Thanhha Lai's _Inside Out and Back Again_

The Plot: Thanhha Lai's 2011 Inside Out and Back Again, a Newbery Honor book and winner of the National Book Award for Young People (along with Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming and Virginia Euwer Wolff's True Believer, one of only three verse novels to ever win the award), follows 10-year-old Hà during a period of one year in her life in which she flees Vietnam with her family after the fall of Saigon and then struggles to adjust to her new life in Alabama. As Lai explains in her author's note, "much of what happened to Hà... also happened to me" (261). Lai further notes that her goal in writing Inside Out and Back Again was to capture Hà's emotional life on the page, as well as use her own memories to provide insight into the beauties of Vietnam and the "challenges of starting over in a strange land" for first generation Vietnamese-American children (262). The narrative begins with the poem "1975: Year of the Cat" and describes how Hà's family celebrates the first day of the lunar calendar. Hà lives with her mother and three older brothers in Saigon; her father has been MIA for the past nine years. Early poems also focus on Hà's beloved papaya tree.

The Poetry: Lai's verse novel utilizes free verse, often with a short line, throughout her narrative. Because Hà is intently focused on learning a new language during a good portion of the narrative, several poems make use of sound (particularly the elongated S-sound). The poem "War and Peace" is an interesting example of Lai's use of ekphrasis and makes use of anaphora, imagery, and caesura to delve into her young protagonist's experience of her American teacher's belittling her culture. (This poem calls to mind a similar experience detailed in Marilyn Nelson's title poem in How I Discovered Poetry.) The poem begins, "MiSSS SScott / shows the class / photographs" and the four stanzas that follow go on to describe iconic images of the Vietnam War; most notably the second stanza describes Nick Ut's Pulitzer Prize winning "The Terror of War" depicting "a burned, naked girl / running, crying / down a dirt road" (194). The speaker of the poem goes on to lament this reductive description of where she is from that leaves out the things she loves most about her country.

The Page: Divided into four sections--"Saigon," "At Sea," "Alabama," and "From Now On"-- each poem ends with either a specific date or more general temporal designations such as "every day." The verse novel opens and closes with a poem on the lunar new year (1975 and 1976), emphasizing the tumultuous year in the protagonist's life and the hope she has for the future in her new home.

As a genealogical verse novel, Thanhha Lai's Inside Out and Back Again is an example of an award-winning work that explores the immigrant experience in a nuanced way that does not sugar-coat the harsh realities of racism faced by the young protagonist and her family. I give Inside Out and Back Again five stars.

Margarita Engle's _The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom_

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom (2008) was the first verse novel by Margarita Engle that I encountered years ago. It is the first book in Engle's "loosely linked group of historical verse novels about the struggle against forced labor in nineteenth-century Cuba" (Lion Island, 160). The Surrender Tree was a 2009 Newbery Honor Book, only the third verse novel to be recognized by the Newbery committee after Marilyn Nelson's Carver: A Life in Poems (2002) and Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust (1998). Engle was the first Latinx author to receive a Newbery honor.

The Plot: In Engle's The Surrender Tree, poems alternate among the voices of five primary characters to tell a story based upon historical events as well as Engle's own great-grandparents' experiences during Cuba's fight for independence. It take place between 1850 and 1899, during which time three different wars rage in Cuba. The narrative follows Rosa, a healer and nurse; Lieutenant Death, a slavehunter; Jose, Rosa's husband; Weyler, a captain-general of Spain who instituted concentration camps in Cuba to control the rural civilian population; and Silvia, an eleven year old girl from a small farm who comes to learn from Rosa after her family starves in the concentration camps.

The Poetry: The most striking poems in this collection are told in the voices of Rosa and Silvia and meditate upon the natural world as a healing balm for war and sorrow. For instance, in an early poem, Rosa describes the burning city of Bayamo:

I watch the flames, feel the heat,

inhale the scent of torched sugar

and scorched coffee....

I listen to voices,

burning a song in the smoky sky. (28)

Imagery, language, and metaphor are at work in this poem to evoke the sense of beauty and danger brought on by the violence of war. The internal and slant rhymes in the first three lines ("watch," "torched," "scorched") emphasize the crackling sound of the flames, while the image of "voices, / burning a song" links the lives of the people to the fire that engulfs the city. Later in the verse novel, the poems told from Silvia's view point evoke the same lyricism and imagery. In one poem, the speaker describes how the driver of an oxcart helps her steal away from the concentration camp: "He points to a hole int he fence, / puts his finger to his lips, / then draws a map in the sky--" (103). Again, the sky figures heavily into the narrative, and silence lingers at the end of each line of poetry.

