Book Review: Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

Malaga Island lies off the coast of Phippsburg, Maine, at the mouth of the New Meadows River, and it was once the home of a small interracial community founded after the Civil War by former slaves. The good citizens of Phippsburg felt that Malaga was an eye-sore, and local newspapers printed stories about the “degenerate community” on the island, attracting even more ire. So when Phippsburg wanted to attract tourists to their town in the early 1900s, Malaga residents were forcibly evicted by a “clean-up party” and sent to a mental hospital in Pownal, Maine. Their freedom ripped away from them and their homes destroyed, many of the residents of Malaga died shortly after being fraudulently committed to the School for the Feeble-Minded – and it was only in April of 2010 that Maine legislators officially recognized the gross injustice.

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, Gary D. Schmidt’s young adult novel that won both the Newbery Honor and Printz Award, is based on these historical events. The story traces the friendship between a Phippsburg newcomer named Turner Buckminster and Lizzie Bright, a young African American resident of Malaga. Turner’s initial tale of woe is one hat is common to many main characters in Children’s/YA Lit: the new boy in town feels out of place and isn’t able to make friends. The Phippsburg boys quickly put Turner to the test, watching to see if he can he hit a baseball and jump off a cliff into the sea – and Turner miserably fails. His isolation is exacerbated by the fact that he is the minister’s son and so expected to wear starched white shirts and behave in certain proper ways at all times. It does not take Turner even a day to realize that his new life will be a lonely and miserable one, especially when his parents begin sending him to read and play the organ for their cranky elderly neighbor Mrs. Cobb.

But then Turner meets Lizzie Bright. Down on the shore, they begin tossing around baseballs and working on Turner’s swing. They search for crabs and clams, then take them home to Lizzie’s grandfather who makes terrific chowder. Lizzie introduces him to the other children who live on Malaga Island, and they all play like they are sea gulls – free from the constraints that Turner feels on the main land. The minister’s son has finally found haven that might make his new life bearable.

But when Turner returns home, he is greeted by disapproving deacons of the church who are pulling all of his father’s strings. The prominent residents of Phippsburg want to attract the tourists to town and so want to evict the African Americans from Malaga – and Turner and his father get in the middle of this historical conflict. Reverend Buckminster is at first unwilling to oppose the deacons and townspeople who pay his salary and so Turner incurs his father’s anger – but hopes that eventually the good Reverend will stand up for his new friends who call Malaga their home.

Of course, because the novel is based on historical events, readers know that the story is moving toward the inevitable tragic conclusion – the eviction of the community on Malaga Island. The real question of the novel, then, is how Turner will react to the injustice wrought by the citizens of Phippsburg, the destruction of his haven and the deaths of his new-found friends. The reader is left to discover how the historical events of the novel will shape the young man – will he become prejudiced? Jaded? Or will he continue to stand by his own moral beliefs?

Schmidt shapes this story into a beautiful coming-of-age novel, written in very poetic language that illustrates how both Lizzie and Turner have an appreciation and respect for life that the rest of Phippsburg seems to lack. Different passages bring the setting and the weather of coastal Maine to life with luminous descriptions and help us understand the connection that Turner and Lizzie feel with the stunning nature that surrounds them:

“The sea surge that had drawn up the coastal waters of Maine poured past the cliffs and tore along the ragged coast… When it had finished its fussing, it seethed back down the New Meadows River, sluicing between the mainland and the islands. It spent its last surge on one rock-shouldered heap just a spit or two off the coast, frothing over the mudflats, setting the clam holes flapping, and carrying a small, startled crab out from its weedy hiding place. It tumbled upside down up the island shore and onto a toe stretched toward the water.

“Lizzie Griffin, who belonged to the toe, grinned at the crab’s frantic turnings as it tried to sort out claws and legs. Its shell was so pale that she could see the mess of the inner workings. Another almost-spent wave came up behind and tumbled it off—claws and legs all to be sorted out again. Lizzie plucked her toe and the rest of her foot out of the covering mud… she turned and scrambled up the outcroppings, picking up the hatchet that was to have been splitting kindling all this time. But she could hardly help it if there was something so much better to do, like watching the tide come in.”

