books about awakenings
True Believer
by Virginia Euwer Wolff
Wolff won the National Book Award for this novel in her Make Lemonade Trilogy. It's perfect and whole
all on its own, and you don't need to have read Make Lemonade in order to enjoy it. Here, we catch up with LaVaughn, now 15, still determined
to get herself to college so that she can leave her blighted community someday. She begins special school programs to help her reach
her goals and also finds a job that won't tangle her up as much as babysitting for Jolly did last year. Sounds smart, even hopeful, yes?
Well, LaVaughn is 15 now, and life's obstacles keep looming even if she tries to stay on the right path. Her best friends are slipping
away, and now a boy from her childhood has returned to the neighborhood, and oh... he's a gorgeous breath of sunshine. Once again in
intimate, stream-of-consciousness poetry, Wolff takes us inside LaVaughn's heart. We can feel her first stirrings, her strong hold on
her goals, and her profound disappointments. When her dreams shatter, will she have the courage to pick up the pieces and keep her
heart open? And how does a warm, intelligent person stay hopeful in this world of suffering and decay? Wolff is brave to tackle
such questions.
Tangerine
by Edward Bloor
Zing! Pow! Zowee! As the title suggests, this new novel is a
delicious burst, full of flavor and entirely refreshing. Paul
Fisher is legally blind, but -- the truth is -- he can see better
than everyone around him. He's even starting to see through the
lies that his family tells him about how he hurt his eyes. Things
start to come into focus more when Paul's family moves to Tangerine -- a
crazy, wacky town in Florida where giant sinkholes eat up entire schools,
where underground fires burn for years. In a weird town like Tangerine,
even a bug-eyed geek like Paul might become popular. In Tangerine, Paul Fisher
begins to believe the things he sees, and he begins to see himself anew.
Sparkling! Please, please, please READ THIS BOOK! ...and then write and tell
me what you thought of it!
The Blue Skin of the Sea
by Graham Salisbury
There are plenty of good angst books with female protagonists.
Here's a rare, sensitive one about a young man coming of age
in a Hawaiian fishing village. What do you do if your biggest
fear surrounds you? . . . indeed, what if that which you fear
brings life (and death) to those you love? For Sonny Mendoza,
it's the sea itself which fills him with fear, and its his
wrestling with its powerful force that brings him to adulthood.
Whirligig
by Paul Fleischman
How can we ever know the full consequences of our actions? A grievous mistake or
a small act of whimsy or kindness can set in motion a ripple of events that
touch many lives. 17-year-old Brent Bishop learns this lesson and has his
heart renewed after he kills a teenage girl while driving drunk. What I so admire
about Paul Fleischman is the way he helps readers examine
"the bigger picture" without hammering at us with a moral -- or even
a prescribed agenda of any sort. Both Seedfolks and Whirligig feel like porous prose poems -- open to different interpretations,
ripe for awakening the reader to new parts of herself. I just finished Whirligig... three
years after it was published. I always wanted to read it. I've had it on my special stack of
books beside the bed all these months (and two moves). Every time I picked it up, I'd feel a
little jitter inside myself, "You're not ready for this one yet, Cathy." I'm glad I waited
until today to read it. It was just the medicine I need to invite hope and life's chaotic
possibilities a little deeper into my heart. Share this one with friends.
With a Hammer for My Heart
by George Ella Lyon
Deep in Kentucky's Appalachian Mountains live a handful of down-to-earth, loving, zealous, confused folks.
All of them are in search of a shade of truth (though some seek deeper shades than others) and the right to
live their lives according to particular rhythms. Lawanda, a teenager who is afraid she'll get stuck in the
Appalachian hills, wants to go to college. Come hell or high water, she'll go--even if she has to sell magazines
to get there. As George Ella Lyon gloriously reveals, that's where things start to go haywire in this small
Kentucky town. On her magazine route, Lawanda meets a crazy old man named Garland. Who could have foretold that
the two would become such good friends? More important, is it proper? Lyon allows these fine Kentucky folks to
ring in with their opinions, and a few of them reveal their hearts and secrets to us, too. Along the way, readers
will discover what shades of truth are necessary to help the crazy to become sane, the young to become strong, the
zealous to be believed. Older teens and adults will appreciate the subtle awakenings revealed in With a Hammer for My Heart.
(a review I originally wrote for Amazon.com.)
The Island
by David Borofka
Maybe you know how fourteen-year-old Fish Becker feels? He dreads the
coming summer because his parents have decided to ship him to Oregon to stay
with old family friends. His parents need space and privacy to work on their
troubled marriage, they say. Fish thinks that's hogwash, and -- if they
would just let him stay at home -- he'd be able to help his folks patch
things up. However, as soon as he lands in Oregon, he's mesmerized
by the Lambert family's eccentricities, passions and excesses. It's not long
before he's tangled up in the family's odd relationships and discovers a
mysterious feeling of belonging that he never felt in his own home. This is a
breathtaking, richly textured story of a boy's awakening. Though published
for an adult audience, mature teens will love what Publishers Weekly calls
"Borofka's vivid, humble word pictures." In my mind, I think of this book as
a boy's version of Brian Hall's The Saskiad. It's very
different, but Borofka indulges us with sensuous descriptions of angst, longing,
adolescent thinking (both the naive and the piercing sorts).
