YA Review: Drawing From Memory

Say, A. (2011). Drawing from memory. New York, NY: Scholastic Press.

In his new visual memoir, Caldecott Medal Winner Allen Say, tells his life story from his birth in Yokohama Japan in 1937 until he leaves Japan for the United States in 1953 at the age of sixteen. Portions of this book read like a traditional graphic novel with a regular distribution of panels and text, while other sections have a more varied layout and incorporate a variety of images including hand drawn maps, photos, old postcards and comic book panels. The author writes briefly about when and where he was born, where he lived during World War II and how, after his parents marriage falls apart, he was moved around from relative to relative. By the time Allen Say was twelve years old he lived alone in a small apartment in Tokyo and attended a private junior high school. The heart and focus of the story (and the vast majority of the pages - 40 out of the 57 pages) show us the three years that he spent as apprentice to the master cartoonist Noro Shinpei – the man who would become his, “spiritual father” (p. 59). He kept his apprenticeship secret from his family who did not approve of artists. At the end of those three years, when he was sixteen years old, Allen Say moved to the United States. A detail rich Author’s Note at the end of the book fills in more information about how he developed the idea for this book and includes additional photographs and artwork.

Reading this book, I felt as though I was able to experience through Allen Say’s simple use of language and illustration what life was like for him as a young man in post-war Japan. The sentences were spare, but conveyed so much meaning. For example, “When the war ended four years later, everything was broken” (p. 13), sums up the entire situation simply and completely. This sentence appears on the page next a photograph of the author, age 4, smiling broadly and holding a toy gun. The juxtaposition of the child’s joy with the sentence’s statement helped me to see how a young child could be oblivious of the destruction around him. Another example of Allen Say’s pithy writing, “When I was drawing, I was happy. I didn’t need toys or friends or parents.” (p. 9), made me think that as a child Allen Say was not often happy, or that happiness was elusive for him. He found a place of safety and joy in the act of drawing and yet it was also a place of loneliness. The poetic sentences, combined with the mixture of illustration techniques, pulled me into the story of a very young man who is emotionally alone in the world and who longs to be an artist. I remain haunted by the image of his spare one room apartment with the bare light bulb in the center of the ceiling. Using both written and visual storytelling techniques, the author helped me to feel his excitement on the day he moved in and “floated with joy” around that room and I felt his isolation when he returned to it alone one evening and found that it, “felt cold and lonesome.”

Sometimes, as an adult and as a teacher, I can feel that my students are not really paying close attention to what I say to them. And yet, in this story Allen Say remembered every little bit of encouragement that adults gave him - from the first affirmation of his first grade teacher, “Mrs. Morita said that my ability to draw was a wonderful talent. No one had told me that before” (p. 13). to the final goodbye from his mentor, “Be true to your art, Kiyoi, and journey well” (p. 56). I realized reading this poignant story how much the words I say, to encourage or discourage, matter to the young people I interact with.

YA Review: 30 Days to Finding and Keeping Sassy Sidekicks and BFFs

Hantman, C. (2009). 30 days to finding and keeping sassy sidekicks and bffs: a friendship guide. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.

Clea Hantman’s lively little pink and black handbook on how to make and sustain “girlfriend-ships” takes a close look at what it really takes for women to have great relationships with other women. The book is organized into four sections - “friendship basics,” taking it to another level, “the major pitfalls and obstacles of friendship today,” and the final section on how to elevate your friendship to, “Mount Everest” heights (p. 3). Each of the four sections is divided into chapters with a grand total of 30 chapters – one per day for the thirty-day duration. Each chapter in this book delves into a theme, offers some advice and provides a daily activity to put the theme into practice in your life. Just for fun, the author includes a daily topical haiku at the beginning of each chapter; often these poems are quite humorous. At the end of each chapter there is a musical selection for the day with a brief annotation detailing how it applies to the theme since, “music magnifies our feelings and self discoveries” (p. 3). Extras at the end of the book include playlist suggestions and a BFF Movie Marathon list. This book isn’t perfect. Some of the material may be a little too much (too silly, too sappy, too cheesy), but looking past the flaws it does examine some valuable topics in an engaging and effective way.

This book struck me as quite “self-help-y,” but it does manage to avoid being preachy. In part, I think that this is because it is not directed at teens only, but really to anyone and everyone who is interested in having great friendships. In fact, I found this quirky book very funny and enjoyable to read. I particularly like that the chapters are short and easy to digest. The language of this handbook is so informal and hip, that I felt as if I was sitting down over coffee with Clea at our local coffee shop and we were talking about women and friendship rather than reading a "how-to" guide. The author is constantly including herself in her daily challenges in a self-depricating way that makes her seem more like the girl-next-door than some professional authority figure. I found that the daily exercises and activities she recommends were legitimately helpful for me. I really liked this book because so often I can forget that friendship is based on the simple basics like kindness, interest in others and openness to new people and is not all about how I look or what I wear.

One of my favorite chapters was on kindness. Kindness is so obvious it is easy to overlook and Clea points this out. Talking about kindness could be so sickeningly sappy, but not in this book. I found that the author’s openness and honesty about her own shortcomings made it easier to be honest with myself while I was reading. Clea writes, “But even I can admit that there are times when I’m not so kind. You know when? When I’m overtired or stressed out, maybe when I haven’t had any coffee. Maybe no one was kind to me that morning. And you know that kindness begets kindness. It’s one of those pay-it-forward, contagious-yawn things” (pp. 24-25). This passage seemed like a page out of my own life and made me think about how challenging it is to be kind when I’m not feeling it. In the end – mixed in with all the fun – I find that I like the message that Clea is putting out there: kindness will make me more real friends than the right haircut or the right purse. In fact, the entire book resonated with me because it was making a real argument for taking the focus of relationships off the superficial and onto issues of character that really matter.

