Under A Painted Sky by Stacey Lee

Under A Painted Sky is a story about friendship, identity and the meaning of family. Set in 1849, it was Chinese-American author Stacey Lee's debut novel in 2016.

The day started out like any other for fifteen year old Samantha Young, the daughter of a Chinese dry
goods merchant. Her father had leased their store, the Whistle only six months earlier after moving them from New York City to St. Joe, Missouri,  the jumping-off point for wagons heading west to California. They left New York to start a new life in California after his Portuguese business partner gambled away their business. To that end Samantha's father had given his friend, Mr. Theodore Trask her mother's precious jade bracelet. Then Trask unexpectedly came to the Whistle last month, leading a wagon train of seven. Before Trask left, Samantha's father gave him the bracelet. She had no idea what Trask was going to do for her father in California.

The Whistle's wood building is crammed with bolts of fabric, so Samantha and her father live at the back of the store. While her father works in the store, Samantha spends her days giving violin lessons. At five o'clock, as she hurries home after a day of lessons, Samantha smells smoke. To her horror she discovers the Whistle a charred heap, the fire still burning strong enough that people are carrying buckets of water. Her father is dead, leaving Samantha to face the world alone.

Their landlord, Ty Yorkshire seems sympathetic to Samantha's plight and offers her a room at one of his places,  La Belle Hotel. When she arrives at the hotel, Miss Betsy orders her Negro servant, Annamae to take Samantha up to Room 2A and clean her up. Annamae gives Samantha a bath but shortly afterwards Ty Yorkshire enters the room. He proposes that in order for Samantha to pay off the "debt" she now owes due to the fire at the Whistle, she work as one of his prostitutes. Samantha refuses and while resisting Yorkshire's attempt to rape her, causes him to slip and hit his head on the edge of the bathtub. Believing she has killed him, Samantha with the help of Annamae, moves Yorkshire's body to the bed and decides to flee St. Joe. Samantha tells Annamae she's going to California to find Mr. Trask who was helping her father. Annamae informs Samantha that she also was planning to escape this very night as Yorkshire was going to turn her into a prostitute. Since she's missed her "Moses" wagon to freedom, Annamae decides to flee with Samantha.

Samantha suggests they dress as two young men out to make their fortune in the gold rush. The girls dress in men's clothing stolen from the brothel's laundry and they put Yorkshire's Colt Dragoon pistol, his powder horn, two gold rings and a few dollars into a saddlebag. They then sneak out of the hotel and down the street with the intent of crossing the Missouri River that night.

Samantha knows they have to be on the last wagon to cross the Missouri otherwise they will never get out of St. Joe. Samantha creates a diversion so that she and Annamae are able to slip quickly into the first wagon, hiding among bags of feed. The driver of their wagon is Mr. Calloway who is trying to catch up with his family. They decide to stay in the wagon which travels through the night. The next morning Calloway is stopped by Deputy Granger who tells him that "A Chinese girl bashed a man's head in last night" and that she is the daughter of the careless Chinaman whose shop burned down. Although Calloway hasn't seen the two girls, he does allow Granger to search his wagon. Samantha and Annamae slip unseen out of the wagon and into the protection of a nearby weeping willow.

Alone on the prairie the two girls open up to one another. Annamae (Andy) tells Samantha (Sam) that she has lived in St. Joe for four years after being in St. Louis. She has two brothers, Tommy who died when he was seven and and older brother Isaac whom she recently learned would meet up with her at Harp Falls. Her family was split when she and Tommy were sold to Yorkshire while Isaac was sold off somewhere unknown. Annamae's goal is to travel to Harp Falls to meet up with Isaac while Samantha intends to catch up to Trask on the trail. Annamae suggests she cut Samantha's hair so she looks more like a boy. Their plan is to follow the Oregon Trail to California.

When they stop to eat, three young men, two white and one Mexican arrive on horseback with a fourth horse. The green-eyed boy is Cayenne Pepper, Cay for short, his cousin West Pepper and their Mexican wrangler, Pedro Hernando Gonzalez or Peety. Samantha introduces herself as Sam and Annamae as Andy. Sam and Andy tell the boys they are heading west to where there's gold, while Cay reveals that they have just moved one thousand head of cattle to St. Louis and are heading to a job in California.

Sam and Andy strike a bargain with the three cowboys to take them to the Little Blue River, riding the extra horse.  The cowboys seem friendly and Sam wonders if they should have bargained to take them farther than the Little Blue. The next morning the group of five set out, Sam riding with West on his sorrel named Francesca or Franny, Peety on his Andalusian named Lupe, Cay on his spunky pinto called Skinny while Andy is forced to ride Princesa, a temperamental bay who screams whenever she approaches. 

Sam learns from West that there are numerous trails to California. He tells her the distance before the Oregon Trail divides is 950 miles. For Sam this means she has to find Mr. Trask before the trail forks or risk losing him and learning what her father was planning for them, forever. When they reach the Little Blue, Sam suggests a fishing contest and that if she and Andy win, the three cowboys will take them to the next trading post, Fort Kearny where they can get their own horses. When the girls win the contest, it means three more weeks of hiding both their true identity and the fact that they are wanted criminals from the cowboys, while trying to learn the location of Harp Falls and catch up to Mr. Trask. What they don't bargain on is becoming friends and finding a new family.

Discussion

Under A Painted Sky is a compelling novel about friendship, family and identity. It is a tale of survival set in 1849, on the Oregon Trail. Although a historical novel, Under A Painted Sky focuses more on characterization and the relationships that develop between the main characters in the novel, in particular between Samantha and Annamae as well as between Samantha and West Pepper rather than on presenting readers with detailed information about the Oregon Trail and the movement west.

For example, most of the story takes place on the Oregon Trail but Lee's portrayal of travel on the trail in 1849 is somewhat sparse in detail. Andy and Sam set out with minimal provisions, yet never seem to lack for food, water or medicine. They conveniently kill a snake their first night when they also conveniently meet up with three young cowboys who are well provisioned. They also have no trouble catching fish or finding suitable drinking water. As they journey along the Oregon Trail no one seems unduly worried about getting caught on the prairie or in the mountains after the onset of winter - a major concern of wagon trains. There is some passing portrayal of the hardships of the journey, but it isn't until the group falls ill from cholera that the reader is presented with the reality of life on the trail in the mid-1800's.

Nevertheless,  the focus is on the relationships between the characters  and that is what makes this novel so powerful. There are five main characters in the novel: Annamae (Andy), Samantha (Sam) Young, West Pepper and his cousin Cay and their friend Pedro. Annamae and Samantha form an unlikely bond when circumstances throw them together.  They are thrown together by fate according to Samantha although Annamae, a religious girl, believes God has a hand in everything, even putting the willow tree near where Calloway stops his wagon.
"God planted this tree right here for us."
"Maybe it's better to think of it as fate...I mean, sometimes I wonder why God  would grant a favor if trouble's just waiting around the corner? It feel disingenuous. If it's fate, then it's written in the stars, and we can't do much to avoid it...I don't mean any offense. I just mean, if God is benevolent ---"
"God is benevolent, and it ain't Christian to believe in fate, because He's in charge of the stars, too."

However Samantha believes in the Chinese principle of yuanfen, that some peoples lives are tied together. She tells Annamae this when she's worried she may not find her brother Isaac. "There's a Chinese principle called yuanfen, which means your fate with someone else...Two people with strong yuanfen have a greater chance of meeting in their lifetimes, and can become close as family."

Lee develops her characters in light of the Chinese zodiac which we learn about through Samantha. Before the girls meet the cowboys, we learn first about Samantha. Samantha was born in 1833, the Year of the Snake. A child born in the Year of the Snake is considered lucky but since Sam's mother died in childbirth she is considered unlucky. She has been told to resist her "Snake weaknesses such as crying easily and needing to have the last word." Samantha, upon learning that Annamae was born in 1832, states that she was born in the "Year of the Dragon, the most powerful of the twelve animals on the Chinese calendar...Dragons are sharp-tongued, stubborn and overconfident...They're also creative and independent. And when they put their minds to something, they always succeed..."

