Skila Brown's _Slickety Quick: Poems About Sharks_

The Plot: Slickety Quick: Poems About Sharks written by Skila Brown and illustrated by Bob Kolar is a picture book that contains 14 spreads, each dedicated to a poem and informational blurb about a different shark. Brown's picture book is not a verse narrative, as it doesn't contain any sort of plot; instead the thread that links each poem is simply the fact that they all address sharks. It may fall into the informational books category (because of its inclusion of informational blurbs), but it does not include a bibliography of sources or peritextual matter that would lead to further resources.

The Poetry: Slickety Quick includes 14 short poems that employ a variety of poetic techniques and forms. In terms of poetic devices, Brown uses rhyme and repetition pretty consistently throughout the collection. The form that Slickety Quick uses most frequently is the concrete poem; for example, the poems, "Great White Shark," "Frilled Shark," "Cookie-Cutter Shark," "Nurse Shark," "Megamouth Shark," and "Whale Shark" all use the space on the page and the visual arrangement of the words of the poem to evoke the shape of a sharks body or mouth. The poem "Hammerhead Shark (a poem for two voices" is a contrapuntal poem, as its title suggests.

The Page: Kolar uses an interesting illustration style: each spread includes an image of the shark described, as well as a background made up of layers of monochromatic shapes depicting the ocean floor and landscape. This technique gives the reader a blurred effect and a feeling of viewing each illustration through goggles or a swim mask.

I found Slickety Quick an interesting approach, but none of the poems really stuck with me. I also found the informational blurbs to be a missed opportunity to expand the purview of the picture book as an information/educative text. I give it three stars.

Janice N. Harrington's _Catching a Storyfish_

The Plot: Catching a Storyfish (2016) by Janice N. Harrington follows Katharen Walker as she moves with her family from Alabama to Illinois to be closer to her grandfather. Keet, as her family calls her, is a natural storyteller who delights in talking and making stories so much that her friends nicknamed her Keet-Keet Parakeet. Katharen is sad to leave her friends and home in the south, and once she starts at her new elementary school, these feelings intensify as she is made fun of for "talking funny." While she struggles to make friends at her school, her relationship with her grandfather, who calls her Fish Bait, blooms through their regular fishing trips. Eventually Katharen meets Allegra, a Spanish-speaking girl in her class who loves her Cockatoo and excels at spelling. Allegra is self conscious about her teeth, while Katharen continues to be teased about her accent, so this allows the girls to bond. Throughout the narrative, Katharen experiences many changes that help her to grow, and while her identity as a storyteller is challenged initially, she is able to find her niche as a writer through the help of her family, friends, and one special librarian.

The Poetry: Harrington's Catching a Storyfish is unique in that it experiments with a multitude of forms throughout the verse novel, including: free verse, blues poetry, prose poetry, pantoum, narrative poetry, haiku, haibun, concrete poetry, catalog poetry, abecedarian, and contrapuntal poetry (a poem in two columns that can be read three different ways, what I have previously referred to in my posts as dueling poems). Each of these poetic forms (except free verse) is identified and discussed in the poetry glossary at the back of the book; Harrington also provides an example poem from her collection. In addition to these forms, Harrington also makes use of anaphora, rhyme, simile, metaphor, and imagery throughout her collection. In the poem "Monday: Reading and Writing Centers," many of these techniques are on display: "I like to roll words in my mouth, like pebbles / I like to read my books aloud / I like the ways stories unwind like Grandpa's fishing line" (60).

The Page: Catching a Storyfish is divided into nine "chapters" and also includes a prologue, a poetry glossary, and an acknowledgements page. Each of the nine chapters represents Katharen's experiences in a different week and includes several poems (anywhere from three to twenty-two poems). Harrington's Catching a Storyfish is a fine verse novel. It employs a variety of forms and tells the story of a friendship between two diverse characters, but at times the poems were not as engaging or electric as they could be. I give it three stars.

Sharon Creech's _Moo: A Novel_

The Plot: Sharon Creech's (2016) verse novel Moo: A Novel tells the story of twelve-year-old Reena. Reena moves with her younger brother, Luke, and her parents from the big city to Maine, where they encounter an old woman named Mrs. Falala. Mrs. Falala owns a farm and a stubborn cow named Zora. After a few strange meetings with Mrs. Falala, Reena and Luke's parents volunteer them to work on the farm helping Mrs. Falala clean and care for Zora the cow and her other farm animals. While Reena and Luke are at first skeptical and even scared of the old woman and her cow, they eventually grow quite fond of her. Luke, an avid drawer, spends time teaching Mrs. Falala to draw, while Reena works diligently to train Zora. With the help of a young man named Zep, Reena begins to train to show Zora at the county fair. The novel ends with Reena and Zora's first time showing at the fair, and an unexpected twist involving Mrs. Falala.