This connection with nature, this respect and maturity cannot save Lizzie – only help her to “see things straight.” But even though Turner cannot control the course of events, his respect for life helps him to deal with and react to the prejudices of Phippsburg’s prominent residents. Even before he becomes the more mature, realistic young man that he is at the end of the novel, Turner’s desire to learn from nature characterizes him as a more moral and upstanding person than even his father. He is filled with awe when he encounters whales and joyful at the discovery of Charles Darwin. He is still pure, still idealistic, still relatively untouched by hatred, greed and fear. He still tries to believe that the citizens of Phippsburg and the residents of Malaga can get along – which is why the inevitable tragedy remains heart-breaking even though it is the obvious conclusion.

Lizzie Bright is a novel that teaches how to be both realistic and idealistic – how to hope for something better while understanding what is. It is a great read for all ages, which is why it received both the Newbery and the Printz Honors. Check this one out for yourself, your kids and anyone else that you can think of…

This review participates in the Y.A. Bliss 2011 Historical Fiction Challenge.

Book Review: Ship Breaker

Paolo Bacigalupi, the author of the 2011 Michael L. Printz Award Winner Ship Breaker, drew his ideas for the novel from recent concerns with global warming, environmental issues in the Gulf Coast region, and knowledge of ship-breaking in Bangladesh. By transposing the world of the ship breakers to the more familiar setting of the United States, he hopes to help his readers examine the possibilities of the world we will all face if we use up the earth’s resources.

Watch Bacigalupi talk about his desire to write about a post-oil world, where people must deal with the consequences of global warming:

While there is a particular ominous message behind Ship Breaker, the novel never feels didactic or heavy-handed because Bacigalupi spins a fast-paced adventure. Ship Breaker focuses on Nailer, a scavenger who helps to pull apart the old-world oil tankers that are run-aground on the Gulf Coast. He crawls and slithers into the ducts of the abandoned ships, pulling out copper wiring and other bits of valuable metal. Soon he will be too big and too heavy to crawl through the duct systems, though, and without regular work on the light crew, he’ll be forced to fend for himself out on the dangerous beaches. Though his loyal friend Pima and her mother Sadna are fiercely protective of him, they won’t be able to help him get a spot on heavy crew – he isn’t strong enough to pull apart the outer hulls and massive pipes of the shipwrecked tankers. Nailer hasn’t given much thought to his future, though, because surviving the dangers of his current job and his violent, drug-addicted father take up most of his time.

After a particularly close brush with death, though, Nailer is lucky enough to come across an opportunity to escape the beaches of the Gulf Coast. When he and Pima discover a wealthy young girl trapped in a shipwreck, she seems to be their ticket to a new life. The daughter of an important shipping magnate, Nita tells them that she is being hunted by her father’s enemies, who want to use her as leverage to gain control of her family’s global corporation. If they will help her make contact with employees who remain loyal to her father, though, there will be a reward.

While Pima chooses to stay behind with her mother, Nailer decides to help Nita escape – burning all bridges with his violent father and hoping that he will be able to find a new life in the North. And so, while the first part of Ship Breaker explores the violent, seedy world of the scavengers and the Gulf Coast beaches, the second part of the novel follows Nailer and Nita as they set out on their journey through Orleans I and Orleans II to find someone who will take Nita back home to her family – and hopefully provide a place and a new life for Nailer as well.

Most of the novel is fast-paced and very involving, so I think that I would have enjoyed the story no matter the setting – but the way that Bacigalupi slowly unfolds his vision of a post-oil world is fascinating. The dystopian setting lends itself to the events of the novel in such a way that Nailer, Pima and Nita’s adventures feel fresh and unusual to me, although I must admit that I am not very well-read when it comes to science fiction (yet). I’ve read and enjoyed other dystopian novels, but this is the first that feels quite so tangibly connected to the world in which we are currently living – over the past five years, we have watched on the newsreel as New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region have been hit first with Hurricane Katrina, then the BP oil spill in 2010. Connecting so closely with a work of dystopian literature is a little bit creepy – but also thoroughly engrossing.