The Page: Engle's verse novel is divided into five parts: "The Names of Flowers, 1850-51," "The Ten Years' War, 1868-78," "The Little War, 1878-80," "The War of Independence, 1895-98," and "The Surrender Tree, 1898-99." The novel begins with a dedication and explanation of the historical roots for the narrative, as well as a quote from a poem by Jose Marti. It concludes with an author's note, a historical note, a chronology, selected references, and acknowledgements.

I give The Surrender Tree four stars.

Margarita Engle's _Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck_

The Plot: In Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck (2011), a 2012 Pura Belpre Honor Book, Margarita Engle tells a story alternating five characters' perspectives: Quebrado, a young slave of Taino Indian and Spanish ancestry; Bernardino de Talavera, a real-life conquistador who became the first pirate of the Caribbean Sea in the 1500s when he stole a boat to avoid debtors' prison; Alonso de Ojeda, a brutal European slave trader and conquistador who was taken prisoner by Talavera; and two young islanders who are secretly in love -- Caucubu, the daughter of a Ciboney chieftain, and Narido, a fisherman. Engle invented the character Quebrado, but the remaining characters are all historical figures-- two European and two Cuban. Engle reveals in her author's note that she "became fascinated by the first Caribbean pirate shipwreck while researching [her] own family history" as one of her ancestors "was a Cuban pirate who used his treasure to buy the cattle each where many generations of [her] mother's family were born" (135). She notes further that she became the subject of the Cuban DNA project and discovered that she carries a genetic marker verifying tens of thousands of years of maternal Ameindian ancestry; Engle is "a descendant of countless generations of women like Caucubu. Indigenous Cubans do survive in body, as well as spirit" (135).

The Poetry: The majority of Hurricane Dancers meditates upon the enslaved life of Quebrado, who is referred to as "broken boy," "spirit-boy," "storm-boy," and "born-of-wind friend" by various characters throughout the narrative. While the experiences of the other characters in the narrative are interesting, the poems told from Quebrado's perspective are the most lyrical and lively on the page. For instance, the first poem in the collection "Quebrado," begins:

I listen

to the song

of creaking planks,

the roll and sway

of clouds in sky,

wild music

and thunder,

the groans

of wood,

a mourning moan (3).

The poem ends as the speaker links the old ship's sounds with the materials used to create it, explaining that the sounds echo the ship's memory of "her true self / her tree self / ... alive" (3). Poems like this one, steeped in metaphor reflecting the natural world and ringing with sound and rhythm, are characteristic of those told from the point of view of Quebrado.

The Page: Hurricane Dancers is divided into six parts: "Wild Sea," "Brave Earth," "Hidden," "The Sphere Court," "The Sky Horse," and "Far Light." Engle begins her verse novel with a quote uttered by Caliban in William Shakespeare's The Tempest and a description of Talavera from Bartolome de las Casas's History de las Indias; a note on her historical setting; and a list and description of the cast of characters. The verse novel ends with an author's note; a historical note detailing her narrative's connection to historical characters and events, culture and language, and literature; and a list of references.

I found Hurricane Dancers to be extremely engaging, and I thoroughly enjoyed Engle's characteristic use of free verse, lyricism, and imagery within her historical narrative. I give Hurricane Dancers four stars and highly recommend it.

Ann E. Burg's _Unbound: A Novel in Verse_

The Plot: Ann E. Burg's 2016 Unbound: A Novel in Verse follows nine-year-old Grace, a light-skinned enslaved girl, as she moves from her mother's cabin to the "Big House" where she will work in the kitchen. Within the first pages of the narrative, Grace's mother appeals to her: "Promise you'll keep / your eyes down," "Promise you'll keep / your mouth closed," and "Promise you won't / talk back" (4). Similarly, Grace's Aunt Sara echoes her mother's warning: "Grace, stay out of trouble" (23). Aunt Tempie takes Grace under her wing, and begins to teach her how to cook, clean, and work in the kitchen. Almost immediately upon entering the Big House, Grace begins to break her promises to her family by questioning and speaking out against the various injustices that occur at the hands of the Missus. Grace meets other house slaves, including Jordon (a server who Aunt Tempie refers to as "a runner" who never smiles and has a wife and daughter that he will never see again) and Anna (a young girl who is the Missus's personal slave and who receives some of the worst treatment). Because Grace has such a hard time following her mother and Aunt Sara's warnings, the Missus begins to punish her. One night Grace overhears the Missus and Master Allen planning to sell her mother and two younger brothers at auction to teach her a lesson. Grace decides to take action and implores her family to flee. The rest of the narrative tells the story of Grace's family and their escape to the Great Dismal Swamp.

