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.

Pamela L. Laskin's _Ronit and Jamil_

The Plot: Pamela L. Laskin's Ronit and Jamil (2017) is a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set in the Middle East. The protagonists, Ronit (an Israeli girl) and Jamil (a Palestinian boy), are teenagers living in the present-day on either side of the barrier fence that divides Israel and Gaza. Ronit and Jamil first meet when they go to work with their fathers. Ronit's father is a pharmacist and Jamil's father is a doctor; the two men know and respect each other. Once Jamil and Ronit fall desperately in love, though, their families do not support them and become hostile toward each other. The verse novel is told primarily from the alternating viewpoints of the titular characters, but also includes the voices of their fathers in act IV. As Laskin notes in her afterword, the voices of the two teenagers sound very similar and that was a conscious decision on her part (180). Although this technique makes it difficult to tell who is who at the beginning of the narrative, it allows the reader to not quite become fully immersed in the story.

The Poetry: Although the majority of the poems in the collection are told in free verse, with a mirrored version of the poem spoken by the opposite character, Laskin also employs a variety of other poetic forms throughout Ronit and Jamil including a series of ghazals (a Middle-Eastern lyric poem with a fixed number of verses and repeated rhyme, typically on the theme of love and often set to music) and a crown of sonnets (a series of multiple 14-line poems, where each new sonnet begins with the last line of the previous sonnet). Laskin utilizes lyricism, rhyme, repetition, and imagery in order to convey the sense of longing shared by Ronit and Jamil. For example in the ghazals that appear together in one spread, "Built of Bones: Jamil's Ghazal" and "Water: Ronit's Ghazal," the speakers of the poems meditate on embodiment and their connection:

There is nothing but the body

built of bones,

when I find myself beside you

I rise like bones;

from the dead and my desire

it grows like bones. (124)

In Ronit's counterpoint, she laments, "my body withers in brutal summer / so what I need is water" and "if your body's mine / I'll need no water" (125). Additionally, multiple poems reference lines from Romeo and Juliet, as well as work by other poet such as Mahmoud Darwish.

The Page: Ronit and Jamil is divided into five acts: "Naming Things," "Complications" (which includes the series of ghazals), "Dreaming an Escape: Overlapping Voices," "A Father's Lament" (which is made up of a crown of sonnets), and "Onward." The verse novel is also bookended by an introduction, reader's note, and epigraph, as well as an afterword and acknowledgement section. I found Ronit and Jamil to be an interesting and lively read. I give it four stars.

Sonya Sones's _Saving Red_

The Plot: Saving Red (2016) is Sonya Sones's sixth verse novel for young adults. Like her first verse novel, Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy (1999), Saving Red takes on the topic of mental illness; the protagonist, 14-year-old Molly, experiences severe anxiety and panic attacks, while other characters in the verse novel suffer from PTSD and schizoaffective disorder. A poem early in the collection provides insight into Molly's panic attacks: "I can't breathe...! // ... I'm having a heart attack! // But then Pixel's here--" (12). Pixel is Molly's service dog that accompanies her everywhere. The narrative begins cryptically alluding to the root of Molly's anxiety by referring to "the awful thing / that happened last winter" (26), but readers don't learn that "the awful thing" has something to do with her brother, Noah, until 163 pages into the narrative. Beyond exploring Molly's family and personal history with mental illness, the verse novel also examines Molly's encounter with a homeless youth named Red and her quest to reunite her with her family before the holidays.

The Poetry: Like many verse novels for young adults, Sones's work is a problem novel and is devoted primarily to narrative. Saving Red is over 400 pages and told in short, free verse poems. Sones's verse novel conforms to expectations readers of poetry might have about the way a collection should be presented (multiple stanzas, each poem titled, poems that are 1-3 pages in length). Each poem title runs into the poem, but beyond that, there is little attention to the ways poetry can use language and imagery to communicate to readers differently than traditional prose. The only poetic techniques evident in Sones's verse novel are her use of the space on the page and a sporadic simile. For example, in the poem "I suck in a Breath," the speaker describes feeling "something like / a steel plate // splitting / apart // deep inside / of me" (371). This is the closest Saving Red comes to a poetry that allows the reader to slow down or focus on language; this seems like a missed opportunity in the collection.