The Poetry: Creech's verse novel follows her previous work in this form, Love That Dog (2001), Hate That Cat (2008), and Heartbeat (2004), in that it uses free verse  throughout the narrative, in addition to concrete poetry and varied typography in several poems. Despite the fact that in Moo the emphasis is most often placed upon the narrative arc, instead of poetic devices and techniques, Creech does use the broken line, white space, and typographical variances in order to emphasize the significance of particular moments in the narrative and to encourage the reader to spend more time on the page. For example, in the poem "Back to Twitch Street," Creech uses imagery and typography to create a distinct picture in the reader's mind of life on the farm:

with the open attic window

and the

           f  l  u  t  e     m  u  s  i  c

                       drift

                               ing

                                     d

                                     o

                                     w

                                     n (61)

In this excerpt from "Back to Twitch Street," Reena and Luke return to the farm after riding their bikes through pastures and past views of the ocean. They are truly captivated by the scenes of the country after growing up in the city. Throughout the narrative, Reena and Luke are captivated the the flute music they hear Mrs. Falala playing from her attic window. They never seen her play, but they come to learn that her flute music and attic space help her practice "remembering."

The Page: The 74 poems that make up Creech's verse novel Moo trace the experiences of pre-teen Reena as she moves from the city to the country and transforms from an indoor girl to an outdoor girl. Creech's Moo was a fine verse novel that represents a growing trend in the blend of free verse, prose sections, and concrete poetry in the verse novel for middle grade readers. I give Moo three stars.

Skila Brown's _To Stay Alive: Mary Ann Graves and the Tragic Journey of the Donner Party_

The Plot: Skila Brown's 2016 To Stay Alive: Mary Ann Graves and the Tragic Journey of the Donner Party is a historical verse novel that explores the life and experiences of nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Graves, a real-life settler who traveled with her family, the Donner family, and several other families across the country to reach California in the 1840s. Brown bases her narrative on historical records and research to tell a particularly compelling story of a young woman's survival in a time of hardship, chaos, and ultimately horror. The nearly 300-page verse novel takes place over the course of one year, beginning in the spring of 1846 and ending in the spring of 1847. Mary Ann travels from Lacon, Illinois with her family which includes her mother, father, older married sister, three younger brothers, four younger sisters, and a hired teamster named John. Mary Ann is a quilter and a strong young woman who likes to speak her mind.

The Poetry: Brown's To Stay Alive is primarily comprised of free verse poems that make use of rich imagery, lyricism, and the space on the page, but the verse novel also includes a few concrete poems that take the shape of what they describe or allude to in the poem. For instance, the poem on page 3, "Father" is shaped like a sphere on the page and describes Mary Ann's father as "burning like the sun" and "itching" to leave on their journey. Likewise, the poem "Inside the Wagon" spreads single words across the space of the page drawing attention to the fact that riding inside the wagon is bumpy: "never still never / smooth / always bump shake rattle" (41). While these poems were interesting in terms of form and content, the poem that I found most moving and rhythmic was the final poem in the collection, "A New Quilt." This nine-page poem shows Brown's skill in the long lyric poem, something that I have yet to see many verse novelists for young readers do well. In "A New Quilt" Brown uses anaphora, lyricism, imagery, and a rhythmic line that mimics the work of quilting to tell the last bits of Mary Ann's narrative. The repeated refrains "I'm stitching / a new quilt" at the beginning of stanzas and "I stitch" justified to the right side of the page at the end of many lines become a place of meditation for the reader as she considers the ways that Mary Ann copes with her loss of many of her family members.

The Page: In addition to being divided into five sections that reflect the seasonal changes, Brown's verse novel also contains a variety of paratextual documents to aid the reader in understanding the historical time period and Brown's research process. The front papers include an article from The Lacon Home Journal announcing that a local family is headed to the west, as well as a two-page map spread that provides the path that Mary Ann's family followed. The end papers include an epilogue, an author's note, a photograph of the real Mary Ann Graves, a list of individuals who were part of the Donner party divided into families with their ages and survival status listed, and an acknowledgments section. Her website also includes an educational guide to pair with the verse novel and a variety of blog posts with more details about the Donner party.

I found Brown's To Stay Alive to be a surprisingly engaging narrative. While the subject matter (cannibalism) initially made me wary of the author's ability to tackle such a topic in a new way, Brown was able to skillfully and successfully weave Mary Ann's story together through her use of lyric poetry. To Say Alive was a page-turner. I give it four stars and highly recommend it.