The Poetry: Burg's novel in verse is told primarily in short lines of lyric, free verse. Throughout the verse novel, Burg makes use of a dialect that drops Gs and uses "what" in place of "that," and while she does note in the end pages of her novel that she used research from "narratives of the formerly enslaved... prepared by the Federal Writers' Project" (348) and consulted the work of anthropologist Dr. Daniel O. Sayers and historian of the African diaspora Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf to assist her in writing her novel, I was hoping for a bit more discussion in her Author's Note and Acknowledgement sections relating to her use of dialect and her linguistic choices. In terms of poetic devices, Burg makes use of some lovely imagery, simile, and lyricism throughout her narrative. For instance, in the first section of the verse novel, Grace feels her resolve begin to crumble:

like a clap of thunder

in a sweet blue sky,

all my promisin

starts feelin like

a fistful of thorns

is scratchin my brain. (4-5)

and in the lines that end the second section of the narrative as Grace's family moves closer to freedom:

Moonlight glistens

on a dark lake

what's set before us

like a shimmerin

piece of fallen sky. (282)

Although these lines evoke some engaging images, they do not make up for the overall sense that something in this project is missing in terms of language and poetic technique. I am wary of the use of dialect in this verse novel, particularly by a white writer, without citation of any source material or discussion of these linguistic choices in her end pages.

The Page: Unlike most other verse novels for young readers, Burg does not separate her narrative into individual poems. Instead the verse novel is divided into three parts: part one is around 170 pages, part two around 100 pages, and part three around 75 pages. Each poem is untitled, but is a few pages long and its ending is denoted with a grey dot. As previously noted, Unbound does include an Author's Note and an Acknowledgements section, but Burg could have included much more information about her research, her sources, and her use of dialect throughout her narrative. I give Unbound three stars.

Margarita Engle's _Lion Island: Cuba's Warrior of Words_

The Plot: Margarita Engle's newest verse novel, Lion Island: Cuba's Warrior of Words (2016), is the fifth and final volume in what she calls her "loosely linked group of historical verse novels about the struggle against forced labor in nineteenth-century Cuba" (160). And it is a lovely and powerful work that follows three young, culturally diverse protagonists: twelve year old Antonio, a messenger boy with Asian, African, and European ancestry who eventually becomes a translator  (based upon the historical figure Antonio Chuffat-- a champion of civil rights for the Chinese Cuban community); Wing, a fourteen year old Chinese American boy whose family barely escaped the anti-Asian riots in San Francisco; and his twin sister, Fan, a talented singer and performer. Antonio, Wing, and Fan's stories intertwine to tell the tale of how a group of young friends worked hard to tell their stories and have their voices heard in a time of violence, with injustice, war, and rebellions swirling around them. Antonio works to record, translate, and help give voice to the experiences of those enslaved Africans and near-enslaved Chinese indentured servants who were forced or coerced to sign eight-year contracts to work in the fields of Cuba, while Wing's story leads him to eventually join the rebellion and Fan runs away from home to work at el teatro chino as a singer who assists runaways in hiding on their way to escaping enslavement.

The Poetry: As previously noted, Engle is a prolific verse novelist for young readers, having published nine well-received, award winning verse novels before Lion Island. This volume contains beautiful poetry, and I found the poems which Fan is the speaker of to be particularly moving as she longs to become an artist. Engle's use of imagery, lyricism, and metaphor contribute richly to her work. The poem "That Same Evening" in which the speaker Wing describes being robbed by Spanish soldiers ends with two rhythmic stanzas describing his emotions: "Rage comes and goes in gusts, / like a hurricane's furious / wind" and "Quietly, I return to work the next day, / trapped in the eye of my own / storm" (41). The quiet rhythm and movement on the page of these two stanzas enacts the content of the poem, tracing the rise and fall of the wind as well as Wing's anger. Later in the narrative, in the poem "Mirror," Fan meditates upon her experiences of being a young woman and the twin sister of a passionate brother:

Being the twin of a boy

is like shimmering

in and out of a shiny river,

the constant burst of rushing water

never peaceful enough to see my own

reflection (52).