When the three cowboys arrive on the scene, Samantha quickly begins to size up their characters and assigns them Chinese zodiac animals too, although she's not completely correct. Based on his age, Samantha believes Cay Pepper was born in the Year of the Rabbit, "meaning he has a tendency to overbreed." and that West is the same. But later she believes Cay was born in the Year of the Tiger. "He's fearless, but a show-off, which leads to recklessness. Yet he could charm the spots off a leopard, so people will follow him regardless. It doesn't hurt that the beauty of Tigers makes them difficult not to watch." She's not far off the mark as Cay is presented as a ladies man, and in fact is running from a girl in Texas who tried to trick him into marriage.

Samantha tells Annamae that Peety, whom Annamae likes, was born in the Year of the Rat. She says, "He likes to talk, but doesn't share much about himself. He's a perfectionist, a tireless worker, and -- this cinches it -- he loves elegance." She tells Andy that "Rats are most well-suited with Dragons." It's that principle of yuanfen once again.

A main source of tension in the novel is Samantha and Annamae hiding their true identity and that they are girls from the cowboys. For most of the novel it seems they succeed but the reader isn't quite certain. The reader learns near the end of the story, that the cowboys were not really fooled and that they knew all along these were two girls who needed their help. But until that point, this secret is the source of tension in the novel, especially as Samantha begins to form a strong attraction towards West. More and more Samantha finds herself falling for West and struggling to maintain her "boy" image. "I regard his profile, his lips parted slightly, and his perfect eyebrows beginning to knit. It both scares and thrills me to admire his beauty from so close, like I am breaking some law against staring." But the mixed messages she receives from West make her wonder. Even when Samantha saves West's life by force feeding him by mouth she is uncertain as to what he feels and what he knows. When he begins to recover he glares at her. Is he repulsed by her because or how she appears on the outside - Chinese or a boy?  "Maybe he knew all along and never said anything because kissing a Chinese girl would be as indecent as kissing a boy." She is saddened that he seems to be judging her by her "wrapper" that is the fact that she's Chinese. In the end she learns that West is actually struggling to come to terms with how he feels about her.

As Samantha and Annamae develop the skills needed to survive on the trail - they learn to ride a horse and shoot a gun and bow and arrow, they also begin to earn the respect of the cowboys. The bond between the five strengthen as they help each other through the numerous difficulties they encounter, West's accident, the cholera and their pursuit by the Scottish boys. By the end of the novel, the five characters discover they have formed a friendship and what amounts to a bond as strong as family. Samantha even chooses to delay her attempt to catch up with Trask in favour of helping Annamae find Harp Falls and meet up with her brother. Samantha realizes that "Maybe what matters is not so much the path as who walks beside you."

Under A Painted Sky is filled with sky imagery that reflects the realities of life, sometimes beautiful, always changing. The title is a reference to something West tells Samantha one evening as they traipse "through a wooded area tinted violet." "This is the best time to hunt, when the animals are out looking for their suppers. 'Course, with a painted sky, light's not good." I never heard anyone all the sky painted before, but it's the perfect word. Clouds outlined in gold streak across the firmament, casting uneven shadows over the landscape." This is a reference to West uncertainty about Samantha. He's not really sure what he's seeing. At the end of the novel when Annamae and Samantha are floating in the river looking up at the clouds and the different shapes they make Samantha tells her that the clouds are like life - ever changing. "The clouds, they never hold still. Sometimes you think you're seeing one thing, and a second later, the whole picture changes."

Lee brings her novel to a thrilling, action-packed climax and a satisfying conclusion. Not all the ends are tied up as Samantha never learns what her father had planned for them in California. But the crisis that nearly costs Samantha her life, forces the truth out into the open: the girls are revealed for who they are, they learn that the cowboys quickly figured out their situation and West and Peety openly admit their affection for Samantha and Annamae. Lee has crafted a wonderfully written piece of historical fiction, filled with adventure, a touch of humour and populated by diverse characters who develop meaningful relationships.

Book Details:

Under A Painted Sky by Stacey Lee
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons     2015
370 pp.

DVD: The Light Between Oceans

The Light Between Oceans tells the tragic (fictional) story of a young couple living on Janus Rock, an island off the coast of Western Australia who find a baby in a rowboat washed near the beach and decide to keep the baby with catastrophic repercussions.

Tom Shelbourne has returned from serving in World War I, a shell-shocked survivor. Seeking a place of refuge and quiet, he accepts a temporary six-month contract as a lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, a remote windswept island off the coast of Western Australia. Before beginning his stint as lightkeeper Tom travels to the town of Partaguese where he has dinner with Violet and Bill Graysmark and also meets their young daughter, Isabel. Bill reveals the lightkeeper on Janus Rock is suffering from some kind of mental breakdown due to the extreme isolation. Nevertheless, Tom begins his stay on Janus Rock, tending the light and working to maintain the lighthouse and its buildings.

It turns out the sick lightkeeper for Janus Rock cannot return and Tom is offered a three year job as the lightkeeper. He and Isabel begin a quick relationship initiated by Isabel and they marry. Tom and Isabel settle into life on Janus Rock and soon she is expecting a baby. However, she miscarries one night during a terrible storm and is understandably devastated. A year later Isabel once again becomes pregnant, but although she carries the baby much longer, she miscarries that baby too. Shortly after this miscarriage, Tom spots a rowboat in the water just offshore of the lighthouse. In the boat they find a dead man and a crying, very hungry baby.

After warming and feeding the baby, Isabel is supremely happy. Tom tells her that this must go in his log and he needs to contact the mainland to let them know. Isabel begs for him to wait until morning which he reluctantly agrees to do. In the morning Isabel argues that the baby is safe and that no one need know and that this is best for the baby who will most certainly be sent to an orphanage. This baby is the answer to their prayers. Against his conscience and better judgement, Tom agrees to omit the events from the logbook and buries the dead man on Janus Rock. He sends a message to the mainland stating that Isabel has given birth ahead of schedule and that the baby is a girl. There is much celebrating and the supply boat returns with baby supplies and food.

However, things begin to go awry when Isabel and Tom take the baby, whom they have named Lucy,  to the mainland for her christening. While waiting for the vicar to arrive, Tom notices a woman grieving by a tombstone.  After she leaves, he walks to the tombstone where he is stunned to see that it bears the names of two people lost at sea on April 26, 1923, the day they found Lucy. Those people are a man named Frank Roennfeldt and his baby daughter, Grace Roennfeldt. Tom realizes that he now knows the Lucy's true identity but more importantly that she has a mother who is suffering deeply. Tom is troubled and preoccupied during the christening and afterwards approaches Isabel to tell her what he has learned. He insists that they now must return Lucy to her mother, but Isabel refuses. She insists that they must do what is right for Lucy who is safe with them. In an attempt to assuage his conscience and comfort Lucy/Grace's mother, Tom sends her an anonymous note telling her Grace is safe and that her husband is in the arms of God. Hannah Roennfeldt takes the note to the local police but they tell her it's not enough to go on at this point.

A few years pass and life for Tom, Isabel and Lucy continues happily on Janus Rock. Until one day during a special event recognizing the service of the lighthouse on the island, Tom witnesses Isabel and Lucy talking unknowingly with Lucy's real mother. This sets in motion a chain of events that unravels the false life Tom and Isabel have built.

Discussion

The Light Between Oceans is a emotional, heartbreaking film that is slow off the mark but gradually draws viewers in. The film takes its time setting the atmosphere and the background for the events to come. After searching for months, the film crew chose the 72ft tall Cape Campbell lighthouse located Cook Strait in New Zealand's South Island as the setting for Janus Rock. Cape Campbell lighthouse allowed cinematographer Adam Arkapaw to recreate the windswept isolation that no doubt played a significant part in Isabel Shelbourne's desperate actions. Unfortunately, while the cinematography of the untamed power of sea and wind are gorgeous, the pacing of the film suffers.

Tom and Isabel Shelbourne are played by Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander who are a couple in real life. The couple definitely has an on-screen rapport that makes their quick marriage believable. Tom Shelbourne's withdrawn nature and propensity to destructive self-sacrifice is well captured by Fassbender. Rachel Weiz was cast as the stoic but caring Hannah Roennfeldt. All give solid performances.

The film is filled with many heartbreaking moments, including Isabel enduring two miscarriages, little Lucy being torn from the person she loves very much and who she believes is her mother, and the struggles of Hannah Roennfeldt to build a relationship with her long lost daughter, Grace. Equally heartbreaking is the conflict that develops between Tom and Isabel whom he loves very much. Tom's guilt over surviving the war results in his misguided attempts to protect the wife he feels he never deserved to have and to love.

