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Around here we love April– springtime starts to peek around the corner, summer vacations don’t seem quite so far away, conference season kicks into gear, and last but certainly not least, it’s Poetry Month!

There are so many reasons to love poetry– it evokes emotions, feelings and sensations.  The rhyme schemes, vocabulary, free verse– it’s all so rich and powerful.  And when we think of poetry, novels in verse might not usually jump to the front of our minds.  But one of our most acclaimed books last year was a novel in verse: INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN, by Thanhha Lai.  While there were many (many!) reasons I loved this Newbery Honor-winning book, one of the things I loved most while reading was the beautiful, poignant, and at times hilariously funny language.  And the coming-of-age immigration story that sticks to you like glue after reading doesn’t hurt either…

Enjoy and share this poem from INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN (now available in paperback!) and enjoy Poetry Month!

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Happy 10th Birthday PaperTigers!

I’ve been blessed to be a part of the PaperTigers’ team since December 2006 when I took on the role of Eventful World Coordinator just prior to the launch of the PaperTigers blog. As the years passed and PaperTigers continued to grow, evolve and expand (most noticeably with the launch of our Spirit of PaperTigers Book Sets and Outreach Program) my role within the  organization changed too. In 2010 I was offered the job of Associate Editor and since then have worked closely alongside our wonderful and very talented editor Marjorie Coughlan to produce PaperTigers’ three components: the website, the blog and the Outreach site .

I consider myself so lucky to be doing a job that I love in a field that I love! Children’s literature has always been my passion and during my years with PaperTigers I’ve not been the only one in my family to benefit from the pile of  books that just have to be read for work. (Insert a big smiley face here because really…how wonderful is it to have to read books!) When I started working at PaperTigers my children were in elementary school so naturally we focused a  lot of our reading time at home on children’s and junior books. However as PaperTigers and my kids grew I found myself developing more and more interest in Young Adult books. Now I have to say that although children’s picture books will always hold a very special place in my heart , Young Adult books tug strongly at my heart too!  So when it came time to do a Top 10 list for PaperTigers’ anniversary celebration, it only made sense for me to select my favorite Young Adult books. Drum roll please….in random order I present:

1.  Secret Keeper  by Mitali Perkins (Delacorte Press, 2009)

When her unemployed father leaves India to look for work in America, Asha, her mother and sister move in with family in Calcutta. When news comes that her father is accidentally killed in America and her family’s financial difficulties intensify, Asha makes a heartwrenching, secret decision that solves many problems and creates others.

2.  Borderline by Allan Stratton (Harper Collins Children’s Books, 2010)

When Sami catches his father in a lie, he gets suspicious as does the FBI who descend on his home, and Sami’s family (the only Muslims in the neighbourhood) becomes the center of an international terrorist investigation.

3. Keeping Corner by Kashmira Sheth (Hyperion Books for Children , 2008)

12-year-old Leela’s husband unexpectedly dies and custom requires her confinement at home for a year, “keeping corner.” Prohibited from ever remarrying, Leela faces a barren future: however, her brother has the courage to buck tradition and hire a tutor to educate her. This powerful and enchanting novel juxtaposes Leela’s journey to self-determination with the parallel struggle of her family and community to follow Gandhi on the road to independence from British rule.

4. I am a Taxi by Deborah Ellis (Groundwood Books, 2006)

12-year-old Diego is deep in the Bolivian jungle, working as a virtual slave in an illegal cocaine operation. As his situation becomes more and more dangerous, he knows he must take a terrible risk if he ever wants to see his family again. As well as being a great read, I am a Taxi  packs in a store of information about Bolivia and the exploitation of children in the drug-trade, and raises polemics about the growth of the coca plant.

5. Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai (Harper Collins, 2011)

During the Vietnam War  Hà and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, Hà discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape . . . and the strength of her very own family.

6. Karma by Cathy Ostlere

On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi is gunned down by two Sikh bodyguards. The murder sparks riots in Delhi and for three days Sikh families are targeted and killed in retribution for the Prime Minister’s death. It is into this chaos that fifteen-year-old Maya and her Sikh father, Amar, arrive from their home in Canada. India’s political instability is the backdrop and catalyst for Maya’s awakening to the world. Karma is the story of how a young woman, straddling two cultures and enduring personal loss, learns forgiveness, acceptance and love.

7. Orchards by Holly Thompson

After a bullied classmate commits suicide, Kana Goldberg – a half-Japanese, half-Jewish American- is sent to her family’s home in Japan for the summer. Kana wasn’t the bully, not exactly, but she didn’t do anything to stop what happened, either. As Kana begins to process the pain and guilt she feels, news from home sends her world spinning out of orbit all over again.

8. Tall Story by Candy Gourlay (David Fickling Books, 2010)

Andi hasn’t seen her brother  for eight years and when he steps off the plane from the Philippines, she cannot believe her eyes. He’s tall. EIGHT FOOT TALL. But Bernardo is not what he seems. Bernardo is a hero, Bernardo works miracles, and Bernardo has an amazing story to tell. In a novel packed with quirkiness and humor, Gourlay explores a touching sibling relationship and the clash of two very different cultures.

9. Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Lee and Low Books, 2011)

As the oldest of eight siblings, Lupita is used to taking the lead—and staying busy behind the scenes to help keep everyone together. But when she discovers Mami has been diagnosed with cancer, Lupita is terrified by the possibility of losing her mother, the anchor of her close-knit Mexican American family. Suddenly Lupita must face a whole new set of challenges, with new roles to play, and no one is handing her the script.

10. Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan (Groundwood Books, 2009)

Set in war-torn Afghanistan, post-Taliban and just after the American invasion in 2001, Wanting Mor brings a ravaged landscape to life and portrays the effects of war on civilians caught up in conflict, especially on children. Based on a true story about a girl who ended up in one of the orphanages Rukhsana sponsors in Afghanistan through the royalties of her book The Roses in My Carpets.

 

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The other day I pondered my own capabilities as an interviewee and concluded that I still need a bit of work.

A lot of work?  Yes, indeed.  A lot of work.

In this New York Times By the Book interview, Kristin Cashore, author of the esteemed Graceling (which I read and loved) and Fire (and, now, Bitterblue) shows us how a real interviewee chooses words rightly.  For Cashore's unwillingness to cop to easy answers or generalizations, for her range of knowing and wisdom, I respect the whole conversation.  I especially respect Cashore's response to the question, What makes a great young adult book — as opposed to a great book for full-fledged adults? Her answer:

The fact that at the moment the distinction is being made, a young adult, as opposed to an adult, is the one reading it. In other words, I don’t entirely believe in the distinction. A great book is a great book, and it’s impossible to say what part of a person is going to connect to it. Age and experience aren’t always among the most relevant factors.

Perhaps I celebrate this response because I hold this opinion this myself—and have often tried to express it, with varying degrees of eloquence, in interviews and on panels.  Just as I have fretted over the labeling of individuals, the attaching of classifications or lower-case nouns (oh, he's a manic depressive, oh, she's a workaholic), I do not cotton to the label-ization of books, to distinctions between young adult books and adult books, say, or to the assignment of fixed and self-limiting categories.  

What adult, for example, should not read Thanhha Lai's Inside Out & Back Again, and what teen should not read the never-officially-stamped-or-stickered To Kill a Mockingbird? Why should the first thing one is told about Julianna Baggot's Pure be that it is a dystopian novel, as opposed to an intelligent and artful and imaginative novel? Shouldn't the readership of Vaddey Ratner's astonishing, forthcoming "adult" novel about a child growing up in the Cambodian killing fields, In the Shadow of the Banyan, be both teens and adults? Doesn't Ilie Ruby's forthcoming The Salt God's Daughter have much to offer any age, and can't we talk about its gentle mysticism, its magic as poetry as opposed to brand or tag?

Certainly, I know how hard this would make things for booksellers and librarians.  I know that commerce requires labels, depends on it.  But wouldn't it be lovely if readers talking to readers dropped the labels and distinctions?  If we said, among ourselves, You must read this book because it is, quite simply, a great book, and because it will transport you. 

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I had a weekend of goodness—friendship, books, and sun, a crowd of azaleas on a woodsy path, the film "Kolya," (oh!), the book Inside Out & Back Again (breathtaking), simple meals that turned out just fine, the weeds gone from (most) of the front garden.

Enough for anyone.  Enough for me.  But this morning the overwhelming goodness continues, as I discover the ineffable generosity of Ed Goldberg, who read Small Damages one day after he received it, and wrote these stunning words the following day on Two Heads Together, the blog that he writes with his Susan.

Ed, you have buoyed me from the very start of my young adult writing career.  I am and will always be so grateful.

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One of the great sorrows of my past many months has been the paucity of books I've had the time to read.  Life just isn't right without a book in one's hand.  And my blog is hollow when not celebrating the work of others.

How happy I was this weekend, then, to settle in with Inside Out & Back Again, the 2011 National Book Award winner for Young People's Literature. It's, well:  it's perfect.  A story told as a child truly sees. A collection of free-verse poems that set the small things (the taste of papaya) against the big things (the consequences of an abrupt flight from home) and makes us feel, deeply, what it is to lose everything that defines you, and what it is to start all over again.

Like Thanhha Lai once was herself, Ha, the story's narrator, is just ten years old when Saigon falls and she finds herself on a boat to the United States.  Supplies are scarce.  The vessel is crowded.  Ha is a kid, and she's hungry:

Morning, noon, and night
we each get
one clump of rice,
small, medium, large,
according to our height,
plus one cup of water
no matter our size.

The first hot bite
of freshly cooked rice,
plump and nutty,
makes me imagine
the taste of ripe papaya
although one has nothing
to do with the other.

Once the boat finally makes it to Guam, the family waits until it boards a plane for Florida, where it waits again, this time to be adopted by an American sponsor. Chosen at last by a car dealer from Alabama (who seeks to train Ha's brother, an engineer, in the art of car mechanics), the family moves again:

We sit and sleep in the lowest level
of our cowboy's house
where we never see
the wife.

I must stand on a chair
that stands on a tea table
to see
the sun and the moon
out a too-high window.

The wife insists
we keep out of
her neighbors' eyes.

Mother shrugs.
More room here
than two mats on a ship.

I wish she wouldn't try
to make something bad
better.

Everything about this book feels right.  The natural quality of the child's voice.  The intelligent use of symbols.  The piercing grace of the story itself.  The deep, authentic sadness.  Simple words.  Big ideas.  A whole, long tug on the heart.  Inside Out & Back Again is a lasting achievement.  It elevates the genre.

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