YA Review: Soul Surfer

Hamilton, B., Bundschuh, R., & Berk, S. (2004). Soul surfer: A true story of faith, family and fighting to get back on the board. New York, NY: MTV Books.

In the autobiography Soul Surfer, Bethany Hamilton tells her own story of being attacked by a shark and loosing her arm at the age of thirteen. Bethany tells us about the morning of the attack from her perspective. Included in this personal tale are a great many details about what life is like for kids growing up in a rural corner of Hawaii and about what kind of commitment it takes to become a professional athlete. The book is organized into chapters some of which are directly about the shark attack, Bethany’s rescue and surgery and her recovery. The other chapters – interspersed throughout – go into the story of Bethany’s family and how they ended up in Hawaii, Bethany’s faith and what it is like, “being kind of famous” (p. 155).

Although, I had heard a tiny amount about a surfing teenager from Hawaii who had lost her arm to a shark, I went into this book knowing little more than those scant details. For me the book reads as if Bethany was sitting right next to me telling her story and I would not be surprised to learn that the book was written from recorded interviews. As Bethany described the morning of the attack I felt like I was right there floating on a board in the water next to her which was both thrilling and a little creepy, “The waves were small and inconsistent, and I was just kind of rolling along with them, relaxing on my board with my right hand on the nose of the board and my left arm dangling in the cool water. I remember thinking, ‘I hope the surf picks up soon…,’ when suddenly there was a flash of gray.” (p. 3) Every detail about that morning seemed gripping to me and I was completely fascinated by how Bethany managed to get back to the beach and how her friends helped her get to the hospital.

There were times when the book veered off into territory that wasn’t as interesting to me – details about Bethany’s favorite foods and activities, for example - but overall I found the description of life on rural Kauai to be completely fascinating. As I read the book, the details about Bethany’s working class family and her parents dedication to helping their daughter achieve her surfing dreams blew away all of my assumptions about what kind of people become professional athletes. I had thought that for sure you had to be pretty well off financially to be able to focus so early on a sport, but at least in Bethany’s case I was wrong and my respect for Bethany and her family and their commitment to her career grew. One part of the book that I really appreciated was Bethany’s honest discussion of her faith and how it helped her through the loss of her arm. Most discussion of faith that I can remember reading in contemporary popular writing is heavily ironic or cynical. I was struck by Bethany’s openness and honesty about how her faith in God comforts and motivates her. Personally, faith is important to me and I found it refreshing to encounter a young woman who also finds real practical courage from her belief.

YA Review: What I Saw and How I Lied

Blundell, J. (2008). What I saw and how I lied. New York, NY: Scholastic.

It is 1947 and the War is over. Fifteen year old Evie (Evelyn Spooner) lives in Queens with her knockout mom, her stepfather Joe and his mother, the grumpy Grandma Glad. Joe had served as an army sergeant in World War Two, but now that he is back home he owns and runs three appliance stores. One day in September, Joe decides they should take a trip to Florida. After a four day drive that grows quieter and hotter the farther south they go, Evie and her family finally arrive in Palm Beach. Unfortunately, everything is boarded up and closed tight until the season officially begins in the winter. The Spooners settle into Le Mirage, the one open hotel in town and become friendly with the Graysons, a sophisticated couple from New York. Then a handsome young man named Peter Coleridge shows up saying he knew Joe in the War and things begin to spiral out of control.

Although Blundell captures all the details of the time period perfectly with the smoking and the lipstick, the cocktails and the late 1940s slang, it is not the picture-pefect setting or the realistic dialogue that won me over. Sometimes historical fiction can be interesting despite a mediocre story, just because the time period is unfamiliar and I'm learning about a time and place I know little about. Not the case for What I Saw and How I Lied. In a way this story could have been set anywhere or anytime and it still would have had the same emotional weight for me. I was blown away by what is at the heart of this book - the universal story of a girl yearning to be considered a woman. The path to womanhood turns out to be a lot different than Evie imagined. At first, being an adult seems to be all about how you dress and who you kiss. Although Evie thought she understood the grown-up world, what she finds out is that she missed key details or misinterpreted what she did see. "I'd noticed things on the way down, too. I'd seen it all - the way he took off his hat, the way he lit her cigarette, the way she walked away, her scarf trailing in her hand. Flower petals and a pineapple vase. Now I had to look at it again. This time without me in it, wanting things to go my way (pp. 2-3). By the time Evie and I realize what has really been going on all along, the truth is devastating,crushing,humiliating and ultimately maturing. At the beginning of the book being an adult woman seemed so glamorous and sexy, but by the end it was so much more than what you can see on the surface.

From the very first chapter it was clear that there would be a revelation later in the story. The surprise for me was that that revelation was not about murder or death. Instead, it was all about an inner revelation - the shock of seeing the truth of a situation. It was about being a kid one minute - naively thinking that things were one way - and in the next minute turning a corner and suddenly realizing that you are "a sap" (p. 218) and what you thought you understood was completely wrong. The most powerful aspect of this book for me was what Evie choses to do once she finally understands the truth. In the end Evie shows some real grown-up courage that I hadn't seen coming.