Despite all of the tragedy the film ends on a hopeful tone, with a message of forgiveness. When Tom and Isabel face years of imprisonment for their actions, it is Hannah who redeems them. Remembering her beloved husband Frank who decided to forgive those who harboured antagonism towards him because of his German nationality, Hannah forgives Tom and Isabel, by speaking for them. She recognizes that they did save Grace and she remembers what Frank once told her, "You only have to forgive once. To resent you have to do it all day, every day."  And maybe in the end, that's the most important message of this film.

Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin

Counting Thyme is a sweet, poignant novel about a young girl's struggle to cope with the changes in her life when her family moves from their home in California to New York city so her brother can receive a last ditch treatment for cancer.

Eleven year old Thyme Owen's family has decided to move from their home in California to New York city when her brother Val is accepted into a drug trial that might save his life. Five year old Val was diagnosed nine months ago with neuroblastoma or nerve cancer.

After spending their last week with Grandma Kay in San Diego, Thyme, her mother and older sister Coriander (Cori) and younger brother Valerian (Val) flew to New York where they were met by her dad who had travelled ahead of them. Thyme is not happy about this temporary move because it means leaving behind her best friend Shani, whom she's known since preschool. The plan is for the Owen family to stay in New York for three months; December, January and February while Val is treated. However when Thyme pressed her mother on whether they would be home in time for Shani's birthday on March 6th, her mother was vague.

Thyme and her family move into a three bedroom apartment in a four-story brick walk-up. Cori and Thyme are not thrilled to be sharing a bedroom. Thyme puts up the Calendar of Us Shani made for her. She also unpacks her Thyme Jar, a glass jar containing slips of paper stating a certain amount of free time she's earned due to chores, good grades or helping out. The time slips began after her eleventh birthday, when Val got sick. Thyme used them at first to spend time with Shani, but once she learned they were moving to New York, she began to save them in the hopes she could return home early to stay with her Grandma Kay or Shani's family.

Cori and Thyme start school in New York with Thyme attending MS 221 near their apartment. She is given a tour the first day by Principal Williams and meets Emily Anderson who takes her to her home room class taught by Mr. Ellison. In this class Thyme meets twins Delia and Celia and a boy named Jake Reese who has "brown skin and hair that stuck out like springs all around his head, dark at the root and sand brown at the end." and who gives Thyme "a floaty feeling". Thyme introduces herself but doesn't tell the class the real reason for her move.

While Thyme struggles to adjust to New York, her older sister Cori seems to have no problems, joining the drama club at school. A call to Shani on the weekend is wonderful until Thyme learns that she has partnered with Jenny Hargrove to finish their social studies project.  When Val begins his treatment, Thyme meets Mrs. Ravelli, a feisty Italian lady hired to help take her to school and cook dinners for the family. Val's treatments cause him considerable pain and this is distracting for Thyme at school as she worries about her brother. One day at lunch, Thyme helps Emily and her friend Lizzie copy flyers for Mr. Calhoun for the Wizard of Oz play that will run during Spring Fling. After Thyme rescues the ruined flyers for Emily, she offers to help Thyme settle into the school.

When Lizzie decides to audition for the part of Dorothy which Emily also wants and believes she should get, Thyme finds herself caught in the middle. She shouldn't care - after all she's leaving New York at the end of February, long before Spring Fling. Meanwhile Cori confronts their mother about her silence on what's happening with Val's treatments and they learn that doctors still have no idea whether the treatment will be successful or even if it's working.

But as Val's treatment progresses, Thyme finds herself building a life in New York city with her new friends Lizzie and Emily and coming to the realization that she might not return to San Diego, especially when she learns of the secret her parents have been keeping from her. When Val experiences a setback, suddenly saving time to return to San Diego is not so important when your younger brother may be running out of time.

Discussion

Author Melanie Conklin first learned about neuroblastoma as a new mother. She quickly became involved in baking cookies for the fund raiser, Cookies For Kids' Cancer. Childhood cancer strikes fear into parents like few other illnesses and it is an illness that has a far reaching effect not only on the children but also their families.

 Counting Thyme explores the challenges families experience as they cope with a family member fighting cancer through the perspective of an eleven year old girl. The focus of the novel is on the journey Thyme experiences over the period of several months: that of accepting her family's situation and the life changes that occur as a result.

Thyme and her sister Cori struggle to cope with Val's cancer diagnosis. His acceptance into a drug trial means temporarily moving to a new city, leaving behind friends, family and starting a new school mid-year. Because the move is to be temporary, Thyme isn't interested in making new friends, only maintaining her friendship with Shani. Her focus is backwards rather than towards the possibilities New York might offer. Although Thyme loves her brother, she wants to be back in San Diego and everything she does, whether it's helping her mother or doing things for Val, is to earn time which she hopes will allow her to leave New York City and return to San Diego before her family. She wants to resume her old life.


Mrs. Ravelli helps Thyme recognize the positive changes in her life. She tells Thyme that based on her life experience making new friends is a good start and that soon they will be "old friends". This upsets Thyme because she is still focused on her friendship with Shani. The possibilities of new friends and experiences in New York is unsettling. "...the idea settled strangely in my mind. With every person I helped, with every conversation I had, I was making ties. Ties to school. To New York. That wasn't what I wanted, but it was happening anyway."

Mrs. Ravelli tells Thyme when she first arrived in New York as an immigrant she was told to go to Little Italy for good pasta like that in the old country. However she found she had to make her own pasta for it to taste like what she remembered. Using this analogy she advises Thyme to make her life the way she wants it, despite her brother's illness. Thyme wonders does that mean returning to her life in San Diego or facing "the promise of something new"?  Thyme finds herself being pulled towards the latter as she develops new friendships with Lizzie, Emily and Jake and becomes involved in the school Spring Fling play - the Wizard of Oz.

When Jake mentions that he doesn't understand why Dorothy didn't get out of the way, knowing the tornado was coming, Thyme understands Dorothy's predicament because her life has been caught up in the tornado of serious illness. "Sometimes, you don't have a choice about where you go. Because it's somebody else's story you're living..."

But more and more life in New York becomes less Val's story and more her own story. She and Jake work on recreating the sound of a tornado for the play,  their friendship blossoms with a hint of a first crush and Thyme finds herself caring immensely when her friends Lizzie and Emily have a falling-out.

Thyme is finally forced to accept her family's circumstances when she discovers her parents have sold their house in San Diego and when Val becomes seriously sick. Her parents acknowledge that they should have told her but they also stress that she is an important part of the family and necessary for Val's recovery. Her dad tells her, "You need all the parts to make the press work. All of them together. That means you, too." while her mother says "Thyme, you're the glue. You're the one Val talks to when he's sad. You're so strong and so brave, taking on this whole new place the way you have..." Thyme realizes that "the missing piece wasn't San Diego after all. It was knowing that I counted. Seeing that I belonged."

The time that Thyme has so diligently collected in her Thyme jar takes on a new meaning for her. The Thyme jar represents her old life in San Diego. She was collecting "time" as a way of holding onto that life. But when Val becomes seriously ill, Thyme realizes that Val is the one who needs that time - the time to go through more treatments and get well. Being healthy Thyme go back whenever to see her friend Shani and in fact her parents offer to send her back on spring break. But for Val, time is more valuable. Realizing this Thyme gives the jar to her mother, she lets it go and in so doing, lets go of her desire to return to San Diego.She realizes that Val needs the time in New York and she needs to be with him.

"I worried that I was too late figuring out what mattered. Too late choosing my brother. It was funny how I'd thought my worries would go away if I could just make it home. But I would have the same problems no matter where I went, because I would still be me, and worries attach to people, not places."

The title of the book then is a double entendre referring to Thyme counting up the hours she saves so she can return to her old life in San Diego and to "Counting Thyme" as in Thyme's life also being important to her family and to herself. Thyme believes her parents are "too busy with Val and work and stuff to listen to me." but Mrs. Ravelli reveals that her mama talks about her all the time.Eventually Thyme discovers that she does count to her parents and to Val.