Laura Shovan's _The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary_

The Plot: Laura Shovan's 2016 debut The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary is a polyvocal verse novel that includes the voices of the eighteen students in Ms. Hill's fifth grade class during a transformative school year. At the end of the year, the crumbling school will be closed and bulldozed to make way for a shopping center. The verse novel explores this event through the eyes of each individual student. Ms Hill tasks the students in her class with keeping a poetry journal; their poems will go into a time capsule at the end of the year.

The Poetry: Each poem in the collection includes the date, the name and illustrated head shot of the student writing the poem,  and a title. The eighteen diverse characters within the verse novel who write poems include: Sydney, Rennie, Tyler, Norah, Rachel, Sloane, Mark, Ben, Katie, Gaby, Brianna, Edgar, Newt, George, Jason, Hannah, Shoshanna, and Rajesh. Their concerns run the gamut from having a mother deployed in the armed forces, to having a crush on a classmate, to a death in the family. The poetry within The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary strives to represent many forms and a multitude of content, but ultimately much of it is uninteresting and the eighteen viewpoints make it difficult for the author to flesh out characters. One interesting move the author makes involves her inclusion of Spanish poems writeen by Gaby and their translation by another student in the class, Mark, on the facing page. This use of translation in Shovan's verse novel is lost though in the multitude of perspectives and thematic concerns.

The Page: The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary is divided into four sections, each named for a different quarter of the school year. The poems within the collection allow for one poem per day during the school year. Shovan includes a lengthly section at the end of her verse novel that includes "A Closer Look at the Poems in This Book," which explains how the persona poems work throughout the collection; "Favorite Forms From Room 5-H," which includes a list and definitions of each of the forms used in the verse novel from acrostics, concrete poems, and haiku to free verse poems, found poems, and odes; "Form the Fifth-Grade Poetry Prompt Jar," that lists several ideas for beginning writing poetry; and a glossary. Much of the work of this verse novel is pedagogical, and I can see Shovan and/or her publishers envisioning this work being used in the classroom. Ultimately, though, this work falls short in both poetry and plot. I give Shovan's The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary two stars.

Stefanie Lyon's _Dating Down_

The Plot: Stefanie Lyon's 2015 verse novel Dating Down tells the story of high school junior and daughter of a politician Samantha Henderson and her experience of falling in love with a "bad boy," who is referred to throughout the narrative as "X." Readers learn in the first pages of the narrative why Sam's love interest is referred to in this way:

I will call him X.

X

for the reasons I crossed him out of my life.

X

for the number of times I plunged into self-destruction.

X

because his name would only give him a place in your mind

that he does not deserve (1).

The narrative follows Sam through the first time she sees X at a coffee shop where he works, through her first sexual experience with him, her discovery of his drug use and infidelity, her own participation in drug and alcohol abuse, and finally her decision to separate from X and move on with her life. Dating Down follows in the pattern of many verse novels for young readers in that it is part of the problem novel tradition.

The Poetry: Lyon's narrative primarily utilizes free verse poetry throughout while making use of end rhyme and concrete poetry occasionally. Lyon also employs the format of dramatic verse in order to demonstrate conversations between Sam and other young characters in the narrative. Ultimately much of the poetry lacked lyricism or innovation. For example, in the poem "Sex," which details Sam's first time having sex with X, the poem relies on short, choppy lines and sporadic end rhyme to move the reader more quickly through the moment: "my bra / my shirt / the late-May air" and "His hands / my body / the canvas of me" (121). Ultimately, this approach is not effective in drawing the reader into the narrative or allowing the reader to linger in the emotion or intensity of Sam's experience.

The Page: Throughout the narrative, Lyon often makes use of the space across the entire page, presumably in order to allow the reader to linger in the white space or to slow down the eye in the reading process. But overall, this approach was not successful. The poetry in Dating Down fell flat and the narrative didn't succeed in pulling me in as a reader. In an over-300-page narrative, the lack of a compelling narrative made getting through Dating Down particularly difficult. I give Lyon's Dating Down two stars.

Helen Frost's _Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War_

The Plot: Helen Frost's 2013 polyvocal verse novel Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War follows two protagonists Anikwa, a twelve-year-old Miami boy, and James, a twelve-year-old American boy, and emphasizes the ways in which the War of 1812 impacts both of their lives. The narrative alternates perspectives, with every other poem told in the voice of either boy; poems about salt and the natural landscape are interspersed throughout the narrative. Anikwa is being raised by family members after his mother died of small pox and his father was killed in "a skirmish" (7) when he was an infant. James lives with his mother, father, and infant sister outside Fort Wayne near the trading post where his father works. The narrative depicts both boys experiencing hardships and the repercussions of the war. While the polyvocal narrative structure and the attention to poetic form seemed promising, overall Frost's Salt is problematic in both form and content in the way it represents Native voices and the historical relationship between settlers and natives. Primarily because this verse novel puts itself forth as "a story of friendship in a time of war," it might have been more successful if Frost had reached out to a Native author to collaborate with her on this project. (I am thinking of the way in which Jayson Reynolds and Brendan Kiely collaborated on All American Boys.) Anytime I encounter a children's narrative that represents the experiences of American Indians, I consult Debbie Reese's blog. Here is Reese's assessment of Salt; Frost also chimes in in the comments section.