The Page: The end of the verse novel includes an acknowledgements and author's note section in which the author describes her own experiences of having a family member with a mental illness and how these experiences inspired her to write Saving Red. Overall, the most compelling part of Saving Red is the plot; I found the poetry to be pretty lackluster. I give it three stars.

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.

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.

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.

Madeleine Kuderick's _Kiss of Broken Glass_

The Plot: Madeleine Kuderick's 2014 YA verse novel, Kiss of Broken Glass, follows fifteen-year-old Kenna Keagan during her 72 hour stay at Adler Boyce Pediatric Stabilization Facility after she is "Baker Acted" (1) when a classmate catches her cutting in the bathroom at school. The poems in the narrative are told in second person (you) point of view, and over the course of three days,the reader steps into the shoes of Kenna as she makes friends at Adler, attends group therapy, and prepares for her family to attend a group session before she is released. Kuderick's work is most certainly a traditional YA problem novel, and much like Ellen Hopkins's Crank Series, the reader discovers in the author's note that the author was inspired to write the book after her own daughter's struggle with cutting and experience of being "involuntarily committed under Florida's Baker Act" (203).

The Poetry: While the author strives to utilize memorable imagery and crisp language that hold the reader in the narrative, ultimately most of it falls flat and reads as cliche or inauthentic. At times the imagery and lyricism work well; for example in the poem "By the Time My Mother Leaves," the speaker describes her urge to cut using simile, alliteration, and anaphora: "The way the blood pools warm at first / then cools like morning dew on slivered skin" and "The way the crimson dances 'round the bowl / then trickles tiny teardrops down the drain" (100-101). Beyond the poetry used to describe Kenna's experiences, one of the characters that she befriends, Skylar (who is also a cutter and is struggling with anorexia) also writes poetry which she passes to Kenna.

The Page: Throughout the narrative, almost every poem title includes one word with multiple strike-throughs obscuring it; this is one of the somewhat gimmicky things that Kuderick's Kiss of Broken Glass engages in that contributes to the at times tired approach to the topic of cutting. The author does include an author's note and a list of resources for young readers who might be struggling with self-harm themselves.

Overall, I found Kuderick's Kiss of Broken Glass to be a fine verse novel. It approaches the problem novel in a way that is becoming common-place with the verse novel form and strives to employ poetic technique while doing so. I give it three stars.

J. J. Johnson's _Believarexic_

The Plot: J. J. Johnson's 2015 Believarexic is an "autobiographical novel" that recounts a ten week period of the author's life during the late 1980s when she lived in an inpatient eating disorder unit. In the beginning of the narrative, 15-year-old Jennifer struggles to convince her family that she needs help, but ultimately they accompany her to her screening interview and she is admitted to the treatment facility. During her hospitalization, Jennifer is treated for bulimarexia, a combination of bulimia and anorexia, and as the narrative unfolds, Jennifer learns that her eating disorder is really just the most visible aspect of her mental health issues. She ultimately discovers that she is an alcoholic, suffers from depression and anxiety, and has unhealthy relationships with both of her parents. The narrative follows her life on the EDU (eating disorder unit) as she attempts to develop positive friendships, learns to interact with the staff on her unit, and moves away from negative relationships with her family members. Ultimately, Jennifer emerges at the end of the novel having moved forward in her own recovery; Believarexic seems to be not only a typical eating disorder focused problem novel, but also a cathartic expression for the author.