Conklin vividly portrays life for a family coping with serious illness. Thyme's Grandma Kay has told her that when she and Grandpa moved to San Diego "she spent a lot of time eating canned tuna and waiting for life to go back to normal after they moved." However, "she discovered that there was no normal - just normal for now." Thyme realizes that for her family whose life revolves around Val's illness,  "normal for now meant that things were always changing. Cancer had changed everything: the things I ate, the place I lived...what kind of normal would we find when we got back to San Diego?"

When Val spikes a fever, Mrs. Ravelli comes to Emily's Christmas party to take Thyme to the hospital. Her family spends the days before Christmas waiting to hear back from Val's doctor. Their family mood is often affected by how Val's health goes and good times, while relished, can be fleeting. Thyme states, "When good things happened with Val, the happy feelings stuck to us for days, like a coating of invisible fairy dust -- but even fairy dust runs out of power eventually."

Later on when Val begins his second cycle of treatment, Cori tells everyone about planning a fund-raiser for her drama club and Thyme notes that "for a few minutes, dinner felt normal. Like it was okay to talk about other things besides cancer treatments and acupuncture and blood tests."

Thyme doesn't tell her friends or classmates the real reason she and her family have come to New York because she doesn't want to "become the poor girl whose brother has cancer...And then that's all they would care about, because cancer is the most fascinating thing in the world when it isn't happening to you...And they can't help assuming things...Like, that cancer boy's sister wouldn't want to participate in the end-of-year talent show, because, obviously, she's too busy with cancer-y things to do a skit..."

Overall, Counting Thyme is a heart-warming story about looking forward instead of back, about identity, family and figuring out what matters most in life.


Book Details:

Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons Ltd.     2016
300 pp.

Paper Wishes by Lois Sepahban

Paper Wishes is a story for younger children about the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II and how one young girl's life is forever changed.

Ten-year-old Manami Tanaka lives with her parents on Bainbridge Island off the coast of Washington state. It is March 1942, three months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the country is at war with Japan. Manami loves walking on the beach with Grandfather and their beloved little dog, Yujiin. They notice a warship off their island and Manami tells Grandfather that the soldiers make her scared. Grandfather tells her "When the soldiers see you, they are scared, too,". He tells her that the soldiers think "people with Japanese faces and Japanese names will betray us,". 

After school one day Manami's teacher Mrs. Brown asks Manami, her friend Kimmi, Ryo and a few others to stay after school. Mrs. Brown tells them that this is their last day at school and that what is happening is not their fault.

At home the next day, Manami is instructed by her mother to gather the herbs and to pull the onion and garlic bulbs from their garden. Her mother washes all their clothing, towels and sheets. Despite her repeated questions about what is happening, Manami is not told anything until the next day when she learns they must leave their home and their island. But Manami's mother does not know why or where they will go or for how long.

When they walk into town to register and get a medical check-up, Manami notes that all those doing so also have dark hair and dark eyes, just like her family. They are assigned a family number and go home to pack. Several days later Manami's family leave their home along with other Japanese. They take a truck to the port but before they leave Manami hides their little dog, Yujiin in her coat. They board the ferry to the mainland and then prepare to take a bus to the train station. However, just before boarding the bus, Yujiin is discovered and taken away and put in a crate. This upsets Manami terribly. Their train trip takes two days, during which Manami sits still and does not speak.

When they leave the train Manami's family are taken by bus to a place called Manzanar which has barbed wire fences, a guard tower and "buildings covered with black paper." Manzanar is in the middle of a prison and Manami's mother recognizes it for what it really is - a prison. The prison is divided into blocks with each block having fourteen barracks.  Manami's family is assigned to Block 3, Barrack 4. They share their building with another family, the Soto family. Manami learns that her friend Kimmi is in Block 7.

At Manzanar, Manami finds she cannot speak.
"But when I open my mouth to speak, the dirt no longer feels like sand. It sticks to my lips and tongue like red mud. It coats my throat so that I cannot speak.
I think this is what happened to me.
I wish the dirt would cloud my eyes, so that I would not see this place that is and is not my home without Yujiin."

Manami is both sad and angry. So sad and angry that she cannot speak. Her mother presses her to speak but Grandfather tells her to give her time. Eventually the family moves to a newly completed barracks, Barrack 8 in Block 3. Mother takes her seeds and the bulbs and plants a garden. She plants zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers and cantaloupes. The planting of the garden makes Manami realize they may be at Manzanar for a long time.

As time passes the garden begins to sprout but only because Manami must water it everyday. Her father works building new barracks while her mother begins work as a cook. Manami still does not talk and she believes she sometimes hears Yujiin. Kimmi tells her that there will soon be a school in Block 7. Even when her older brother Ron comes to Manzanar, Manami does not speak. The starting of school nor the forced recitation of the pledge does not help, as Manami simply cannot speak. Will she ever find her voice again? Will she ever find Yujiin again?

Discussion

Paper Wishes is a touching story of a young girl who is so deeply affected by the forced move of her family to an internment camp and the loss of her beloved dog Yujiin that she cannot speak. Sepahban tells her story in the form of ten parts labelled from March to December of 1942. Paper Wishes captures the emotions and hardships Japanese Americans experienced as they were forced from their homes, leaving behind everything they had worked for, mainly due to fear and prejudice.

With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were forced to relocate to camps further inland as result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 9066. This presidential order resulted in the relocation of approximately 122,000 Japanese Americans from the west coast of the United States. Interestingly as noted by the Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive website, Japanese in Hawaii where Pearl Harbor is located were not relocated or incarcerated. As the website suggests, "The fact that so few Japanese Americans were incarcerated in Hawaii suggests that their mass removal on the West Coast was racially motivated rather than born of "military necessity." Agricultural interest groups in western states and many local politicians had long been opposed to the presence of Japanese Americans and used the attack on Pearl Harbor to step up calls for their removal."

Poster on Bainbridge Island

Sepahban touches on the racism that led to the decision to relocate Japanese Americans but in a gentle way for younger readers. Grandfather remarks to Manami that the soldiers are afraid of her. Manami notices that all the people being sent from their homes look just like her. But the author also shows that not all Americans are prejudiced through the character of Miss Rosalie who tries to befriend Manami. Miss Rosalie is kind, gentle and understanding towards Manami and encourages her to draw. She shows respect towards Manami's family.  She also falls in love with Manami's brother Ron, demonstrating that she is not afraid of someone who is different.

The theme of loss is explored in the novel in several ways; Manami and her family's grief at losing their way of life and their culture, Miss Rosalie's loss when Ron is sent to another camp for his own safety, and especially the loss of  Yujiin which is keenly felt by Grandfather and Manami. Manami is so overwhelmed by the loss of Yujiin she stops speaking. She comes to believe that it is her fault "that Yujiin is alone on the mainland, far from the island." She also believes that it is her "fault that Grandfather has stopped laughing." And she wonders if it is her "fault that Ron is with us in this prison-village, far from college." Manami believes that Yujiin is out there somewhere trying to get back to her. She decides to draw pictures of Yujiin and write promises on the paper: "Come, Yujiin and you can sleep in my bed." Then she walks to the edge of the camp and making a wish releases the paper into the wind. "I have added my paper promises to the air." Manami releases over thirty drawings but Yujiin does not return and Manami wonders if he did not get her drawings. Eventually Manami's loss is acknowledged by Grandfather and eventually he tells Manami she must stop looking for him because he will not come. Acknowledging her grief allows Manami to begin to move forward.

The inner journey Manami makes is reflected in the garden she and her mother plant in the barren desert. Every day the seeds must be watered and they flourish despite the hot, dry climate and a pounding rain storm that batters them into the ground. In October, Manami and her mother dig up the remnants of the garden and prepare it for next year. Manami's mother tells her that this garden was better than the island garden. "The island garden had plenty of rain," Mother says. "So much rain that it only grew shallow roots. This garden never had enough rain. So it had to grow deep roots. The island roots would never have survived the desert summer." The garden is a metaphor for Manami's struggles which have made her a stronger person with "deeper roots".

Paper Wishes explores the themes of family too. When Manami and her family report to register, her father makes sure that the soldiers understand that despite Grandfather's different surname of Ishii, he is part of their family. Manami's brother Ron is the oldest child and a young man and therefore considered responsible for his family. Because of this he returns from college to be with his father and mother, grandfather and Manami.

