A Notes from the Windowsill annotated bibliography by Wendy E. Betts. Copyright 2006
Click on the book covers for more publisher's information or to order from Powell's Books.
A note to our readers: We guarantee that absolutely no payment is accepted from any bookstore, publisher, author or any other agency, for inclusion of a review in Notes from the Windowsill or for any special notice given to any book.
Last Updated 10/26/05
Flying Solo by Ralph Fletcher. Clarion, 1998 (0-395-87323-1) $15.00
This offbeat book looks at an unusual day in the lives of a group of six-graders, and its surprising aftermath. The day doesn't begin auspiciously for several members of Mr. Fabiano's class: Bastian is worried about how his puppy will survive quarantine when he moves, Sean has no clean clothes and only a candy bar for breakfast, and Rachel is sixth months into a self-imposed silence she began after the death of a weird classmate who adored her. Then the class realizes that their teacher is absent and there's no substitute: whether by accident or design, they're on their own. As they cooperate to keep their secret and prove they can run the class themselves, they find themselves working as a group in a new way--and finding new feelings inside them that may help change the patterns of their lives.
This story may disappoint readers who expect it to be about unsupervised kids going crazy with freedom; it's far more about internal exploration and the importance of facing challenges. Although the situation may seem implausible, the classroom dynamics ring true: Fletcher has captured the particular kind of intimacy and awareness of each other that classmates have, even when they're not friends. This makes the life-changing nature of the day believable; the well-crafted ending doesn't solve every problem, but offers hope for the characters to find their own solutions. (9-13) (no titles currently)
The Beggars' Ride by Theresa Nelson. Orchard, 1992;
Laurel-leaf, 1994 (0-440-21887-X) $3.99
Running away from her alcoholic mother and a secret she doesn't dare tell, twelve-year-old Clare finds herself destitute and alone in Atlantic City. Then she meets the gang: five homeless kids who roam the Boardwalk, scrounging a living through petty crime. "Boardwalk's our territory, bottom to top," they tell Clare, and they plan their heists with a Monopoly board, taking even their names--Cowboy, Thimble, Racer, Shoe, and Little Dog--from the game. If Clare wants to stay with the gang, seemingly her only chance for survival, she has to earn a name too - by arranging and carrying out an innovative crime somewhere on the Boardwalk. But what should be a simple heist sets off a complex chain of events that will change the gang--and Clare-- forever.
Written with an authenticity of detail so strong you can practically
hear the crash of the ocean, The Beggars' Ride is a deeply
moving
story about children who have been betrayed so often--both by their
parents and the system that's supposed to protect them--that they
think they have only each other to turn to, their frightening gang
identity only a desperate cover for their pathetic vulnerability.
Clare's story makes their plight achingly real: through her we see
what it's like, not just to sleep inside a playground whale and eat
pizza from a dumpster, but to live with a continual erosion of your
inner self and to struggle to survive when you have no future.
Although most of the characters didn't quite come alive for me - the
homeless gang, with their Monopoly names, seeming studied and
artificial--that's a surprisingly minor flaw; Clare's voice is so
utterly believable that the book holds together anyway. The ending
offers some hope for Clare and her friends, tempered with a plausible
ambiguity.
A Door Near Here by Heather Quarles. Delacorte, 1998
(0-385-32595-9) $13.95; Laurel-Leaf, 2000 (0-40-22761-5) $4.50 pb
"Dear CS... I was wondering if you could tell me where a secret door is from here to Narnia... I need to go to Narnia very bad, I think someone there can help my mom, she is sick."
For fifteen-year-old Katherine, reading the letter her little sister Alisa wrote to her favorite author, C.S. Lewis, is a painful wake-up call; she can no longer pretend that their mother's weeks long drinking binge isn't affecting the family. But it's very important to keep pretending to the outside world... because although she and siblings Tracey and Douglas could always go live with their father, Alisa isn't their father's child. And as Tracey says, "he wouldn't even take her to the museum."
Katherine, who loves to keep lists and makes plans, thinks that together the three of them can cope: "we still have a chance to keep everything normal. If we just handle things right, then nothing bad will happen." But events rapidly get beyond her control. Their mother is almost comatose, the food is running out, and when Katherine has to bring Alisa to school with her--she keeps running away to look for that secret door--the religion teacher, Mr. Dodgson, begins taking a very unwelcome interest in their family situation. Even worse, he seems to be encouraging Alisa in her belief that C.S. Lewis' character Aslan can save her mother. Clinging tighter to the veneer of normality the more fragile it becomes, Katherine becomes convinced that Mr. Dodgson is their enemy, and she strikes out to destroy his credibility--only to realize that she desperately needs his help.
Katherine's narrative, which reveals both her intelligence and her immaturity, has an authenticity that makes her sympathetic even when she's clearly running in the wrong directions. Her story is as gripping as an adventure, holding our interest through calamity after calamity, but everything builds so inevitably that the book never seeming episodic or melodramatic. Only the end perhaps falters, with the author, like many another problem novelist, having trouble reconciling probability with a desire to rescue her characters; on the other hand, the ending could be considered integral to an underlying theme of sacrificial forgiveness that comes straight out of the Narnia books.
You don't have to be fan of Narnia to appreciate A Door Near Here, or even to have read the books, but it will have its greatest resonance for those who understand how much Narnia and Aslan can mean to children, especially desperately unhappy children. The resolution of Alisa's obsession is especially powerful, leaving it for readers to decide whether Aslan's appearance in her life is fantasy or metaphor.
A Door Near Here was the winner of the 15th annual Delacorte
Press Prize for a First Young Adult Novel.
(no titles currently)
Back to the Notes from the Windowsill Flipside Families bibliography.
Back to the Notes from the Windowsill Home Page.