Toward the end of this same poem, Fan notes that her brother can go anywhere and so or say whatever he pleases, while as a young woman she must constantly guard herself and speak and dream with caution. While Fan and Wing's stories are significant to the narrative, Antonio's experiences are the underlying drive of the work. In the poem "Quiet Truths" toward the end of the verse novel, Antonio examines his place as messenger, translator, and activist,

How difficult it is to describe injustice.

No wonder Fan used a knife on wood,

or a stick in mud, before discovering

her own songs.

.......................................................... 

There's nothing a warrior of words can do

for people who have already been murdered,

nothing but offer comfort so that the living

can begin to feel peaceful in the presence

of memories (142).

This seems to be the overall drive of Engle's series of historical verse novels that examine the struggles and injustices faced by so many during this time period in Cuba. Engle's Lion Island and her series as a whole draw attention to these experiences and histories.

The Page: Lion Island includes seven sections of poems: "Running with Words: Year of the Goat 1871," "The Beast of Hope: Year of the Monkey 1872," "Free Songs: Year of the Rooster 1873," "The Shadow Path: Year of the Rooster 1873," "Dangerous Flames: Year of the Rooster 1873," "Listeners: Year of the Dog 1874," and "Voices Heard Across the Sea: Year of the Tiger 1878." Engle's verse novel is not only rich in poetry and plot, but Lion Island also includes sections book-ending the narrative focused on historical background. Engle includes sections not only about Cuban history, but also about historical figures, and she provides a reference section and further readings for young people.

I give Engle's Lion Island: Cuba's Warrior of Words four stars and highly recommend it.

Linda Oatman High's _A Heart Like Ringo Starr_

The Plot: Linda Oatman High's 2015 A Heart Like Ringo Starr tells the story of 17-year-old Faith Hope Stevens who is awaiting a heart transplant. Faith, who has been sick since she was born, is home-schooled, and her family runs a funeral home, so death seems to always be a part of her life. The narrative follows Faith through her experience of being on the transplant list, to discovering that she will receive a heart transplant, to her life with a new heart and the uncertainties and surprises that arise from this transition in her life. Before her transplant, Faith is depicted as cynical, and she expects that it is not just a matter of if she will die but when. After she receives a new heart, she feels unsure of who she is and longs to have her old, defective heart back. Faith starts her senior year at high school (it is not as exciting as she thought it would be and she feels on-display and invisible at the same time), and she meets a young man while at the beach with her great aunt. The narrative moves surprisingly quickly through each of these events and has a closed, happily-ever-after ending.

The Poetry: Throughout the verse novel, Oatman High utilizes a significant amount of end and internal rhyme, as well as a considerable amount of white space. These two poetic techniques seem at odds with each other throughout the collection. The use of rhyme speeds the narrative up, which seems to contradict the serious subject matter. The white space created by the use of short lines, half-blank page, and alternatively left and right justified text might usually act as a method to slow the reader's pace in verse novels, while in A Heart Like Ringo Starr these techniques juxtaposed with the extensive use of rhyme and the sporadic changes in typography do not seem as purposeful. For example, in the poem "Wintertime," three four to five line stanzas include only one to five words and the facing page leave the top half of the page blank and includes two similarly short stanzas that end the poem:

Bummer.

I so

want summer.

Popsicles.

Not icicles.

This pedicure tickles

                                 my

                                         toes (9).

This use of rhyme and space on the page does little in terms of narrative work or linguistic play, and ultimately the poem falls flat. Other poems such as the title poem, "A Heart Like Ringo Starr" (91), are on the verge of successfully exploring a character's thoughts and feelings with rhyme, rhythm, and lyricism, but in the end the poem is less impactful because of the author's choice of line length and use of white space.

