guided reading, or to have in a leveled library for reader's workshop.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien

Title:  The Things They Carried
Author:  Tim O'Brien
Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Year:  1990
Pages:  273
Genre:  Historical/Realistic Fiction, Memoir
Themes:  War, Survival, Courage
Age Level:  10th Grade and Up

While I sometimes share reviews I've written of young adult novels on my adult book review blog (Book Addict Reviews), I have never posted the other way.  But when my daughter recommended I read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien after reading it in her junior level English class (my daughter, whose last recommendation to me was Twilight when she was 13), I figured I'd better read it.  And she was right-this book says things that need to be said about war and courage, and I think that those things should be said to our youth.  So, you'll find my review below, not in the usual format, but here all the same.

Summary and Review:
I was born in 1970.  So while my life overlaps briefly with the Viet Nam War, I have no real memory of it.  What I do remember is going to downtown Chicago with my granny, and later with my parents, and seeing the faces of the homeless vets that were begging on the streets.  Wild-eyed, or blank-stared, the memories of their faces color everything that I have heard, read, or seen about the war since.  And I have heard, read, and seen a lot.  Stories from the fathers of friends who fought in the war, lessons from school, movies like Full Metal Jacket and Platoon-from these sources I have cobbled together a picture of that hot, wet, chaotic, horrific place and time.

But I am not sure that I have truly felt that I had even the faintest understanding of what it might actually have been like.  Not, that is, until I read Tim O'Brien's stunning book The Things They Carried.  Neither entirely fact nor entirely fiction, O'Brien uses a series of short stories and vignettes to tell the tale of Alpha Company, a group of soldiers based, in part, on the real men that O'Brien served with during the war.  The stories meander from stateside to the jungles of Viet Nam, from childhood to middle age, detailing how each experience prepares or informs or explains the person that Tim was or is or may yet become.

I will admit to having some difficulty at first with the non-linear narrative, and with the fact that I was never sure what was true and what was made-up.  But the genius of this work is that you soon realize that it doesn't matter.  In fact, the way that the book is put together and the inability to tell fact from fiction ends up doing a better job describing what living through that experience was like than any straight forward telling could.  O'Brien and his fellow soldiers lived a reality that most of us will never experience, and can never truly comprehend, where time was skewed, day and night traded places, where extraordinary circumstances became ordinary, and where the ordinary world as most of us know it became a dream that you couldn't let yourself believe in.

My favorite section of the book (if favorite is even the right word) is the story of how O'Brien almost ran away to Canada rather than go to war.  Part of O'Brien's extreme talent is an ability to use words to paint not just a visual but an emotional picture for the reader, and I was able to feel how deeply terrified he was at the prospect of war.  I felt his ambivalence about running away, about choosing the possibility of death over the certainty of shame and embarrassment.  But the thing I found most stunning, and the line I would consider the most "controversial" of the whole piece, is this, "I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Viet Nam, where I was a soldier, and then home again.  I survived, but it's not a happy ending.  I was a coward. I went to war."
Given the hyper-patriotism of the US since 9-11, and our unquestioning assumption that every soldier is brave and heroic,  this simple statement stopped me dead in my tracks.  It felt almost sacrilegious.  Are we allowed to say that not going to war is more courageous than going?  What does that say about us as a society, that we are find ourselves so often in armed conflicts?  Is it bravery and strength, or is it because we don't want to be judged as wanting by the rest of the world?  What would happen if our young men and women, en masse, simply refused to go the next time we try to send them into harm's way?  Would it be courageous or cowardly?  Regardless of where any one of us comes down on that particular idea, what O'Brien's work has done is illustrate for those of us that weren't there that nothing is as simple and straightforward in war as those of us sitting at home watching it on our televisions thinks it is.

Teaching Resources:  
National Endowment for the Arts Teaching Guide 
ReadWriteThink Lesson Plans 
Web English Teacher Lesson Plans