The Poetry: One thing that Reese picks up on in her own review of Salt that I would like to echo and expand upon here is the way in which poetic form plays into the representations of the characters. The poems in which Anikwa is the speaker are concrete poems, which Frost describes in her author's note on form as, "shaped like patterns of Miami ribbon work" (133), while the poems in which James is the speaker utilize a series of seven couplets, which Frost says represent "an image of the stripes on an American flag" (133). This dichotomy of form seems to suggest a connection between James and patriotism and Anikwa and folk art. The use of concrete poetry juxtaposed with the couplet also sets up a binary between avant-garde poetic form and more traditional poetic form. The symbolic use of form is intentional, but it sets up a binary between creativity/Native populations and national pride/white settlers that is troubling. Clearly Frost, who has written multiple verse novels, is aware the impact that poetic form has on readers and the ways in which symbols make meaning in poetry. She notes that she utilizes the poems about salt to "allow readers to pause between one event and another" (133). In many ways, Frost's project seems like a missed opportunity to bring in the voices of Native authors and/or scholars. As Reese's blog underscores, it is extremely important for white writers and publishers to ask themselves critical questions when they choose to represent experiences and cultures that are not their own, particularly in historical narratives.

The Page: As previously noted, Frost's polyvocal Salt utilizes dualing voices and this is represented with spreads that include juxtaposed visual poetry. Frost's narrative also includes a map of the "Miami Homeland," an introduction, a cast of characters, a notes section, a glossary of Miami words, and an acknowledgement section. Frost notes in her comments on Reese's blog that she is working on creating a curriculum to pair with Salt that takes into account some of Reese's concerns.

Overall, I thought Frost's Salt was an interesting exercise in formal experimentation and was interested in the historical period she chose to explore, but ultimately, many of the concerns Reese raised about the narrative's representation of Native experience were also troubling to me as a reader. I give Salt three stars. Again, I think a polyvocal project such as Frost's would have been much more successful if she would have reached out to a Native author to collaborate with on the work. This month, the blog Reading While White is focusing a spotlight on #OwnVoices books, "amazing books that have been written by authors and artists of color and Native authors and illustrators." Hopefully, in the future authors can take scholarly and critical views such as those championed by Reese and RWW into consideration when they are interested in telling historical stories that represent a diversity of experiences.

Margarita Engle's _Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal_

Earlier this year I reviewed Margarita Engle's Enchanted Air which focuses on US-Cuban relations during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as Engle's own experience growing up and traveling between her two homelands. Once again, in Silver Peeople: Voices from the Panama Canal, Engle explores the Cuban perspective specifically, and Latin American history more generally in this narrative.

The Plot: Engle's 2014 verse novel, Silver People is a polyvocal narrative that includes poems in the voices of imaginary characters, historical figures, and native plants and animals in Panama's forests. Silver People takes its title from the discriminatory silver/gold payroll system in the American-ruled Canal Zone during the construction of the Panama Canal. The verse novel takes place between the years of 1906 and 1915. The narrative begins by introducing the reader to Mateo, a 14-year-old orphaned boy from Cuba, who boards a steamship to Panama after an American Panama Canal recruiter promises food, housing, and pay for his labor. After an arduous journey at sea with no food for three days, Mateo arrives in Panama, and he finds that the recruiter's promises are not truthful. The work is grueling, the working and living conditions are poor, and workers often become ill with malaria and yellow fever. Despite these hardships and the racial discrimination faced by the young laborers, Mateo and his companions manage to make a life for themselves in Panama. Early on in the narrative, he befriends Anita, a local yerbera, or herb girl, and a Jamaican boy named Henry. The narrative alternates between the voices of Engle's imagined characters: Mateo, Anita, Henry, Old Maria (Anita's adoptive grandmother), and Augusto (a Puerto Rican with a PhD in geology from a New York university) and historical figures such as John Stevens, Theodore Roosevelt, George Goethals, Jackson Smith, Gertrude Beeks, and Harry Franck. Engle also includes eight sections of poems that are told from the imagined voices of native plants and animals in the forest including: howler monkeys, trees, vipers, butterflies, crocodiles, and frogs. The inclusion of these personified voices demonstrates the ways in which the landscape of Panama and the individuals who labored on the canal are intimately connected in that both were harmed immeasurably. The epilogue to the verse novel is a letter from Augusto to Mateo, Anita, and Henry noting that at the San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition fails to honor the silver people who labored and died in the construction of the canal.