The Page: A Heart Like Ringo Starr is divided into two parts that follow Faith before and after her transplant. As previously noted, the poems make use of white space and typography play. It seems that the author made some of her choices because she sees her work appealing to "reluctant readers." This argument for the use of white space and short lines as inviting to readers because less appears on the page seems to be a mistake and a view that doesn't take young readers seriously as an audience. Ultimately, white space and poetic language within a verse novel are most successful when they encourage a reader to slow down and meditate upon the narrative, emotion, and meaning.

I give Oatman High's verse novel two stars.

K. A. Holt's _Rhyme Schemer_

The Plot: Rhyme Schemer (2014) is K. A. Holt's second verse novel for young readers (following her 2010 Brains for Lunch: A Zombie Novel in Haiku). Holt's Rhyme Schemer follows Kevin Jamison, a seventh grader who is struggling with his home life and his school life. Both of his parents are doctors who are never around, all four of his older brothers ignore him, and he and another student Robin are constantly taking turns tormenting each other. Kevin's one solace is creating poetry through erasure (by defacing classic books for young readers, which most all of his teachers and his principal frown upon). As punishment for his bullying he is forced to work shelving books in the library where he meets Mrs. Little, who encourages him in his poetry. When Robin finds Kevin's poetry notebook and begins posting his work around school, he realizes how much his poetry means to him.

The Poetry: Holt's verse novel follows Sharon Creech's Love That Dog in that it essentially functions as a young poet's writing notebook. Like Creech's verse novel for younger readers, Rhyme Schemer emphasizes the reluctant poet character, his connection to a trusted teacher/librarian, and the young poet's hidden emotional pain. For example in the poem "Friday Rescue" Mrs. Little finds Kevin outside a restaurant alone and crying after his parents send him out for making a scene at dinner. Kevin is astonished when his teacher begins to praise him in front of his parents:

She called me

A schemer, no doubt.

But also?

Smart.

Funny.

Fragile (134). 

Mrs. Little then asks to borrow Kevin and take him to a poetry open mic night at a local coffee house. One of the most interesting and innovative elements of Holt's verse novel is her use of erasure poetry; there are 10 erasure poems dispersed throughout the novel pulled from The Wind and the Willows, Peter Pan, and Hansel and Gretel, among others. There are also a series of quatrains with regular rhyme schemes that Kevin calls "Necktie Poems" (written about his principal).

The Page: Through its writing journal structure, Rhyme Schemer provides yet another unique approach to the verse novel form. Poems are titled as either days of the school year or are pasted in pages of other book pages that Kevin uses to create erasure poems. Verse novels like Holt's and Creech's certainly serve a pedagogical function in that they provide an outline for how developing writers might approach poetry. In this way, the writing journal structure in the verse novel is distinct in its approach and call to young readers who want to be writers in that the form and structure imply a participatory reader experience. The structure serves as a model, one that is referred to by other verse novelists such as Kwame Alexander, whose protagonist reads and refers to Holt's Rhyme Schemer and then creates his own erasure poems after this model.

I found K. A. Holt's Rhyme Schemer to be another fascinating exercise in form and poetic experimentation. I give it four stars.

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.

Kwame Alexander's _Booked_

Earlier this year I reviewed Kwame Alexander's Newbery Medal winner The Crossover (2014). I highly recommend The Crossover, which incorporates some truly electric language and utilizes a variety of different formal approaches to tell a rich story that deals with family, grief, sports, and boyhood in an absolutely innovative way. Alexander's follow up to The Crossover, Booked (2016) is another groundbreaking verse novel that is sure to garner praise from young readers, librarians, educators, and scholars.

The Plot: Kwame Alexander's Booked follows eighth grader Nick Hall-- a wordsmith and avid soccer player-- as he navigates his first crush, his parents' separation, and his relationship with books. Alexander's verse novels have both portrayed highly professionalized parents; in The Crossover Josh's parents were a retired professional basketball player and an assistant middle school principal, and in Booked Nick's parents are a linguistics professor and a former horse racer turned trainer. The narrative begins with Nick daydreaming about soccer and feeling annoyed that his father makes him read a dictionary he wrote called Weird and Wonderful Words in preparation for college. As the narrative continues, the reader learns that in addition to playing soccer, Nick takes regular lessons at Miss Quattlebaum's School of Ballroom Dance and Etiquette (21), where he often gets to dance with April (the girl he has a crush on but is mostly too nervous to talk to). Early on in the narrative, Nick learns that his mother has decided to go back to work with horses in Kentucky and that his parents are separating (57). After learning this news, Nick becomes depressed; he has a hard time sleeping and begins to struggle in his classes. Nick struggles with his parents' separation throughout the novel, while also building up the courage to talk to April, playing against his best friend in soccer tournaments, dealing with being bullied, and resisting his honors English teacher's and his librarian's pleas for him to get more involved in reading because of his strength with words.