Because we have had the images of devastated New Orleans so recently before us, it is not difficult to imagine this section of the country as hell-on-Earth; I’m impressed, though, with the way that Bacigalupi develops the details of this harsh new America. The residents of New Orleans have always been known as colorful and superstitious, so it is not surprising that in the wake of such extreme environmental disasters, a new society would spring up that is similarly religious/superstitious. Nailer’s world is filled with people who are both cruel and religious, who are willing to turn to both violence and the Fates in order to survive. It is this picture of a desperate society reduced to brutality that makes Nailer such a sympathetic character – he is one of the few that still dreams, still values human life, still seeks to understand those around him. As Bacigalupi pulls you along on this fast-paced adventure, you will likely find yourself hoping for Nailer’s survival not only as an individual, but as a symbol compassionate humanity triumphing over the poverty, destruction and desperation of society.

This post participates in Presenting Lenore's Dystopian February Challenge. Drop by her website to read more about it and/or join up!

Book Review: A Northern Light

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly came highly recommended from several other book bloggers and had also won the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, so my expectations were high. And in case you don’t read my entire review, let me be clear from the start: it more than met my expectations.

Donnelly’s protagonist is actually the most believable feminist character that I’ve read in a very long time. A poor sixteen year old from the Adirondacks, Mattie is a gifted aspiring writer who is faced with a difficult choice: keep the promise that she made to her deceased mother that she would help her pa take care of her younger sisters, or accept a scholarship to study writing at Barnard College in New York City. Her decision is complicated even further by an unexpected romance with a local farm boy, who is physically attractive to Mattie and gives her the attention that she craves, but doesn’t understand her desire to get an education and become a writer. Mattie’s love for her family, her longing to be loved by a man, and her desire to be a writer are all extremely important to her, and so she is tortured by the idea that she must choose between these things.

Too often, feminist narratives (whether works of fiction or non-fiction essays) declare that a woman should prioritize her career without acknowledging that loved ones are/should also be an important consideration. By portraying Mattie’s struggle to decide whether or not to leave home, Donnelly addresses a conflict that is still extremely relevant to women today, whether they are writers or aspire to another type of career.

It was, however, Mattie’s love of reading and desire to be a writer that made her character particularly interesting and sympathetic to me personally. As an avid reader and aspiring writer myself (as many of you are as well), I was thrilled that Donnelly was able to accurately portray the kind of ache that so many artists and authors feel, as students and lovers of the written word. And Mattie is not an idealistic young artist, either – she sees the world for what it really is and yearns for literature that will be honest with its audience. An experience with one of her schoolteachers disheartens her because the woman wants her to be disingenuous, to portray the world as beautiful and carefree, but the sixteen year old Mattie has already witnessed too much unfairness and death:

“Look around yourself, Mathilda,” she said. “at the trees and the lakes and the mountains. At the magnificence of nature. It should inspire joy and awe. Reverence. Respect. Beautiful thoughts and fine words.”

I had looked around. I’d seen all the things she’d spoken of and more besides. I’d seen a bear cub lift its face to the drenching spring rains. And the silver moon of winter, so high and blinding… but I’d also seen the dark of things. The starved carcasses of winter deer. The driving fury of a blizzard wind. And the gloom that broods under the pines always. Even on the brightest of days.

Mattie yearns to express the truth of what she sees, which is something that many people do not want to hear. She also yearns to be loved for her honesty, something that most people cannot bring themselves to love. So, she is caught between her desire for family and education, love and artistic integrity.

Two of Mattie’s friendships influence her decision of whether or not to attend Barnard in the fall. The first is with another one of her teachers, a married woman living under her maiden name because her poetry has been banned – as Mattie discovers more about her teacher’s identity, her desire to pursue her own education grows despite the fact that it seems quite impossible for her to go to school in the fall. Her friendship with Weaver, a young African American man who is planning to attend Columbia University to become a lawyer, also stirs Mattie’s heart and urges her toward the exciting, unknown life of a college student.