The Poetry: Engle is the author of nine verse novels for young readers, and her tenth is scheduled for publication in August. Like Engle's many other verse novels for young readers, Silver People relies heavily upon the use of lyricism and imagery to depict the natural world and the emotional lives of her characters. For example, in the poem "The Voyage from Cuba" Mateo reflects upon hunger and the experience of being at sea for three days:

feels like a knife in the flesh--

twisted blade, rusty metal

the  piercing tip of a long

sharp-edged

dagger

called regret (10).

Later in the narrative, Augusto the map maker provides Mateo with art supplies and he begins to sketch the wonders of the forest around him. In the poem "Completely Magnificent" he describes the animals he paints:

two swiftly sprinting whiptail lizards,

and all the gigantic rodents that graze

on gold-zone lawns-- cat-size agoutis

and dog-size capybaras, none of them

afraid to be captured

by my paintbrush (131).

The Page: In terms of form, Engle's verse novel is primarily told through free verse poems in the alternating voices of eleven characters. Each section of poems in the voices of human characters is separated by a section called "The Forest," and in these eight sections, Engle depicts the voices of plants and animals as they respond to the canal's construction. These poems often take the form of visual poetry (shaped verse or concrete poetry). For example, the poem "The Giant Hissing Cockroaches" includes short phrases alternatively right and left justified so that the words appear to flit across the page, mimicking the movement of the cockroach (104).



Engle's Silver People was an interesting and engaging narrative, and she employs her signature lyric free verse to represent a historical moment and give voice to the Cuban experience. I give Silver People four stars and recommend it to those who already enjoy Engle's verse novels.

Skila Brown's _Caminar_

The Plot: Skila Brown's 2014 verse novel Caminar tells the story of Carlos, a young boy growing up in Guatemala in 1981. According to the prefatory note to the reader, Brown's narrative is inspired by the real events and experiences of individuals living in Guatemala during the period after 1954 when the "democratically elected government of Guatemala was overthrown by a group of military men who were unhappy with the way the government had been passing laws to help poor farmers in rural communities. Forty horrible years followed, in which the people of Guatemala tried to resist, organize, and bring about change." Carlos lives in a small farming village with his mother in the mountains and is at the point where he is still treated like a child but wants to be grown up. When a group of soldiers come through their village asking for names of Communists and promising money for individuals who provide names, Carlos's mother and community begin to worry. The villagers decide that if the soldiers or the rebels fighting against them return to their village again, they will run and hide in the trees. While some of Carlos's friends wish to stay and defend the village, Carlos's mother is adamant that he run if anything happens. A few days later, when Carlos walks to the edge of the village and into the jungle to gather mushrooms for his mother to make soup, the soldiers return and massacre his village. He escapes into the jungle and hides in a tree; unsure about whether or not to return or to flee, he decides to make his way to the village where his grandmother lives. Along the way, he encounters a group of rebels and, after some trepidation, he begins to walk with them. Carlos teaches them what he knows about the jungle, plants, animals, hunting, and hiding. Once he reaches his grandmother's village, he must decide whether to carry on with the rebels or stay and defend the village.

The Poetry: Some of the most interesting features of Brown's verse novel are her use of space, repetition, shape, and language. Throughout Caminar, which is the Spanish word for "walk," Brown relies heavily upon the use of repetition and the blending of English, Spanish, and other indigenous languages to emphasize the significance of voice, cultural experience, and character subjectivity in the narrative. For example, in the poem "Nahuales," an elder named Santiago explains the process of coming of age for young men when he was growing up in which each young man enters the jungle to meet his animal spirit protectors:

I looked up to the trees,

away from his eyes. I did not want to tell him

no one believes anymore

in nahuales,

spirit animals who guides us in life, keep us

safe.        I walked away.

                           But I wondered

                                   which animal

                                           he saw. (22)

This poem foregrounds the tensions between Carlos's connections with his cultural history and the circumstances of his experience of war. These tensions are also connected to Carlos's desire to grow up, to go to work instead of school, and his mother's insistence that he is too young to think about participating in work and war.

