rain

I have not posted in a week, in part because I have had a sick baby. There was time only for the important stuff: holding my baby while looking out the window at the rain, and at the trees beyond glistening. There's the amazing ability for the rain around here to fall on only half of what I can see, ie on the parking lot but not the trees behind. From my couch I can see a bay window and sliding doors--often it will look like two different landscapes. One will be clouded over while the other shines brightly.

To make up for my absence, a longer post:

This week, Kathryn Erskine. She writes both YA and Middle Grade, and recently I've had the pleasure of reading both Mockingbird (2010) and Quaking (2007), both published by Philomel. Both books stress the incredible importance of putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Faced with violent situations, her books allow us glimpses into what makes bullies, bullies. It doesn’t mean that we or her characters like said bullies any better. In both books, peace and healing require monumental acts of strength. The above books address a school shooting and working for peace in the Middle East, respectively. I applaud her subjects.

I have to say, though: Quaking didn’t stick the landing. Her main character, Matt (short for Matilda), has been passed among increasingly distant relatives in the 9 years since her abusive father killed her mother. As the pro-war vs. pro-peace battle rages in her hometown, taking a stand for peace will eventually mean that she has to take a stand against those who cause violence—not run or retreat inside herself. These two plot lines align nicely as ideas, but in the story, I don’t believe them. I don’t quite believe Matt’s past, perhaps because I’ve seen children of abuse handle their stories so fluidly in Swati Avasti’s Split. The abusive past seems more literarily convenient than truly lived. Her foster parents are wonderful characters, but the book comes across with a narrator who’s a bit over-explained. The struggle, too, seems a bit heavy-handed. 

I freely confess that I'm not the target audience of the book. In addition to being over the age of 25, I'm already aligned with the author and don't need to be won over: I don't think Quakers are weird, and I don't think that people who are pro-peace are un-American. Perhaps someone who couldn't imagine why people would attend a peace rally against the Iraq war would have their eyes opened here, in which case, hurrah! I still read the book and enjoyed it, but all the while I was trying to figure out why it just didn’t quite work for me. 

Where Erskine’s writing works wonderfully is in her middle grade novel Mockingbird, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. While her character Matt would avoid people's faces out of fear, here the same actions by Caitlyn come across naturally. Here we are happily in the mind of 11-year-old Caitlyn, who has Aspergers. We find ourselves pleading for the other kids on the playground to understand, to see things from her point of view. We hurt for her and her whole town as they seek Closure after a school shooting. It’s an important book, and a pleasure to read. Erskine nailed the landing here.