But it is ultimately Mattie’s connection to a young woman, drowned at the resort hotel where Mattie works over the summer, that motivates Mattie to make a decision regarding her future. As Mattie ponders the situation of the dead girl, she is forced to face the idea that love and loneliness can be both pleasurable and painful. She realizes that no matter what she chooses, there will be difficult consequences – and the novel does not offer easy solutions to Mattie’s quandary or simple resolutions to its various subplots, either. This is why this novel is so important; it is satisfying in its unsatisfying-ness, in its refusal to simplify anything. Being a feminist – and a human being – is an extremely complex thing, and this novel is beautiful in the way that it portrays the difficulties of learning to be an unselfish but independent woman.

Book Review: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume One

Right around the time that I started reading The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party, I found an excellent article on the Parents’ Choice website about M.T. Anderson’s Octavian Nothing novels, written by Jerry Griswold. It is entitled “The American Revolution in Young Adult Novels," and it discusses the ways in which history textbooks and young adult fiction have traditionally both portrayed the subject of the American Revolution as a fairly uncomplicated war. Democracy was progress, so of course the American Colonists were depicted as the good guys, and the British Loyalists were generally portrayed as cruel and wicket. This is true even in certain recently published novels, such as Gary Paulsen’s The Woods Runner. In addition, Native Americans had sometimes been included in YA Revolutionary War novels, but usually remained fairly undeveloped characters—while the perspectives of slaves and immigrants were completely ignored.

Here at the start of the twenty-first century, however, M.T. Anderson and Laurie Halse Anderson (no relation) have both written two-book series that give African American perspectives on the American Revolution, and Griswold briefly summarized each. I never had an interest in historical fiction as a kid—all my friends were pouring over The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, while I was reading Nancy Drew mysteries—but Griswold’s article piqued my interest in the writing of both Andersons, as well as Revolutionary War fiction in general. I love reading Multicultural and “Global” Literature because novels by Mexican, Asian and African authors offer perspectives of the world that are so very different from my own. The idea that novels about the American Revolution could tell a more complicated story was—and continues to be—intriguing to me.

Octavian Nothing, Volume One is narrated almost entirely by a young African American slave, who instead of working in the fields, has been the subject of a “philosophical experiment.” A group of scholars, tutors and men of science have educated Octavian in the classics, in order to measure his progress as a student and determine whether or not Africans have an equal capacity to develop intellectually to that of Europeans. The narrative, then, is written in very intelligent terms and brings to mind the historical figure of Fredrick Douglass. Upon his escape from slavery, Douglass was able to become a famous orator, writer and abolitionist leader because his master’s wife had taught him to read, thus beginning his education. But in contrast to Douglass, Anderson’s character Octavian is not yet in a position to lead his fellow slaves; he has been mostly taught Greek literature, fine arts, and experimental sciences—which he finds have no real application in the real world. He is self-conscious that he cannot perform simple household tasks and feels even more useless in the face of other challenges to his intelligence and threats to his safety.

His education gives him a unique perspective, however, and like both Douglass and the educated slave girl Harriet Jacobs, Octavian has the ability to narrate his own experiences more clearly and more sympathetically than an uneducated slave. It is quite clear why the novel won both the National Book Award and the Michael L. Printz Award; Octavian wrestles with many painful situations in intelligent terms. He describes the mistreatment and death of his young mother at the hands of the so-called philosophers who have educated him, then his own flight, brief freedom, recapture, and second escape. While a portion of the novel is narrated by a white colonist, the majority of the book embarks upon the project of giving voice to the previously silenced African American population of the Revolutionary Era.

Perhaps what is most interesting about the novel, though, is that even though Octavian is extremely educated and has an immense vocabulary, he still cannot find the words to adequately describe certain experiences. The confusion that he feels when he discovers that he has been the subject of an experiment and his grief regarding his mother’s death both prove to be too powerful for anyone to truly explain. Therefore, even though Octavian could seem too educated to be sympathetic to readers, the gross injustices visited upon him emphasize that every man—whether slave or free, educated or uneducated, character or reader—is equal in the face of devastating loss.

While the title of the novel may seem excessively long, it is accurate—the events of this young slave's life are truly astonishing, and this is the most engaging slave narrative, fictional or non-fictional, that I have read to date.