The Page: Brown makes use of the space on the page and shape in her poems. Many of her poems employ right and left justification, dual columns on either side of the page, and are shaped to evoke the imagery her narrative conveys. For example, the poems "Ah Xochil" (4) and "Eye to Eye" (90) utilize right and left justified columns that encourage readers to read and reread poems in a variety of ways to glean different meanings from the poem. Concrete poems such as "After They Left" (35) and "I Climbed a Tree" utilize the space on the page and shape. "After They Left" depicts a series of voices from the village giving their opinion about what to do if any soldiers return; this poem depicts the lines of dialogue spread across the page as if the voices are coming from many different people and co-mingling together. "I Climbed a Tree" is shaped simply as a tree, utilizes repetition to depict climbing, and describes Carlos's experience of terror as he waits in the tree while soldiers with machetes and rifles pass through after destroying his village.

Brown's Caminar was a fascinating read. I give it four stars.

Marilyn Hilton's _Full Cicada Moon_

The Plot: Marilyn Hilton's Full Cicada Moon (2015) takes place in 1969 and follows twelve-year-old Mimi Yoshiko Oliver as she moves from Berkeley, California to Hillsborough, Vermont with her mother and father. Mimi faces a multitude of struggles in her new town and at her new school, and most of these dilemmas are centered around the fact that she is biracial: her mother is Japanese and her father is black. In addition to the blatant and covert racism Mimi experiences, she also experiences sexist attitudes from her school administrators and teachers when she expresses interest in taking wood shop class instead of home economics. Beyond these already complex topics, Full Cicada Moon also explores a wide variety of conflicts. Mimi's family has a neighbor who is unfriendly, which the reader later learns has to do with his prejudice toward Japan after serving in WWII as a pilot. Mimi's mother is struggling to adjust to life without her relatives from California nearby. Mimi makes a friend whose mother does not like that she is part-black; this friend later wants to date a "boy with an afro" in their class, which she hides from her racist mother. Mimi wants to be an astronaut when she grows up and is fascinated by the Apollo 11 mission and the moon. She follows her passion and creates a science project about the moon's phases, and just when it seems that her project will win the school science fair, someone vandalizes her work. There are several school dances (where fights occur or where Mimi feels left out), Mimi befriends her rude neighbor's nephew and begins to have romantic feelings for him, and Mimi experiences a variety of racist attitudes and remarks from various townspeople and her schoolmates. This is a lot for one text to take on, which makes sense given the book's 400 pages.


The Poetry: While a lot happens in the novel, and the author approaches and successfully tackles some taboo topics, the one thing that was most lacking in Full Cicada Moon was the use of sustained poetic technique. In fact, in 400 pages, there were only a few poems that employed any poetic devices at all. The narrative is told in free verse poems, but the poems lack imagery, lyricism, and music. This lack of poetic technique is acceptable, so long as the author endeavors to utilize the space of the page to create pauses or to draw the reader's attention to linger on a scene. Hilton's verse novel was really more of a soliloquy, where the main focus was on the story and the voice and musings of the speaker (see Mike Cadden's "The Verse Novel and the Question of Genre" for an in-depth discussion of the ways in which the verse novel utilizes dramatic techniques). The one poetic device that Full Cicada Moon does employ every so often is the use of concrete or visual poetry (words arranged on the page to imply movement) and the em-dash (for emphasis and pause at the end of a line).

The Page: Full Cicada Moon is divided into parts that focus on the seasons of the first full year of Mimi's life in Vermont. Several poem titles also emphasize Japanese cultural traditions or follow the phases of the moon. The book includes a glossary of Japanese words, epigraphs from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Neil Armstrong, and an author's acknowledgement page that details how Mimi's narrative came to her and the research she did for the novel.

Overall, the narrative of Full Cicada Moon was interesting, but the book was far too long and filled with too many side-narratives, and the under-utilization of poetic techniques and devices seemed like a missed opportunity. I give Full Cicada Moon three stars.

Nikki Grimes's _Words with Wings_

The Plot: Nikki Grimes's Words with Wings (2013) was named a Coretta Scott King honor book in 2014 and tells the story of daydreamer Gabriella. Gabby's story begins with a poem entitled "Prologue" which explains how her parents decided on her name. Most of the poems focus on the primary narrative: Gabby's parents have just divorced and she and her mother have moved to a new town where she starts a new school. In addition to the focus on Gabby's changing home life, these poems also track her struggle in school and at home with being labeled a daydreamer. At school, most of her teachers remark that "her mind tends to wander," while at home her mother is constantly frustrated that she can't stay on task with her chores or doesn't seem to be listening. Gabby thinks this tension with her mother might have something to do with the fact that her daydreaming is something she gets from her father. The one teacher who seems to support her daydreaming is her English teacher, Mr. Spicer. When Gabby suddenly stops daydreaming, she becomes even more withdrawn and sad; it is her English teacher who encourages her by suggesting that her entire class spend some time every day writing down their daydreams. It seems that this helps her pay attention in class, and her mother begins to praise her for being such a great writer.