Paper Wishes would have benefited tremendously from good pencil illustrations. It's a shame so much new juvenile fiction goes without illustrations to accompany the story. Sepahban's character, Manami Tanaka has a very simple interior dialogue suggesting the book is definitely for younger readers. But readers of all ages will find themselves wanting pictures of Manami and her Grandfather walking on the beach with Yujiin, of the soldiers loading the trains or buses, of Manzanar and its barracks with the mountains in the distance, of Miss Rosalie and the school, of the mess hall, of Kimmi and Manami, of Manami sending her pictures into the wind, and of Yujiin.

The author includes a detailed Author's Note and a list of Resources at the back of this delightful short novel. This information will help young readers understand the context of the story. The riot mentioned in the novel actually did happen and was known as the Manzanar Riot.

Overall Paper Wishes is a beautiful and thoughtful treatment of a very sad event in American history.

Image credits: 
Poster: http://www.drshute.com/archives/000099.html  

For more information on the Manzanar War Relocation Center readers are directed to the National Park Service website: https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/historyculture/japanese-americans-at-manzanar.htm. There is a webpage specifically about Japanese Americans as well as a cache of photographs of the people who lived there and the center.

The Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive:  https://calisphere.org/exhibitions/t11/jarda/ 

has a wealth of images and information on the incarceration of Japanese Americans from the west coast.

The University of Washington Libraries Special Collections has a website on Bainbridge Island:http://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcollections/collections/exhibits/harmony/exhibit/bainbridge

Information specific to the Japanese American community on Bainbridge Island can be found at the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community website, https://bijac.org/.

Book Details:

Paper Wishes by Lois Sepahban
New York: Margaret Ferguson Books    2016
181 pp.

DVD: Deepwater Horizon

Deepwater Horizon is a cinematic dramatization of the oil rig disaster that occurred on the night of April 20, 2010 in the Gulf Coast in which eleven workers were killed and seventeen injured.

The Deepwater Horizon rig was drilling an exploratory well in the Macondo Prospect, a potential oil and gas prospect in Miocene-age sediments located approximately forty-one miles offshore of Louisiana. Ironically, the prospect takes its name from the fictional town of Macondo in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Drilling in the prospect was initially begun in 2009 by Transocean's Marianas semi-submersible rig but was discontinued after the rig was damaged by Hurricane Ida i the fall. In February of 2010,  Deepwater Horizon, a dynamically positioned ultra deep-water semi-submersible rig resumed drilling the prospect. It is important to remember that Deepwater Horizon was to look for oil, not pump it out of the ground. In April of 2010, with the drilling operation forty-three days behind schedule, disaster struck. What followed was a serious of human and mechanical mistakes that led to the disaster.

When an oil well is drilled a bit is used to drill through the rock. Each section drilled has casing installed to line the hole and then cement is poured to seal the space between the casing and the rock wall. This process is repeated again and again as the well is drilled deeper using smaller casing. When drilling a well, heavy mud is pumped into the well to lubricate the bit and also to carry bits of rock (called chips) to the surface. The mud also has another function. Hydrocarbons - that is oil and gas in the rock formations are under tremendous pressure thousands of feet below the earth's surface. When an opening is created as when drilling, the oil and gas will flow out of the rock to the surface unless there is a countering force.That force is provided by the static pressure of the mud which keeps the gas and oil from flowing out of the rock, up the drill pipe to the surface. If the pressure exerted by the mud is not sufficient the well will "kick" that is gas and oil will flow upwards. The hydrocarbons can also flow upwards if the well has been damaged or if "the cement placed between the casing protecting the drill string and the rock wall of the well isn't tight." In this case methane gas can flow up the drill string or outside of the cement casing and flow upwards with catastrophic results.

Deepwater Horizon

Because BP was behind schedule, drilling proceeded too quickly and the well was fractured at around 13,000 feet. The pipe had to be pulled two thousand feet back, the damaged section sealed and drilling restarted along a slightly different angle into the oil/gas bearing formation. With the drilling now finished, to secure the final section of the well, BP decided to go cheap and use a single string of casing from the wellhead to the bottom of the well. This was risky because it meant that there would be a significant chance gas would leak out of the formation. (Generally single casing is used on shallower wells on land.) Even worse, BP did not use enough centralizers or collars that ensure the pipe is in the middle of the bore hole so that when the cement is poured around it there are no gaps and therefore no risk of gas leakage. Both of the options were used to cut time and cost. BP also did not have Schlumberger run a cement bond log, deciding it wasn't needed. This test is routine on a well to test the integrity of the cement bond between the well casing and the formation. The blowout preventer (BOP) which can be used to shut down a runaway well was also damaged making it useless. Added to this was the apparent misreading of the negative pressure test which is done on a well to determine the integrity of the well. All of these factors plus many more contributed to the making of the disaster..


The movie, directed by Peter Berg,  focuses on a few people in the disaster - Transocean's Chief Electronics technician Mike Williams played by Mark Wahlberg with Kate Hudson cast as his wife Felicity, Transocean's offshore installation manager  (OIM) Jimmy ("Mr. Jimmy") Harrell (Kurt Russell), Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez) who was a Dynamic Positioning Operator and Caleb Holloway (Dylan O'Brien) who was a drill crew floorhand. Also included were BP executives, nighttime rig supervisor Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) and daytime rig operator Robert Kaluza. While the movie makes Vidrine out to be the villain in fact as indicated above, it was a smorgasbord of many failures, both human and mechanical that were involved in creating the disaster. 

While much media attention has been on the ecological disaster associated with the oil spill that followed, little focus has been on the real people who survived the disaster and the eleven rig workers who died that night. Berg wanted to create a movie about the human tragedy behind the disaster.  In an interview with the L.A. Times Berg stated: “To this day, when people think of Deepwater Horizon, they only think of an oil spill — they think of an oil spill and dead pelicans ...Obviously that oil spill was horrific,” he continued. “But the reality is 11 men died on that rig and these men were just doing their jobs and many of them worked hard trying to prevent that oil from blowing out and it was certainly not their fault. As it pertains to the families of those men who lost their lives, I want them to feel as though another side of that story was presented, so that whenever someone talks about the Deepwater Horizon or offshore oil drilling, people don’t automatically go to ‘oil spills.’ ”

To recreate the events, an 85% scale replica of the Deepwater Horizon rig was built on an abandoned lot in Louisiana and placed in a enormous water tank.The replica was made as accurately as possible and the set was one of the largest ever made for a movie. It was set on fire to mimic the real explosions and inferno of the disaster. The realism of the set made it possible to give viewers some idea of just how horrific things were on the rig during the blowout. A 2010 New York Times article written by David Barstow, David Rhode and Stephanie Saul became the main source for the development of the movie script.

From the very beginning, the movie adaptation portrays a culture of disorganization, risk taking and poor maintenance on the rig. When Mike Williams, Jimmy Harrell and Andrea Fleytas arrive on Deepwater Horizon they are astonished to learn that the Schlumberger team has been sent home without running the cement log. No one seems to know why the log was not run and they are told that the drilling is finished and they are going to cap the well.  Furthermore there are many things on the rig that do not work - the phone system is out, toilets are backed up etc. After his own brief investigation with rig staff, Mr. Jimmy decides to confront BP executives, Don Vidrine and Robert Kaluza about the cement log and while doing so, Williams reels off a list of items on the rig that don't work and are in need of repair.

The movie also portrays the complex and often difficult relationship between the various partnering companies. Mr. Jimmy and Mike Williams show considerable disdain for the BP staff who they see as interested only in saving money at the expense of rig safety. Mr. Jimmy who works for Transocean the owners of Deepwater Horizon has nothing but contempt for Vidrine. It is also apparent that many of the rig's crew respect Mr. Jimmy.

One of the best scenes in the movie occurs early on when Mike is preparing to leave for his three weeks on the rig and he has breakfast with his daughter Sydney. Sydney is working on a school project that will explain her father's job and how he "tames" the dinosaurs. The scene is both an analogy for drilling an oil well and a foreshadowing of the disaster. Using a coke can which her father shakes, Sydney explains to her father that he tames the dinosaurs by drilling for oil. Sydney rams a metal rod into her can of coke and plugs it with honey - but after she finishes her explanation, the pop explodes out of the metal tube and onto the table, mimicking a well blowout. One of the trailers released for the movie shows this scene:

For the most part the movie is a fairly accurate portrayal of the situation on the rig and the disaster that follows. Williams didn't rescue Mr. Jimmy as in the movie but both men were seriously injured, Williams was left on the rig and did jump over ten stories into the ocean, the survivors did say the Lord's Prayer on the deck of the Damon B. Bankston and the rig was entirely engulfed in flames. The are minor inaccuracies such as when Mike Williams is given a dinosaur tooth by one of the rig staff for his daughter. Retrieval of a large fossil would not be possible because it would be destroyed by the drill bit. There is some dramatic license taken in the movie such as showing bubbles of methane gas escaping from the seabed around the borehole, suggesting to the viewing audience that the well is about to "blow".