The Poetry: Formally, Believarexic has a complicated and somewhat unique approach. The work is divided into six sections: "Before," "Admission," "Stage One," "Stage Two," "Stage Three," and "Discharge." The first three sections, which comprise about half of the book, are told in third person point of view and utilize free verse, while the last three sections are told in first person point of view and employ prose. Furthermore, the narrative as a whole functions as a kind of diary/scrapbook. Dated entries span the entire work, both in the free verse and prose sections, and various treatment focused documents are sporadically inserted throughout as well (including letters, group therapy worksheets, treatment planning objects, facility rules, and so on). As previously mentioned, this work is certainly part of the problem novel tradition, as are most YA texts focused on eating disorders, but this work seems particularly interesting in terms of its use of formal collage. Moreover, the shift from free verse to prose and third person to first person point of view as the protagonist progresses in her recovery seems to suggest the emotion state of the character. Free verse seems to imply a sense of fragmentation, while the third person point of view emphasizes a distance and slows the reading pace. The formal and narrative shift to first person in the second half of the narrative suggests a sense of connection and encourages more intimate reader involvement in the protagonist's experiences. While the reader is encouraged to lose herself in the narrative (because of the use of first person, engaging narration) during the second half, the first half of the narrative asks the reader to spend more time piecing together fragments of verse, voice, and experience.

The Page: In addition to the formal experimentation and assemblage in the narrative, Johnson also employs varying fonts between the first two sections (typewriter-style) and the final four (traditional Times New Roman), as well as gray pages to denote supplemental documents that appear within the diary narrative.

Johnson's narrative was an interesting experiment in form. I would categorize Believarexic more as a hybrid verse novel, as it certainly does employ verse and poetic techniques in half of the narrative. While the narrative was engaging, the author could have made more use of the verse form throughout the first half. I give Believarexic three stars.

Sarah Crossan's _One_

The Plot: Sarah Crossan's 2015 verse novel One tells the story of conjoined twins, Grace and Tippi. The girls have been home schooled their whole lives, but at the beginning of the narrative they start their junior year of high school at a private school. Initially worried that they will be mocked and isolated, Grace and Tippi are excited when they meet and befriend Yasmeen and Jon, both of whom are also outsiders (Yasmeen has HIV and Jon has a rough home life). The narrative follows the protagonist, Grace, as she experiences going to school for the first time, having her first crush, feeling less connected to Tippi, and her parents' separation. Both Grace and Tippi see their therapists regularly to process their feelings and support their mental health. In addition to all of these issues, their younger sister Dragon, who is a ballet dancer, is also beginning to show signs of anorexia. Toward the middle of the narrative, it is clear that Tippi and Grace are beginning to experience some health issues that eventually lead their doctors to decide that they need to have separation surgery in order for one or both of them to survive. Grace is having serious heart issues after struggling to get over the flu, causing her to need a heart transplant, which she cannot get while living as a conjoined twin. Eventually the sisters and their family decide that they will go through with the surgery, although it is likely that Grace will not survive.


The Poetry: Like many verse novels for young readers, Crossan's One makes use of free verse throughout the narrative. In addition to the use of the gaps and space created by line breaks, Crossan also makes use of repetition, and when the narrative tension is at its highest point toward the end of the verse novel, Crossan alters the justification of the text of her poems from left to center. Overall, the use of free verse makes sense, but the repetition and justification of text seem a bit gimmicky and don't serve the narrative much. For example, page 366 features a poem titled "Tippi" that is made up of the word "Tippi" repeated 97 times: 12 lines each feature 8 repetitions of the word followed by question marks, while a final line features a single repetition of "Tippi" with a period. There doesn't seem to be much point to including a poem like this as it doesn't play with form in any significant way and the repetition doesn't serve to move the narrative forward or reveal anything about the character.

The Page: One is divided into sections based upon the months from August to February. Each new section is marked by an illustrated page that features the silhouette of what appear to be a portion of a chain of paper dolls. The dolls are meant to represent the connections that Grace and Tippi share, not just the physical, embodied experience of being conjoined, but also their bonds as sisters, twins, and partners in life.

Crossan's One was a quick read, and the narrative certainly draws on the tradition of the problem novel in YA literature, but there were a few issues. The topical focus on conjoined twins was discussed briefly in an author's note at the end of the text, but there could have been more focus on engaging with disability or difference from a medical and social standpoint. Additionally, the author's use of poetic techniques seemed strained at times and could have been more purposeful. I give Crossan's verse novel two stars.

