Margarita Engle's _The Wild Book_

The Plot: The Wild Book (2012) by Margarita Engle is verse novel inspired by the stories and experiences Engle's maternal grandmother told her about her childhood growing up in Cuba in the early 1900s. As she explains in her author's note, the verse novel follows Fefa (Josefa de la Caridad Uria Pena) who lives on a small farm in the countryside during a time of "chaos following Cuba's war for independence from Spain and the subsequent US occupation of the island. It was a time of lawlessness, when bandits terrorized the countryside, kidnapping children unless their families agreed to deliver ransom money" (123). From the first poem in the collection, readers learn that Fefa has "word-blindness" (3)-- "a medical term used in the early twentieth century for what we now call dyslexia" (125). The narrative focuses on Fefa's struggle with dyslexia and learning to read and write through poetic exploration, as well as Fefa's encounter with Fausto, her family's old farm manager, who writes a sloppy "ugly" poem in her honor (42); Fefa is mortified by Fausto's attention.

The Poetry: Like many other of Engle's verse novels, The Wild Book employs free verse, lyricism, and imagery to tell the story of a young girl's experiences. The Wild Book in many ways shows a young girl developing a love for reading poetry and writing in her own wild book, which her mother gives to her upon her diagnosis with word-blindness: "Think of this little book / as a garden, / Mama suggests" (5-6). Her mother advises her to view her writing as a path to maturation and self-acceptance:

Throw wildflower seeds

all over each page, she advises.

Let the words sprout

like seedlings,

then relax and watch

as your wild diary

grows. (6) 

And eventually, a love of language emerges within Fefa. She exclaims later in the collection in a poem entitled "Fly to the Truth of Dreams" that she "love[s] the way poetry / turns ordinary words / into winged things" (68). In addition to the imagery and lyricism Engle relies upon, she also utilizes repetition and the space on the page to emphasize the ways in which Fefa's struggle with dyslexia manifests itself, as well as how she begins to find ways to allow herself to experience more comfort and pleasure in language.

The Page: Engle's verse novel begins with a dedication "for young readers who dread reading and for those who love blank books" which answers one of the chargers that the verse novel form is ideal for reluctant readers. This dedication is followed by a quote in Spanish with a translation from the poet Ruben Dario, who is referred to throughout the narrative as the Fefa's mother's favorite poet. The quote reads: "In the hour of daydreams my eyes watched / the blank page // And there came a parade of dreams and shadows" (from "La Pagina Blanca" or "The Blank Page"). This epigraph complicates Engle's dedication in that it demonstrates the complexity and intertextual, cross-cultural references made throughout the collection. The book ends with an author's note that includes a family photograph of Fefa from 1914 and an acknowledgements section.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Wild Book; I give it four stars and highly recommend it.

Ellen Hopkins's _Traffick_

The Plot: Traffick (2015) is the sequel to Ellen Hopkins's Tricks, and in it Hopkins presents the intertwining narratives of five teenagers from across the country who are living in Vegas and have been victimized by sex trafficking. As a sequel narrative, Traffick focuses on each characters' attempt to become a survivor of trafficking and their individual, rocky roads to recovery. The first character introduced is Cody, who wakes up in the hospital after being show to find that he is paralyzed from the waist down. Cody's struggles with gambling led him to sex work. Next, the story shifts to Ginger, who runs away from home with her girlfriend Alex after years of her mother selling her to men for drugs, but is eventually arrested for soliciting an undercover cop. Ginger is living in House of Hope, a Christian center for young sex workers looking to become survivors. Ginger practices writing her story through poetry while at House of Hope. Next, the narrative moves to Seth, a farm boy from Indiana whose father kicked him out after he came out to him. After a string of boyfriends, Seth finds the only way to survive is to begin working for an escort service. He also volunteers part-time at the YouCenter serving LGBTQ youth. After Seth, readers are introduced to Whitney, a girl from a wealthy family whose boyfriend/pimp Bryn facilitated her trafficking and heroin addiction. After the police find her, she is placed by her family in a five-star rehab facility called Clean Slate. Finally, the narrative turns to Eden, a preacher's daughter who after escaping from an abusive, religious facility called Tears of Zion, turns to prostitution to survive. After wandering into a Catholic church, Eden is directed to Walk Straight, a rescue for teen prostitutes intent on a better life. The narratives alternate every 10 pages or so for 500 pages.

The Poetry: Hopkin's Traffick is told through a series of alternating narratives. Each time a new character is introduced, a poem "written by" that character or someone close to them leads off the section. The poems are told in free verse and are typically one to three pages in length. Often, Hopkins will include a poem that manipulates the space on the page in order to isolate a specific phrase that can be read inside the poem, but also vertically as its own entity. For example, the first page of the verse novel is a poem written by Cody Bennett; it contains four stanzas with four lines justified left and four single lines appearing after each stanza justified right. The lines justified right form the phrase: "the abyss,... / would be... / preferable to... / this living hell" (1). Each right justified line can also be read as part of the larger poem, as in the first five lines:

The courage to leap

the brink, free-fall

beyond the precipice,

hurtle toward

                                                     the abyss, (1).