Nevertheless Deepwater Horizon is a great action movie, filled with many tense moments and good acting. If anything the movie will help viewers understand the tragedy, learn a bit about the oil industry and remember the human story that seems mostly forgotten. Media focused on the 210 million gallons of oil that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico but Deepwater Horizon helps us to remember the eleven men who died that night. It was both a human tragedy and an ecological disaster.

For those interested in a more detailed description of exactly what is believed to have happened to cause the Deepwater Horizon blowout a video by Encyclopedia Britannica at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOK9J0wETYo  explains the details. 

Popular Mechanics also has a great article "Special Report: Why the BP Oil Rig Blowout Happened" (https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a6065/how-the-bp-oil-rig-blowout-happened/) that is worth reading.

The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm

The Fourteenth Goldfish is a
humorous look at one family's life when a scientific impossibility becomes a reality.

Eleven-year-old Ellie Cruz lives with her mother, a high school drama teacher, in a small, two bedroom house in the Bay Area surrounding San Francisco. One afternoon Ellie's babysitter, Nicole tells her that her mom will be late coming home because she has to pick Ellie's grandfather up from the police station.Ellie can't imagine what her grandfather has gotten into. He's a scientist who's never approved of Ellie's mom's love of theatre, so Ellie knows this will interesting.

When Ellie's mom returns home she is accompanied by a slender, teenage boy with long hair. At first Ellie thinks he might be one of the kids from her mother's theatre crew. As her mother and the boy argue back and forth, Ellie begins to realize that he seems familiar. When she spies the college ring on the boy's finger she realizes the boy is her grandpa.

Her grandfather tells Ellie that he has found a way to reverse aging, through cellular regeneration. He's discovered the fountain of youth. Ellie is filled with disbelief but her mother assures her that the thirteen-year-old boy standing before them is actually her seventy-seven-year-old grandfather, Melvin Herbert Sagarsky.

As Melvin stuffs himself with pizza, he tells Ellie that his vision and hearing has returned and his arthritis is gone. He also says he was picked up by the police for trespassing on private property - the lab where he once worked and whose reputation he helped build.

The next morning Melvin tells Ellie that he needs to get into his lab to recover his jellyfish specimen. He explains to Ellie that he has a species of jellyfish, Turritopsis melvinus in the lab. The T. melvinus is what helped him to "sort out the mechanism for reversing senescence" or the process of aging. Ellie is skeptical but Melvin explains to her that there are plenty of examples in nature of organisms with regenerative abilities. A few months ago, Melvin states that he was contacted by an Australian diver who had found an odd specimen of T. nutricula. When Melvin received the specimen he was certain it was a new species as it was huge and had other differences. So he named it Turritopsis melvinus. He then created a compound which he tested on adult mice who reverted to adolescence. He decided to test it on himself and he too reverted to adolescence. But the jellyfish is still in the lab and Melvin wants it to continue his research.

First though Melvin is sent to school with Ellie. Besides dressing very eccentrically, Melvin loves the large school lunches. As he struggles to fit in at school, Melvin schemes to retrieve his jellyfish from his old lab, in the hopes that he can publish his work and win a coveted Nobel Prize. But as Ellie learns more about the world of science and what it means to be a scientist she begins to wonder at the price some pay for the knowledge they gain and whether every discovery is necessarily good. It is Ellie who forces Melvin to consider the true cost of his discovery.

Discussion

Jennifer Holm has written an engaging, humorous story for younger readers that explores both the importance of science in our lives but also the ethical dilemmas scientists should consider but sometimes do not,  in the face of new discoveries. Holm's writing draws from her personal experience growing up with a father who was a pediatrician and who regularly kept "petri dishes with blood agar in our refrigerator to grow bacteria cultures."

In The Fourteenth Goldfish, Ellie's grandfather Melvin Sagarsky is determined to sneak into his old lab and obtain his jellyfish, T. melvinus, from which he created a compound that reversed aging and turned him from an old man into an adolescent. Melvin shows up at Ellie's house being the snarky, quirky grandfather she's always known except that he's now in the body of a thirteen year old boy. He's determined to recover T. melvinus, continue his research and win the coveted Nobel Prize.

As Ellie spends time with her grandfather, he explains the positive character traits of scientists and why science is so important - that it has brought about good change in the world.  Her grandfather mentions many famous scientists such as Jonas Salk, Robert Oppenheimer and Galileo and presents to his granddaughter what he believes are characteristics that make scientists superior to other people in society. He tells her that scientists are persistent. "Average people just give up at the obstacles we face every day. Scientists fail again and again and again. Sometimes for our whole lives. But we don't give up, because we want solve the puzzle." According to Melvin, scientists "keep trying because they believe in the possible...That it's possible to cure polio. That it's possible to sequence the human genome. That it's possible to find a way to reverse aging. That science can change the world."

Ellie researches the scientists her grandfather has mentioned so she can write about one of them for a school project. While researching Oppenheimer, Ellie discovers that the scientists working on the first atomic bomb had mixed feelings about their success. Oppenheimer stated  "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed. A few people cried. Most people were silent." Ellie understands a little how they felt because her feelings were the same when her "grandfather walked through the front door looking like a teenager." 

Even though they fail at their first attempt to gain access to the lab, Ellie's grandfather remains undeterred, telling Ellie that "Scientists fail all the time...you have to keep at it. Just like Marie Curie" who eventually won a Nobel prize. Once they do rescue the jellyfish specimen from his old lab, her grandfather begins making plans to set up a lab and continue his work. However, Ellie begins to have reservations about his research. Her research into some of the scientists her grandfather mentioned shows that science can also have a dark side too. "Marie Curie was exposed to a lot of radiation during her experiments. Eventually it poisoned her. Her discovery killed her." When her best friend Brianna tells Ellie that she thinks Melvin is cute, Ellie is stunned that her friend likes her seventy-seven year-old grandfather. 

Melvin teaches Ellie to observe the world around her, to ask questions and to think more deeply about things. This has an unexpected result because Ellie begins to seriously consider the consequences of her grandfather's discovery with the critical observation of a scientist.  "I look around my room with new eyes, and what I observe makes me question everything. The handprints on the wall: as people grow older, will hands get smaller instead of bigger because of T. melvinus?...will people have fewer candles on their cake every year because they're getting younger?"  Ellie already knows the other side of the Marie Curie story, but what about Robert Oppenheimer?  Her internet searches reveal that almost two hundred thousand people died because of the atomic bomb. Was the development of the bomb good?

This leads her to question her grandfather about what his discovery will mean for the world: will they have changed it for the better? When Ellie's grandfather clings to the idea that science is always for the good, she counters, "I believe in science! But what if it isn't a good idea? What if we're not Salk? What if we're Oppenheimer? What if T. melvinus is like the bomb?"

Ellie asks her grandfather, "Is growing up, growing old - life - is it all so terrible?" Ellie goes full circle remembering what her grandfather said to her about scientists believing in "the possible".  She tells her grandfather that she wants that possibility of living her life from the age of twelve until she's old. Ellie's idea is further affirmed when she attends her mother's high school production of Our Town, a Thornton Wilder play about life in small town America. The play's central theme is that the living do not appreciate life while they are living it and take the time to savour it fully. This is expressed by the character of Emily who grows up, marries but dies unexpectedly after having her second child. She returns to the living for one day, her twelfth birthday.
"She has a line about whether anyone understands life when they're living it. I get what she's trying to say: life is precious and we don't realize that at the time. But maybe life's also precious because it doesn't last forever. Like an amusement park ride. The roller coaster is exciting the first time. But would it be as fun if you did it again and again and again?" Ultimately, Melvin Herbert Sagarsky gets it and this understanding is shown in what he tells Ellie and what choices he makes.