Christine Heppermann's _Ask Me How I Got Here_

The Plot: In Christine Heppermann's 2016 verse novel Ask Me How I Got Here, high school sophomore Addie attends an all-girls Catholic school (Immaculate Heart Academy) where she runs on the cross country team. At the beginning of the narrative, Addie is dating a junior named Craig from St. Luke's, but his drinking and partying eventually lead her to developing a connection with his best friend, Nick. Addie and Nick kiss after a party one night, Addie breaks up with Craig, and begins dating Nick. After dating for a few months, Nick and Addie have sex and she becomes pregnant. Addie talks to her boyfriend, and eventually her parents, and decides that she wants to have an abortion. The remaining half of the narrative focuses on Addie's physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological struggles and growth after her abortion. Although Addie never wavers in her view that having an abortion was the right choice for her, she is conflicted throughout the narrative with what her choice means for her morally and how she will be perceived by others because of her choice. In the second half of the narrative, Addie reunites with Juliana, a former cross country runner who graduated the year before. Addie decides to quit the cross country team, and is happy to meet regularly with Juliana, who is taking a break from college cross country and going to therapy to deal with her own demons.

The Poetry: Heppermann's verse novel is primarily told through free verse poems, but interspersed throughout the collection are various haiku and prose poems. Throughout Ask Me How I Got Here, Addie's narrative is juxtaposed with her own writing (written in a script, sans serif font) which includes poetry, mostly focused on the figure of the Virgin Mary, and assignments for various classes. Heppermann uses a variety of poetic techniques beyond the syllabics of the haiku including imagery, lyricism, anaphora, and metaphor. For example, in the poem "Sunday Morning," one of the early poems written by Addie, she draws connections between her sexuality and religious devotion:

His mouth a skittish liturgy

along my neck,

my need a holy ache,

a blessing, I tilt back my head,

prepare to receive

communion (32). 

In this poem, Heppermann utilizes rich religious imagery and the lyric in order to foreground the bodily experience of her protagonist. In the haiku that immediately follows this poem, "A Risky Equation," the poet juxtaposes this lyric imagery with a more restrained, formal approach to express her speaker's regret and anxiety: "Add one plus one plus / zero condoms to equal / pleasepleaseplease not three" (33).

The Page: One subtle way that the author/publisher underscores the significance of her use of both narrative poems and the writing of her character is through the use of alternating page color throughout the narrative. All of the poems, class assignments, and letters written by Addie are marked with a slightly grey-toned page color, in addition to the use of a script-style, sans serif font and a inked-in script scribble at the end of the title and final line of the writing.

One of the strengths of Heppermann's verse novel is the fact that it never becomes overly didactic in terms of its approach to discussing Addie's abortion, and overall the narrative's conclusion is open-ended. I found Heppermann's Ask Me How I Got Here to be a fine verse novel. I give it three stars.

Marie Jaskulka's _The Lost Marble Notebook of Forgotten Girl and Random Boy_

The Plot: The Lost Marble Notebook of Forgotten Girl and Random Boy (2015) is a collection of poems by Marie Jaskulka that alternate perspectives between Forgotten Girl, a 15-year-old high school sophomore who is dealing with her parents recent separation and her mother's depression and drinking problem, and Random Boy, an unemployed recent high school graduate who is also dealing with a troubled home life in which his alcoholic father physically abuses him and his mother. The verse novel's alternating perspectives are visualized through font; Forgotten Girl's poems are in standard font and Random Boy's poems are in italics. The narrative follows the development of the romantic relationship between Forgotten Girl and Random Boy, which very quickly moves from intense to abusive. Random Boy's desire to keep Forgotten Girl isolated from others and to become completely enmeshed with her intensifies after Forgotten Girl decides she wants to begin exploring a sexual relationship with him. Forgotten Girl begins to develop interest in another young man, who she gives the alias of Peter X in her notebook poems, and this further enrages Random Boy. Peter X takes hundreds of pictures of Forgotten Girl on his cell phone and creates photo collages for her. Forgotten Girl eventually realizes she is in an abusive relationship after Random Boy brutally beats Peter X after he tries to stand up for her. The narrative builds upon the legacy of Judy Blume's problem novels like Forever that confront taboo issues such as teen sexuality and romantic relationships and also follows in the footsteps of other verse novelists who use poetry to approach the problem novel such as Ellen Hopkins and Sonya Sones.

