The Last True Poets of the Sea by Julia Drake

THE LAST TRUE POETS OF THE SEA by Julia Drake has a beautiful cover, doesn’t it? This young adult novel introduces the story of Sam, who has tried to kill himself, but it focuses primarily on Violet, his sister who feels guilt, remorse, anger. Well actually, she is not sure what she feels or how to react when she is sent to live with her Uncle Toby for the summer in a small, coastal town named Lyric, Maine.  Violet meets new friends (Orion, Liv, Mariah, and Felix) and develops a romantic relationship as she struggles to repair her ties with her brother (under treatment in Vermont) and parents (working in New York City).  Drake explores bisexuality in this coming of age novel that also has an element of suspense and family history due to a long ago shipwreck. I thought that THE LAST TRUE POETS OF THE SEA started well and was quite engaging, but it also slowed a bit in the middle (too much angst over boyfriends and girlfriends?) before resolving many of the issues (“no one thing could fix us, because no one thing was wrong. The fixing would be in keeping going, in trying.”) and chronicling some of the healing. Drake writes beautifully: “I felt the weight of my brother’s sadness in my own chest. He was a jellyfish being asked to float on land.” Loosely evoking Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, THE LAST TRUE POETS OF THE SEA received a number of starred reviews, including ones from Booklist (grades 10+), Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, School Library Connection, and School Library Journal (grades 8+).

Women's Work by Megan K. Stack

WOMEN’S WORK by National Book Award finalist Megan K. Stack explores a “Reckoning with Work and Home” by relating events from Stack’s time living in Beijing and India.  During those periods she and her husband became parents. They employed housekeepers and childcare workers – “migrants who’d left their own children behind to work in the city, and ended up in my house.” This extremely personal and well-written text describes Stack’s feelings about work (she had been a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times) and motherhood, noting “Job, book, baby: I’d forced myself to choose the one I loved least. It was a terrible choice because I loved each of them.” WOMEN’S WORK also confronts the ideas of feminism and privilege as Stack strives to explore the lives, homes, and families of the women who worked for/with her and says, “Xiao Li, Mary, and Pooja will forever give me strength and push me forward to what needs to be done.” 

Stack recounts in detail her own experiences with post-partum depression, concluding at one point, “If a woman is in an intolerable situation, the answer is not to drug her so that she can tolerate it.  The answer should be – should be – to change the intolerable situation.” And, she honestly reflects on the role of men, particularly fathers and husbands (expat or not), who often fail to appreciate the ambivalence - even guilt - over the unsatisfactory compromises involved with employing domestic workers. In addition, she writes about Asia: “[China and India] represent our collective future; they are the stuff of the world’s dreams and nightmares. They are also places that have made statistical headway towards erasing women.” There is SO much to explore here and our students could certainly use this book as a Junior Theme research text or perhaps read portions for Senior Writers Seminar. I definitely recommend WOMEN’S WORK which received a starred review from Kirkus.

Dear Evan Hansen

 
DEAR EVAN HANSEN by Val Emmich, Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul is the novelization of the award-winning Broadway musical.  It’s a story filled with classic young adult themes of belonging and isolation, of anxiety and acceptance, of guilt and truth. But the novel version seemed especially slow – in fairness, maybe that was my reluctance to discover any “spoilers” prior to the show’s opening in Chicago.  I ordered a copy of the book and had it sitting on my desk where it sparked quite a bit of interest – students know and like the music as well as the story of a young outcast, Evan, who is mistakenly credited with being a good friend to a boy, Connor, who commits suicide and whose family struggles to understand.  

DEAR EVAN HANSEN received a starred review from School Library Journal (grades 9 and up).