The Fourteenth Goldfish is a thoughtful novel in which author Jennifer Holm asks her young readers to consider the consequences of scientific discoveries and to ask hard questions. Questions like,  "Should we do something just because we can?" and "How will the discovery of...change the world?"  In this novel it is the discovery of reversing aging but it could be anything - the genetic modification of foods or animals.

One of the strengths of The Fourteenth Goldfish is the strong, well developed characters Holm creates. She has captured the snarky, confident, proud nature of an accomplished, elderly scientist in the character of Melvin Sagarsky. He's a brilliant mix of elderly wit and teenage moodiness. Ellie Cruz is a thoughtful, intelligent young girl whose natural curiosity is sparked by her grandfather. Even the secondary characters are interesting; Raj who shows an interest in Melvin's research and Ben, Ellie's mother's boyfriend who desperately wants to marry her.

The Fourteenth Goldfish is a great novel for middle grade readers and is highly recommended. The title refers to the goldfish Ellie was given by her preschool teacher, Starlily to teach her about the cycle of life. After all her classmates goldfish had died, Ellie's fish seemed to live on and on until it died in fifth grade. But it turns out that Ellie's first goldfish actually died years ago and her mother had been replacing each goldfish with another until that fateful thirteenth in grade five. Melvin is the fourteenth goldfish - the one who lives on and on.

It should be noted that Madame Curie won TWO Nobel Prizes, one in Physics in 1903 and the other in Chemistry in 1911. To this day she remains the only person to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in TWO different sciences. Also poliomyelitis cannot be cured but it can be prevented through vaccination.

Book Details:

The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm
New York: Random House     2014
195 pp.

To Stay Alive by Skila Brown

In April of 1846, Franklin Graves decides to relocate his family of nine children to California where the climate is warmer and the land fertile. It would be a decision with serious and life-changing consequences
for all involved.

During the spring, nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Graves sews herself a new dress for the journey while her family prepares, receiving their two new wagons and selling their cabin and land in Lacon, Illinois. Despite his eagerness to leave, Mary Ann's father, Franklin, delays their departure so their cattle will have grass to eat on the journey. They will take three horses, twenty head of cattle, three wagons and eighteen oxen to pull them on the 1700 mile trek to California. Mary Ann's older sister, Sarah and her husband Jay Fosdick will also travel west.

Eventually the Graves leave Lacon, accompanied by hired hand John Snyder, beginning their five month journey west. The days are monotonous, filled with walking, cooking, rain, mud and the making of a quilt to memorialize their trek. They arrive in St. Joseph in Iowa Territory, one of the last wagons to pass through. They pass through the prairie during the summer, seeing herds of buffalo, gathering their chips to feed the cooking fires. Their first sign of trouble is having over one hundred head of cattle stolen by the Pawnee Indians. When Mary Ann's father and some other men go out to find the cattle they return with only a few head and one dead man, Edward Trimble.

On the fourth of July the group reaches Fort Laramie in the western part of Nebraska Territory. In the fort there are many wagons and lots of information shared. A man named Hastings insists that taking the new southern route will save three weeks, but others insist that the northern route is the proven one. Mary Ann's father decides they will take the route south of Salt Lake and that they will have plenty of time to pass through the Sierra Nevada mountains before fall.

The Graves leave Fort Laramie alone and face days of monotonous walking with no sign they are even heading in the right direction. They arrive at a huge rock, Independence Day, so named because that is when most wagons heading west arrive at this point. It's a subtle reminder to the Graves that they are now weeks behind. At Fort Bridger just east of Great Salt Lake, Jim Bridger tells the Graves that Hastings is waiting ahead to lead them through the new route which has grass and is flat and easy. They buy supplies and two days out meet with another large party, the Donner Party which is awaiting the return of Hastings to lead them onward. The Donner party has sent three men, James Reed, Bill McCutchen and Charles Stanton to get Hastings. However only Reed returns telling them that Hastings cannot turn back as he is obligated to help the first party through. The Donner and Graves party move on and eventually meet up with McCutchen and Stanton who are bedraggled and exhausted. They tell the group that the way forward is impassable for them because it is too rugged for the wagons.

While Bill tells the men that the canyon is too steep, James Reed insists that they can move forward. In the end they decide to take a canyon to the north. This proves to be disastrous as the men must cut the trees and haul boulders in order for the wagons to pass. After eleven days of arduous work, in two days the wagons pass through and they finally leave the Wasatch Mountains. Fall sets in and the days are cool. They find a note,badly weathered, telling them that they must travel fast for two days and two nights through the desert to reach water. It takes the Graves three days before they finally walk out of the desert. They are now running out of food and it is decided that Bill McCutchen and Charles Stanton will ride ahead and bring back supplies. All the belongings the Graves brought with them from Lacon are now abandoned before the group begins travelling along the Humboldt River.

Tragedy again strikes when James Reed murders John Snyder in a fit of anger. They bury Snyder and banish Reed. The group now walks as fast as it can, hoping to spy the mountains that mean their journey is almost over. Soon they do come to the mountains but Donner's want to stop and rest the cattle while Mary Ann's father does not. Charles Stanton, accompanied by two Indians, Luis and Salvador, arrives with mules loaded with food. However, Bill McCutchen is not with them. Charles tells them they are ten days away from their destination of Sutter's Fort and winter is at least a month away. Mr. Donner decides that the group will rest up a few days before continuing onward. In that time a young man accidentally shoots another and Mr. Donner suffers a deep wound to his hand while repairing a wagon wheel. This leads Franklin Graves to decide to leave without the Donners, taking the Breens, the Reeds and Charles Stanton. But a day out, the Graves party encounters a prolonged snow storm. As the days pass, each with more snow,  travel becomes difficult. Mary Ann and her family now face the dreadful possibility that they will be trapped in the mountains and may not live to see California.


Discussion

To Stay Alive is the heartbreaking account of the "Donner Party" tragedy of 1846-47 in which only forty-five of the eighty-one people trapped in the mountains survived. Although many wagon trains set out for the west that year, a combination of factors worked together to cause the tragedy. Author Skila Brown in her note at the back of the novel states that the combination of an early snow and the lengthy time it took for the party to cross through the Wasatch Mountains, the route suggested by Hastings, contributed to the Graves and the rest of the Donner party being trapped in the mountains in deadly weather.

Brown tells the Donner Party story from the point of view of Mary Ann Graves. Her research into the tragedy revealed Graves to be a fascinating person, an attractive woman with a strong, determined personality - the exact type of storyteller she wanted for the novel. The story is told in verse, some narrative, some free, and some shape poems, one poem per page. These poems are placed into five seasons, beginning with Spring 1846, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring 1847.

To Stay Alive portrays the struggles Mary Ann and the rest of the settlers experience to stay alive in the harsh Sierra Nevada winter. The use of verse allows Brown to omit some of the more gruesome details of what Mary Ann Graves and her family endured as they slowly starved and froze in the snowy, frigid mountains. Yet the poems do convey their desperation and revulsion as they are forced to make the most awful of decisions to stay alive - to eat those who have died. The poem "something" conveys how, as their circumstances deteriorated, cannibalism becomes a possible way to survive. The dead become "it" and "meat".

               something

                we could eat it
                                        oh god
                                 we could
there's flesh there     like with the bear
                                                     the beef
                                                   it's meat
                we could eat it

                            oh god          we could

What Mary Ann might have been thinking as she lived through this is captured in many of the poems that follow.

"We could do that.
We could.
It would keep us alive."

And when it's decided that they will eat human flesh,

"I look around at the faces, see
the agonizing dread because it's clear
this thing
will be done."

Later on in the poem titled "Cold",

"Amanda slices meat,
lays it out to dry,...

We all sit, wait,
shamefully hungry,

except Salvador and Luis
who've moved over, revolted."

Brown foreshadows the coming tragedy and cannibalism in her poetry. For example, the poem, "We Wait" foreshadows the tragedy that awaits the Graves family partly due to Franklin Graves' decision to delay their  journey west.

Even though he's itching to go,
Father says we wait.

Wait deeper into spring,
until the roots

in the ground along the way are closer
to moving, pushing

up, growing tall, sweet,
into food for out cattle.

wait as long as we dare, hoping
winter won't come and cool everything

before we have a chance to arrive,
before our five-month journey has ended.