The Poetry: One of the most unique and fascinating things about Alexander's Booked is his use of erasure poetry, footnotes, acrostics, and intertextuality throughout. Towards the end of the verse novel, Nick begins to become immersed in literature for younger readers and joins a book club. He describes the experience of reading works like Karen Hesse's verse novel Out of the Dust and Jacqueline Woodson's Peace, Locomotion. In many ways, Booked takes on a pedagogical or didactic function in that it introduces readers to contemporary works for young readers and schools them in vocabulary. While acrostics, poems in which the first letter of a line spells out a word when read vertically, may seem like a commonplace poetic form for works for young readers, Alexander elevates this form by using unfamiliar words and then following up these poems with discussions of the word's meaning. For example the poem "April is" (114) utilizes an acrostic of the word "limerence," which means "the experience of being in love with someone" (119) to describe all of the characteristics he likes about April. When his English teacher asks him to find an example of a malapropism in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Nick creates an erasure poem from a page of the novel to show two malapropisms he found in the text (51). While Alexander's Booked does not contain the same level of electricity and playfulness in language as his previous work, The Crossover, Booked is innovative in its approach to form.

The Page: Footnotes are another inventive device that Alexander uses throughout Booked. While the footnote might be seen as academic, Nick utilizes them not only to define words, but also to provide his own commentary on the words. For example, in the poem "Busted," Nick's footnote reads: "*malapropism [mal-uh-prop-iz-uhm] noun: the amusing and ludicrous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of a similar sound. Here's an example: my English teacher, Ms. Hardwick, is a wolf in cheap clothing" (18).

I found Alexander's new verse novel Booked to be a fascinating and fun read. I give it four stars and highly recommend it.

Meg Wiviott's _Paper Hearts_

The Plot: Paper Hearts, Meg Wiviott's 2015 historical verse novel, is based upon the true story of the group of young women who survived the Holocaust, experienced the horrors of Auschwitz, and endured the death marches at the end of the war. Wiviott's narrative focuses specifically on two young women, Fania and Zlatka, who became friends and worked together as part of the Union Kommando (work squad) for the Weichsel Union Metallwerke (private factory in Auschwitz that made munitions for the Third Reich). The narrative of Paper Hearts focuses not only on the historical events, but also on the friendship and experiences of Fania and Zlatka and one specific act of defiance and love-- Zlatka's creation of a birthday card for Fania's 20th birthday. Wiviott was inspired to tell this story after seeing "Fania's Heart" on display at the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre. The author notes in her "What Is True?" section at the end of the verse novel that she relied upon "the USC Shoah Foundation's audiovisual testimonies of Fania Fainer (Fania Landau) and Zulema Pitluk (Zlatka Sznaiderhauz), the film documentary The Heart of Auschwitz (Ad Hoc Films), the testimony given by Zlatka on the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre website, and several e-mail and telephone conversations with Fania's daughter" (329). The narrative consists of fourteen chapters which alternate the first person perspectives of Fania and Zlatka. Both girls' narrative begins with their experiences living in different ghettos; Zlatka lives in Pruzany ghetto with her parents and three siblings, and Fania lives in Bialystok with her parents and two siblings. Zlatka observes Fania upon their arrival in Auschwitz; Zlatka is alone, having been separated from her family, and Fania is with only her younger sister Necha. Necha eventually becomes ill and is taken to Block 25, where prisoners were housed before they were sent to the gas chambers. Sick with despair, Fania begins to lose hope, and it is only her friendship with Zlatka that brings her back from the brink.

The Poetry: Wiviott, like several other verse novelists reviewed on this blog, is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts's MFA program in writing for children and young adults. Her verse novel is full of lyricism, imagery, and music that makes her exploration of this historical moment fresh. For example, in the poem "74207," Fania meditates upon the landscape of Auschwitz Birkenau and her body:

Just outside the barbed-wire fence,

A stand of birches.

I'd never seen trees the color of ghosts.

