Eleven-year-old Jett Campbell has been sent to spend the summer with his Grandma Jo (Joanna) on the island after his year on the mainland doesn't go so well. Grandma Jo or cotton-candy granny as Jett refers to her, is somewhat eccentric with cotton-candy blue hair and a lime green car. His grandma loves to collect sea glass, bits of glass from broken bottles that have been rounded due to the ocean.
The previous year, Jett's father, Douglas Campbell was jailed for killing a father and his three children while driving drunk on New Year's Eve. The fallout from this results in Jett being sent to the mainland, to a new school for the year. But what was supposed to be a new beginning for Jett, turns out to be anything but.While staying with Grandma Jo it soon becomes apparent that Jett is angry about events that have happened over the past year. He acts out in a destructive way at his grandmother's house. While playing Monopoly, a game he hates, he throws the board on the floor in anger. When his grandma takes him to visit a very poor neighbour, Nelly who has no teeth and smells bad, he steals her glass paperweight. When they are going to paint his room purple, Jett deliberately drops Grandma Jo's treasured glass fish full of sea glass.
In an effort to help Jett move on from what happened over the past year Grandma Jo begins by having Jett make some superficial changes like dyeing his hair blue and painting his room purple. Their time by the ocean, Grandma Jo's care of Nelly who is poor, and the stories they tell one another allow Jett to think back on what happened.
In flashbacks, Jett reveals the events of the year that was supposed to be a fresh start for him and his mother. Jett falls in with a tough bad boy named Michael (Junior) Dawson. He becomes friends with Junior who is mean and a bully, because Jett knows that having a father in jail will seem cool to a boy like Junior. As Jett hangs around Junior he becomes involved in doing more things that are wrong such as swearing, skipping school, ordering pizzas in a teachers name, and stealing money at a classmate's birthday party.
Then Jett learns Junior's terrible secret: his mother abandoned him due to Jett's violent father whom he now lives with in a shed at the back of his Aunt Cora's home. Aunt Cora's brother and Junior's Uncle Alf lives with her. Alf has a developmental disability and is a child in a forty-year-old man's body. While Jett is kind to Alf, Junior makes fun of him, calling him Uncle Retard. Unlike Junior, Jett grows to like Alf, as they go to the library to read books. Jett find "learning with Alf was fun." But when Junior learns something about Alf that could possibly give him the means to runaway from his abusive father, he draws Jett into a plan that leads to serious repercussions for both himself and Jett.
Discussion
Ebb and Flow is a story about a young boy coming to terms with his actions and transitioning from destructive anger to forgiveness and healing with the help of his beloved grandmother.
When Jett arrives at his Grandma Jo's home, his feelings are all bundled up inside of him. He truly believes he is a bad, unredeemable person. With plenty of time on his hands, his thoughts go back to the events of the past year, that spiralled out of control. He remembers at first being kind to Alf, Junior's older cousin who has a disability. Jett describes himself as a person who cared about others when he first arrived on the mainland:
"That was a long time ago,
when I was a good person,
when people with no teeth
made me sad."
He remembers when he first changed, hanging around Junior, and becoming like him. Jett believes these changes are permanent.
"...once you kill your old self
and bury it deep underground
it'll never come back,
no matter how hard you dig."
Jett's destructive behaviour continues at his grandma's home until he breaks down and cries after destroying her glass fish with the sea glass. Here, Smith uses grandma to tell young readers how adversity builds character, and can mold a person into something stronger and beautiful. Grandma Jo explains to Jett what sea glass is, pieces of broken bottles that have been scoured and rounded.
"It got quite a bashing,
that little piece of glass
It spent years
caught in the ocean waves.
It was tossed around
and beaten down,
until finally
it washed up on shore.
Now look at it --
what was once a piece
of broken glass
is now something better --
it's a gem."
The lesson here is that Jett, after all his troubles, can become something better, rising above what happened in the past year.
While Jett believes he's bad and doesn't deserve to be liked, his grandmother tells him about some of the mistakes she has made and how she regrets those mistakes. Her lesson is that Jett needs to forgive himself.
Jett's perception of himself and what happened during the past year changes over the course of the summer. He begins to accept responsibility for his actions, and begins the process of forgiving himself and making amends. Jett and his grandma tell one another a series of "stories" which are really anecdotes about their lives. In his first story, Jett tells his grandma,
"Junior made Jett
do lots of bad things."
But in his second story, Jett's perspective is much changed:
"Once upon a time,
there was a kid named Jett
who blamed a lot of bad stuff
on another kid name Junior.
But everything that happened
wasn't just Junior's fault.
Jett kind of liked being bad."
Jett explains that when he was mean to other kids, it made him feel good, "like he was winning at something." Except when he was mean to Alf.
His third story sees Jett finally tell his Grandma Jo how he came to help Junior try to steal Alf's money. He tells what happened exactly as it went down, how he felt caught between two friends, the gentle Alf whom he didn't want to steal from and the manipulative Junior who had to deal with his physically abusive father.
Grandma Jo's stories emphasize each have their own moral. She tells Jett about making a choice when she was twelve to buy something for herself instead of helping out her own grandmother who then died suddenly leaving her with bitter regret. Jett is sympathetic, telling her that "Everyone makes mistakes, grandma." It is precisely this lesson that Grandma Jo want's Jett to learn. Once he accepts this, Jett can begin to forgive himself.
In forgiving himself, Jett is able to forgive his father and visit him in the penitentiary. He is also able to contact Aunt Cora and admit his mistake, tell Alf he is sorry in his own way, and to remind Cora that Junior is not all bad. Jett's message to Aunt Cora is that Junior might have acted differently if she had been kinder. "All she had to do was pick him up, but she stepped on him instead." Jett also returns Nelly's paperweight. Making things right, allows Jett a fresh start for junior high.
Ebb and Flow is a deeply touching story that explores the themes of betrayal, forgiveness, and friendship. Smith's characters are realistic, with both good and bad qualities.Grandma Jo is Jett's safe refuge where he is allowed to face the realities of his actions over the past year. She gently helps him come to terms with what happened, to grieve and then to accept and move on. Jett is realistically crafted, with the good qualities of kindness and the ability to accept others as they are, but sometimes lacking the courage to do the right thing - not uncommon at all for an eleven-year-old boy. Junior perhaps elicits the most compassion, abandoned by his mother, abused by his father, and neglected by the one adult who could have offered him refuge. Smith offers her young readers hope when we learn that he is now living with an aunt.
Heather Smith is a Canadian author, originally from Newfoundland but now currently residing in Waterloo, Ontario. Although Heather admits she and words did not get along well in the beginning there is absolutely no evidence of that strained relationship in Ebb and Flow.
Book Details:
Ebb and Flow by Heather Smith
Toronto: Kids Can Press 2018
227 pp.
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