The Poetry: This short 83 page verse novel is comprised of mostly short free verse poems, with a few haiku and concrete poems. Eighteen of the poems are Gabby's "daydreams," and these poems are set off in a different sans-serif font and a slightly larger font size. Each of the daydream poems begins with the same refrain that focuses on the poem's title image. For example, the poem "Waterfall" begins:

Say "waterfall,"

and the dreary winter rain

outside my classroom window

turns to liquid thunder,

pounding into a clear pool

miles below,

and I can't wait

to dive in (30).

Most of the poems in Words with Wings fall into a similar pattern of using a key word to evoke an image. Mostly these poems are not extremely compelling, but they do work similar to that of Sharon Creech's Love That Dog in that they show a young person learning the intricacies of language and practicing at being a writer of poetry. A few poems in this collection incorporate interesting rhyme and imagery, but even these ultimately have endings that feel overly didactic or have a strange exclamatory clause at the end. For example, the title poem "Words with Wings" begins with interesting sound and imagery: "Some words / sit still on the page / holding a story steady" and "But other words have wings / that wake my daydreams," but ends with the phrase, "I can't help / but buckle up / for the ride!" (11).

The Page: The organization of Grimes's verse novel seemed a bit strange. At first it seemed that the daydream poems might have been flashbacks, but towards the end of the narrative it became clear that they were parts of her daydream journal. I am not sure that this was an effective organizational strategy.

Overall, Words with Wings is a fine verse novel. I give it three stars.

Mariko Nagai's _Dust of Eden_

The Plot: Markio Nagai's verse novel Dust of Eden (2014) takes place between 1941 to 1945 and focuses on the experiences of thirteen-year-old Mina Masako Tagawa and her Japanese American family as they are forced from their home in Seattle and relocated to an internment camp in Idaho after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Amidst increasing discrimination in their town, Mina's father is imprisoned, and her family is then placed on a bus with only two pieces of luggage each to Camp Harmony in Puyallup, Washington. After four months, her family must travel again by train to Minidoka Relocation Center in Hunt, Idaho where they live for three years. Throughout the narrative, Mina struggles with her identity and experience of living as a Japanese American during a tumultuous time in US history. Her grandfather and father practice "the stoic Japanese principle known as gaman, which means to bear hardship silently" (122), while her eighteen-year-old brother Nick expresses his anger and frustration at the unfair treatment of Japanese Americans by the US government and eventually volunteers to join the Japanese American regiment in the US military to prove his loyalty to his country. Throughout the narrative, Mina expresses sadness and longing for the way her life used to be; she misses her home, her cat Basho, her best friend Jamie, and her family being together and happy.

The Poetry: The free verse poems in Dust of Eden utilize a variety of poetic techniques and formal approaches to express Mina's story. Some of the most prevalent features of Nagai's collection are the use of imagery, anaphora, lyricism, and metaphor. Each of these features in the poem "October 1942":

Dust enters

during the night like a thief,

leaving mounds 

of sand in all corners

of the room where the wind left it,

leaving mounds like graves,

even on top of us, burying us

while we were asleep.

Dust enters through our noses

and mouths while we are asleep (53).

In this poem and many others in the collection, Nagai uses space and symbol to illustrate the hopelessness and grief experienced by those interned in the camps during World War II. Poems like "September 1942" utilize space and movement on the page to depict mundane every-day experiences of internment such as the way in which internees were forced to stand in "line after line" while imprisoned (51), while other spare poems like "July 1945" disclose the horrors of internment: "A woman killed her baby / today because she was / afraid of leaving the camp" (114).

The Page: Nagai's verse novel is divided into five sections each focused on place; each poem is titled with the month and the year to give the collection a diary or journal-like quality. In addition to free verse poems, Dust of Eden also presents Mina's experiences through letters to and from Mina and essays written by Mina for school. This approach contributes to the layered and assembled nature of the verse novel as a work that contains not just lyric poetry but also documents and correspondences.

I found the narrative of Nagai's Dust of Eden fascinating and affecting, and the poetry beautifully and uniquely crafted. I give Dust of Eden four stars and highly recommend it.