The Page: In addition to the manipulation of space on the page, Hopkins also makes use of varied font to depict when characters write poetry or letters. Hopkins includes a detailed author's note in which she explains the research she did for Tricks and Traffick, relates the significance of the project to her, and provides a list of resources for young people. Overall though, I found Hopkins's writing in Traffick to be lacking. One of the biggest issues with the narrative is that it tried to develop the stories of too many characters, which became confusing as a reader and almost trivialized the horrific experiences of child sex trafficking being related. In addition to the five primary characters, readers are also introduced to a myriad of other characters who also share their unique stories of victimization. Ultimately, Hopkins verse novels are more successful when they focus on fewer characters. The inclusion of poems "written by" characters in addition to their narratives was interesting, but got lost in the chaos of narrative. I give Hopkins's Traffick two stars.

A. L. Sonnichsen's _Red Butterfly_

The Plot: Red Butterfly (2015) by A. L. Sonnichsen is a three part verse novel that tells the story of Kara, a preteen Chinese girl growing up in Tianjin. Kara was abandoned as an infant because of a hand deformity and taken in by an older American woman living in China. As Kara grows up, she comes to understand that her foster mother has been living illegally in China with an expired visa and that she has never officially adopted Kara, so she does not have paperwork to prove her identity. All of these issues come to a head when her mother's 40-year-old daughter Jody comes to visit, collapses, and the police are notified. Kara is sent to an orphanage where she meets and befriends Toby, a physical therapist, who helps care for children with diseases and deformities. Eventually Kara is faced with the difficulty of wanting to be with her foster mother and the possibility of being adopted by a family from Florida. While it seemed like the narrative was dangerously close to relying on the "white savior" trope, Sonnichsen does explain that she takes her own experiences living in China and volunteering at an orphanage as inspiration for the events of her verse novel. Sonnichsen reveals in her author's note that she grew up in Hong Kong, spent eight years as an adult living in Tianjin, China, and eventually adopted her daughter from a Chinese orphanage.

The Poetry: Sonnichsen's nearly 400-page verse novel utilizes lyrical free verse to tell Kara's story. Like some other verse novels for young readers, Sonnichsen project does not adhere to the traditional poetic practice of beginning each new poem on its own page; it appears that she does this to save space, but this practice also forefronts the novelistic aspect of the work. Many of the early poems in the collection employ imagery, sound, and repetition to great effect, but as the collection continues, these poetic techniques are discarded in favor of a focus on plot. The title poem, "Red Butterfly," an early poem in the collection, employs impactful poetic techniques such as imagery, space, and consonance:

I ride with my hair

whipping back,

a long,

flapping

black flag.

..........

The city

is a blur.

No one stares,

..........

when I am alone,

pedaling my ruby-red bicycle.

No one knows I am different,

..........

flitting between them,

       a red butterfly. (7-8)

The Page: Red Butterfly is divided into three sections entitled "Crawl," "Dissolve," and "Fly"-- each section playing on the metaphor for transformation (from a caterpillar to a chrysalis to a butterfly). One of the most interesting elements of the verse novel are the collaged illustrations by Amy June Bates. Every four or five pages includes a small illustration, most of the times in the margins of the poems. These illustrations appear to collage bits and scraps of Chinese newspapers combined with pencil drawings. They are quite lovely.

Overall, I give Red Butterfly three stars. It was a fine verse novel; the narrative was engaging, the illustrations were captivating, and the poetry in the early parts of the collection was well-done.

Padma Venkatraman's _A Time to Dance_

The Plot: Padma Venkatraman's A Time to Dance (2014) tells the story of a Bharatanatyam dance prodigy, Veda, who lives in India. The verse novel opens with a prologue poem entitled "Temple of the Dancing God" that describes Veda's first encounter with a bronze statue of Shiva, God of dance; a priest in the temple explains to her that she only has to look within and around her to see God "danc[ing] within all He creates" (2). The story then moves forward to an older Veda who is getting ready to dance in the Bharatanatyam dance competition. After winning the competition with her "flawless technique" and "skillful mastery over her body" (23), Veda is injured in a car accident and her right leg must be amputated from the knee down. Devastated by this loss, she faces the possibility that she will never dance again. With the help of her prosthesis, Veda becomes determined to continue dancing. When her old dance teacher refuses to continue to work with her, her grandmother Paati encourages her to try to work with Dr. Dhanam, a different kind of dance teacher who focuses on abhinaya, or emotional expression (123). With the help of Dhanam akka, the doctor who creates her new prosthetic leg, and her new friend and dance teacher Govinda, Veda relearns dance, as well as lessons in acceptance and peace.

The Poetry: Venkatraman's verse novel is told entirely through free verse poems that range in length from one to five pages. The poems are primarily made up of plain, every day language. Each poem is clearly written to move the narrative forward, and there is little time spent focusing on the intricacies of language. There are a few lyrical moments where the beauty of language and line are apparent. For example, in the poem "The Color of Music" Venkatraman uses sensory imagery and lyricism to describe the landscape and her experience of God.

The Page: In A Time to Dance, like many verse novels for young readers, the author places a heavier focus on the narrative than she does on the use of poetic devices and techniques. The author primarily makes use of the space and pause that the verse novel naturally creates through line break. While some critics might find this to be a significant weakness in the work, I would argue that Venkatraman's use of the verse novel is a valid and useful choice because space and pause (even if they are the only elements of "poetry" in the verse novel) require reader engagement in a way that traditional prose does not.

A Time to Dance told an engrossing story. I give Venkatraman's verse novel four stars.