Bark streaked with black,

Lashes on the skin.

Blending with the

Winter sky

....

My forearm,

    Thin as paper,

    Losing luster,

    Scarred with black. (117)

In this poem, the haunting image of ghost trees and the dull landscape is richly mirrored in Fania's body. Other poems, like "Coping," provide similarly grim representations of life during the Holocaust. In this poem, Zlatka watches a horrible scene unfold on a spring day: "Upwind from the chimneys / blue sky hung like a promise / in the air." Zlatka describes watching three girls holding hands who "walked past us / toward the / shadow of the chimneys" and the electrified fence: "one girl lifted her hand to the fence... / Death rippled / through her fingers / radiated to the others" (212).

The Page: One unique thing about Paper Hearts is its inclusion of the image of Fania's paper heart and its incorporation of translations of the inscriptions inside the heart card throughout the last half of the narrative. Each of these translation pages is a darker gray color and includes an image of stitching at the edge of the page. One of the final pages of the narrative also includes a reproduced image of the actual heart on display at the Holocaust Memorial Centre. These elements, along with the glossary, bibliography, and author's "What Is True?" sections contribute to the construction of the verse novel as a whole and link the narrative to the actual historical events it portrays.

Meg Wiviott's Paper Hearts was a beautiful and fresh historical verse narrative. I give it four stars and highly recommend it.

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.

Ellen Hopkins's _Rumble_

The Plot: Ellen Hopkins's Rumble (2014), her eleventh verse novel for young adults, tells the story of Matthew Turner, a high school senior who is dealing with his younger brother Luke's recent suicide, his parents' separation, and his conflicted feelings toward his evangelical Christian girlfriend Hayden. Most of the narrative in this 500+ page work centers around Matt's anger and resentment toward Hayden's circle of church-going friends who bullied his younger brother mercilessly for being gay before his death. Matt also attends regular therapy sessions in which he meditates upon his anger toward everyone who he feels had a hand in Luke's death, his fear of being left along (by Luke, his parents, and his girlfriend), and his struggles with guilt and forgiveness. Toward the middle of the narrative, Matt reconnects with his girlfriend's former best friend Alexa and they begin to feel more and more attracted to each other. This connection, along with his girlfriend's deepening faith and increased commitment to her youth group ministry, leads to Hayden and Matt's breakup. Matt finds out that Hayden also had a hand in gossiping about Luke to her friends who then posted photoshopped pornographic images to Luke's social media pages before he committed suicide. Matt also begins visiting his uncle's gun range regularly to practice shooting. His uncle eventually gives him a job working at the range where one of his uncle's friends (Gus) comes regularly. Gus is depicted as suffering from PTSD after his military service and regularly comes to the range drunk and tries to obtain his gun. When Matt's uncle has a sudden heart attack and leaves Matt alone at the range, Gus shows up angry and Matt's life is changed (again) forever. There is a lot of drama packed into Rumble, and Hopkins employs her signature angsty teen voice throughout. Ellen Hopkins is the Judy Blume of the verse novel, and Rumble is absolutely a problem novel, filled with the protagonist's confessions and an overarching didacticism concerning ideas about books and censorship, faith and religion, and teenage sexuality.

The Poetry: Hopkins's verse novel is told through a series of free verse poems that have a strong focus on language and utilize internal rhymes and rhythm to move the narrative along quickly. For instance, the first poem in the collection "In the Narrow Pewter Space" begins:

Between the gray of consciousness

and the obsidian where dreams

ebb and flow, there is a wishbone

window. And trapped in its glass,

a single silver shard of enlightenment (1).

In these first few lines, Hopkins sets the focal point of the narrative on the mind and philosophical meditations of her protagonist. This first poem in Rumble utilizes alliteration, internal rhyme, and metaphor to convey the inner workings of Hopkins's character.

The Page: While most of the poems in Rumble focus on moving the narrative forward, several poems take the form of Matt's memories of his younger brother and the discussions they would have about faith, family, and the meaning of life. A few poems also focus on Matt's own writing, including an essay he writes for his English class arguing against the existence of God and a letter to the school board he writes arguing against the censorship of the YA text The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Overall, Hopkins's verse novel was in the same vein as her other works: full of drama and the frank discussion of serious/taboo topics like sex, drugs and alcohol use, religion, suicide, and PTSD. I give Rumble three stars.