Cordelia Jensen's _Skyscraping_

The Plot: Cordelia Jensen explains in the acknowledgements of her 2015 Skyscraping that "a long, long time ago it was a memoir.... Although the book was once a true story, it is now, absolutely, a work of fiction" (346). Set in 1993 New York City, Jensen's verse novel tells the story of Mira, who is just starting her senior year of high school. She is excited about editing her high school yearbook, taking an Astronomy class, and applying to colleges, but her world is turned upside down when she walks in on her dad and his lover after school one day. Mira has long seen her father as a mentor and someone who she wants to emulate. He is a Spanish Literature professor at Columbia and stepped up to take care of her and her sister while Mira's mother went to Italy for a year to study art. After this incident, Mira's mother and father explain to her and April, her younger sister, that they have an open marriage, that Mira's father is gay, and that he is HIV positive. While April is supportive, Mira is not; she is angry that her father and mother have lied to her. Mira copes with her feelings through self-harm, drinking, smoking weed, and exploring her sexuality. While I am a huge fan of the problem novel, and Skyscraping definitely falls into this category, I took issue with much of the plot structure and the unredeeming representation of the seventeen-year-old protagonist. Mira is portrayed as judgmental, overdramatic, and even homophobic at times throughout the narrative. It is not until almost 200 pages into the verse novel, when she realizes her dad's HIV has progressed to AIDS and that he only has about one month to live, that she begins to let go of her anger and, frankly, stops throwing a temper tantrum. The only time Mira comes close to accepting her father is after she loses her virginity to her ex-boyfriend, tells him her family's secret, and he remarks that "AIDS is a deserved disease" (208). While most problem novels are issue focused and present their characters as somewhat self-centered, they also provide the reader a sense of comfort (in that they feel that they are not alone) as well as a window through which they might see themselves or learn something new about a serious topic. Skyscraping falls short for me in this respect; the protagonist is portrayed as hateful and without depth, and the way in which the significant issues are treated in the novel is problematic.

The Poetry: Jensen divides her verse novel into four seasons, following Mira through "fall," "winter," "spring," and "summer" of her final year in high school. The poems utilize free verse, and the author occasionally makes use of shaped or concrete poetry. The poems are mostly told in fragmented, end-stopped phrases which gives the verse novel a jarring quality, and at times makes it difficult to read. This is clear from the first poem in the narrative "Piloting":

I have everything I need.

My bag. My key.

The security man knows my name, 

lets me in.

Soon the school with be full;

for now, quiet, empty (3).

Just like these first few lines of the verse novel, the poetry throughout the collection falls flat. The author seems to rely very little on sound and music, and the images presented are mostly mundane. Jensen attempts to use the yearbook theme Mira chooses (outer space) as a metaphor for Mira's experiences and feelings of isolation, but again this metaphor becomes a missed opportunity for the author to inject lyricism and vivid imagery into her poetry.

The Page: Like many other verse novels, especially those that focus less on the music, imagery, and/or sound and more on narrative, Jensen's work attempts to make use of space (literal page space, as well as the metaphor of outer space). These attempts ultimately miss the mark for me as a reader.

I give Jensen's Skyscraping two stars.

Kwame Alexander's _The Crossover_

The Plot: Published in 2014, Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover was the winner of the 2015 Newbery Medal and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. The story follows 12-year-old Josh Bell and his twin brother Jordan (JB) as they lead their middle school basketball team to their first county championship. Their father is a former Euroleague basketball player and their mother is the assistant principal at their middle school. The narrative begins with Josh feeling confident about his locks, his basketball skills, his friendship with his twin brother, and the idea of one day attending Duke University. Throughout the novel, which is divided into six sections (warm up, four quarters, and overtime), things begin to change in Josh’s life: his brother accidentally cuts off five of his locks and he must shave his head, JB gets his first girlfriend and Josh feels neglected, Josh gets suspended from the basketball team, and his family becomes more and more concerned about his father’s health.

The Poetry: Alexander’s verse novel utilizes multiple poetic forms (free verse, rap, concrete, tanka, ode) and devices (rhyme, rhythm, anaphora, lyricism, metaphor, simile) in order to focus on the strong family ties and the significance of language in the life of Josh Bell. Alexander uses free verse in a variety of different poems to push the narrative thread along. Additionally, several poems utilize rhyme and rhythm that mirrors rap or hip-hop lyrics, while others use concrete poetry and irregular font size and placement to emulate movements during basketball games.

The Page: Throughout the narrative, the poems make use of a variety of narrative modes including conversation poems, basketball rules, definition poems, text messages, play-by-plays, and newspaper articles. For example, in the definition poem “cross-o-ver,” the speaker of the poem, Josh, explains the meaning of this basketball term and how it relates to knowledge he has gathered from his education in language, his father, and professional basketball players he admires (29). In the final basketball rules poem in the novel, “Basketball Rule #10,” Josh meditates upon the year that has gone by: “A loss is inevitable, / like snow in winter. / True champions / learn / to dance / through / the storm” (230).

I found Alexander’s verse novel to be one of the best I have encountered thus far. Both the narrative and the use of poetry were compelling. I give The Crossover five stars and highly recommend it.