The Poetry: The most unique aspect of Jaskulka's verse novel is her use of multiple narrative view points to explore the intricacies of an intense teenage relationship and the way in which a physically and psychologically abusive romantic relationship can develop. The Lost Marble Notebook of Forgotten Girl and Random Boy uses free verse poetry throughout and forefronts each teenage characters' use of the writer's notebook in order to explore their feelings, trauma history, and experiences. The author also utilizes lyricism, imagery, and metaphor in her poems. For example, each speaker uses the metaphor of notebook as body in order to emphasize the intimacies of both poetic exchange and romantic partnership. The poem "Even the Air" begins: "is different / after he's undressed / my notebook" (52), and later, the poem "View" continues that Forgotten Girl is never invited to Random Boy's house after the "day he opened / his notebook / to me" (65).

The Page: One of the biggest missed opportunities of Jaskulka's verse novel is the lack of framing provided to the reader in terms of the books exploration of abuse experienced by young people in romantic relationships. Not only does the author fail to mention this issue in her acknowledgement section or in an author's note, but the reviews of the book and Jaskulka's author website all fail to open a discussion of this topic or to be provide teens with resources if they are experiencing abuse in their own relationships. Instead, the reviews and dust jacket refer to the "dark story" and relationship as "frightening, but ultimately hopeful." I found this missing info within the pages of the book and the reviewers' discourse surrounding the relationship in the book problematic.

I give Jasulka's novel three stars and suggest using THIS interview with the author and the linked resources as a companion piece.

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 _House Arrest_

The Plot: In K. A. Holt's most recent verse novel House Arrest (2015), seventh grader Timothy must write in a journal every week for the entire year of his court-ordered probation. In addition to his journal writing, Timothy must meet with his probation officer, see a therapist, and remain on house arrest as punishment for stealing a wallet and using the credit card inside to pay for his sick younger brother's medicine. Throughout the course of the narrative, the reader learns that Timothy's baby brother, Levi, has subglottic stenosis, bronchiectasis, and failure to thrive (87), and that Timothy's mother is struggling to deal with her younger son's illness as a newly single parent after the boys' father abandons the family. Timothy's family has difficulties paying for Levi's medical bills, their mortgage, grocery bills, and Levi's in-home nurses.

The Poetry: Holt's verse novel is unique in its structural and formal approach in that it is essentially a poetry journal. Each of the 52 poems in the book is entitled as a week number and includes several stanzas of varying lengths separated by a single black bullet shaped like a sunburst. The first poem "Week 1" begins with a short three line stanza that mimics a similar approach taken by Sharon Creech in her poetry notebook verse novel Love That Dog: "Boys don't write in journals,/ unless it's court-ordered./ At least, this is what I've figured" (2). Formally, Holt focuses mostly on constructing a series of free verse monologues for her character that make use of white space and the gaps created by line breaks to explore his internal thoughts and emotions. In a few poems, such as "Week 4," House Arrest nods to other poetic forms such as the haiku: "A year is a long time/ to write in a journal./ and never go to paintball parties./ That is not a haiku" (15).

The Page: In addition to each of the poems being named after a week of the year, House Arrest is also divided into four sections that are titled by the seasons of the year ("Winter," "Spring," "Summer," and "Fall"). Each section title spread includes the number of days included in that season; for example, the "Winter" spread has 91 tallies and includes 13 weeks.

I found Holt's newest verse novel fell far short of her 2014 Rhyme Schemer, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. The narrative often felt exaggeratedly sentimental and some of the details of the plot seemed a bit far fetched. I give Holt's House Arrest two stars.

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.

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.

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.

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.