Brown hints too at the future possibility of cannibalism when Mary Ann and William Eddy are struggling to climb one of the mountains. The two hear a noise in the bush but do not realize it is Charles Stanton who has fallen behind. Eddy is prepared to shoot what he hopes is an animal and therefore something to eat.  At the last minute he sees that it is Charles.

"I see Eddy's face
lower to the side of the gun
as he adjusts his arm and then

through the bushes
comes Charles,
out of breath, he staggers in, slumps down
at the base of a tree.

We watch him pant.
Eddy lowers his eyes before he lowers his gun,
and I let out my breath.

Imagine.

He almost shot Charles,
thinking he was food.

To Stay Alive is a skillfully crafted piece of historical fiction about an event that still garners much interest and controversy to this day. The novel asks the reader to consider "the choices we would make if we were on the brink of death." Readers who do further research will discover that To Stay Alive is a much sanitized telling of what was a very gruesome tragedy that involved murder, cannibalism and outright selfishness. For example the group trying to walk out of the mountains on snowshoes begins to consider their Indian guides as food and begin to dehumanize them, rationalizing killing them for food:  "don't have a soul", "like a lame horse that sometimes needs to be relieved of its suffering...". Mary Ann warns the Luis and Salvador to leave the camp and in terror they flee. But William Eddy hunts them down, kills them and butchers them. In the poem No Indians, the poetry is to the point:

"Eddy takes the lead, veers
us over ground we've covered.
His gun is out as if he's 
hunting game." 

In the poem, "numb" cannibalism is vaguely described but the meaning is clear,
numb
i feel nothing
not my fingers
or my toes
or my thighs
or my neck
or my cheeks
or my tongue

or the warmth

eddy places in my hand

or the taste of it

as it brushes past my lips..."

Overall, To Stay Alive is a very good recounting of a piece of American history (and tragedy). Brown includes a map at the front of her novel, showing the route taken by the Graves from Illinois to California, as well as a list of all involved.  There is also a detailed Author's Note at the conclusion which is worth reading and lists the outcomes for all involved.
For more information on each family in the Donner Party and their fates check out Survivors of Donner Party.

The March 1992 issue of Discover Magazine, March published an article, Living Through the Donner Party which discusses the Donner Party tragedy and why some people perished while others managed to survive the harrowing conditions.

Book Details:

To Stay Alive by Skila Brown
Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press 2016
275 pp.

The Memory of Things by Gae Polisner

On the morning of September 11, 2001, sixteen year old Kyle Donohue watches the first Twin Tower collapse from his classroom in Stuyvesant High School. As he is evacuated across the Brooklyn Bridge, Kyle spots what he first thinks is a bird, but soon discovers is a girl wearing a pair of giant white wings that look like part of a costume. She appears ready to jump but Kyle pulls her up and makes her run with him across the bridge. Kyle's father is back in Manhattan, where two planes have been flown into buildings like bombs. He's part of the Joint Terrorist Task Force, the first sent into crisis situations like this. At this point, Kyle has no idea if his father is alive or dead.

Kyle takes the girl who is covered from head to toe in white ash to their four bedroom apartment in Brooklyn Heights. He tells her that his mom and sister are in Los Angeles and that his uncle lives with them. Kyle is unable to reach his father or his mother by phone. At home, Kyle finds another message on his phone from his father, filled with sounds of crashing, sirens and chaos. His father asks him to contact his mom but also to get to somewhere safe. 

Kyle tells the girl to shower and gives her clean clothes and tells her she can rest in his sister Kerri's room. He then attempts to call his mom and Kerri at Chase Knolls Garden Apartments where they have been staying over the summer in Los Angeles. Kerri has been attending acting camp and her departure was delayed by a week when she got a callback for an audition. He is not able to get his call through though.

Meanwhile the girl gets cleaned up and Kyle notes that she's quite pretty with all the ash cleaned off. He informs her that he will wash her clothing, that he needs to reach his mom and tell his Uncle Matt about her presence. When he asks her her name, she tells Kyle she doesn't know which only puzzles and upsets Kyle more.

He decides to check up on his Uncle Matt who is in the guest room and finds him asleep in his wheelchair. Kyle's Uncle Matt was a lieutenant in the Emergency Services Unit before his motorcycle accident. A kind and very smart man he now lives with Kyle's family. Uncle Matt would defend Kyle from the criticisms of his Uncle Paul and his dad who believe all Donohue men are cops. It was especially bad after Kyle transferred to Stuyvesant. Now Kyle misses the old Uncle Matt. 

The scenes on the television screen confuse Kyle because they are saying that the North Tower collapsed when he knows he saw the South Tower fall. From the television Kyle learns that both towers have collapsed, that a plane was flown into the Pentagon and that a fourth plane believed to be hijacked, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Military jets have been scrambled and it is unknown how many other attacks might happen.

Eventually Kyle does receive a message from his mother who is not able to work a cell phone properly and keeps hanging up. She does let him know however that their flight has been cancelled and that they are going to try to find a place to stay in Los Angeles. In the guest room his uncle is watching coverage of the disaster in disbelief. Kyle fills him in on what happened to him that morning and on what he knows so far about the attack, and his mom and dad. 

Later on he also tells his uncle about finding the girl around his age on the bridge and that he has brought her to their apartment. He tells him that based on the amount of ash on her she must have been at the towers when they collapsed. His uncle suggests that Kyle call "Missing Persons" but Kyle tells him it's unlikely he will get through. As the day wears on and Kyle tries to carry on as much as possible, making pizza, taking care of his uncle and trying to reach his mother. What should he do with the girl who doesn't remember her name? Is his father safe? Will his mom and Kerri be able to return home soon? When will it be safe to go outside? Over the next several days Kyle will find himself falling for this mysterious, captivating girl. And he will discover his act of kindness in saving a girl in a moment of despair, gives her a second chance to make things right. In saving her, Kyle saves himself too.

Discussion

The Memory of Things is a poignant story about how,in the face of the incomprehensible, we struggle to continue on with our lives. The terrorist acts of 9-11 certainly can be described in this manner. How do we comprehend the act of hijacking two fully fueled planes, using them as bombs to bring down two iconic buildings trapping and pulverizing to death thousands of innocent people. Polisner was inspired to write The Memory of Things in the years after 9-11 but waited because she required time to process the depth of the tragedy.

To tell her story, Polisner uses the two main characters of Kyle and a girl whom readers eventually know as Hannah. Kyle's narrative is the principle one, written in prose because his memory is intact. Hannah's narrative is inserted into Kyle's and is in free verse. Initially Hannah's narrative consists of simple broken verse, representing her broken memory;
"Wait to fall
but don't
Am tethered here.
Turn.
A boy shouts,
eyes full of terror.
He grabs hold of me...

In the day following the terror attack, Hannah makes many references in her narrative that seem random and meaningless. For example,
(Words slip in, echoing and distant:
emboite,
attitude devant...)

emboite and devant being ballet terms. As Hannah spends time at Kyle's family's apartment, her memory begins to return and her narrative is more fluid and coherent.

The tears come so hard I can't catch my breath,
can't stop my body from shaking.
Kyle hugs me, and I fight him off.
I'm so angry and broken, I can't even bear to be hugged,
don't deserve to be hugged.
But then I give in, because I'm
so
lonely and
scared"

Eventually Hannah's story becomes coherent, revealing a heartbreaking story filled with grief and regret but not without hope.

As the tragedy unfolds, two people who would otherwise never have met, come together and briefly find comfort in each other, helping each other to cope and to begin healing. Their budding relationship is temporary though as Kyle suspects. "Besides I have this aching sense that what Hannah and I have is one of those things that happens in a vacuum, that can't be sustained under normal conditions. Under the pressures of school, and life, and parents, and siblings, and distance. It's something quiet and possessive, that will fall apart once it's diluted." Despite that both Kyle and Hannah have each other's contact information - she his email, he her phone number.

A major theme in the novel revolves around memories and how they are an important part of our lives, defining who we are and even the choices we make. This is demonstrated in the novel especially through the characters of Uncle Matt and Hannah Marconi. Kyle's Uncle Matt was badly injured in an accident, breaking his neck, jaw and fracturing his skull. His speech is slurred and he is partially paralyzed. Uncle Matt has been reciting things that appear to be random but Kyle knows he's working on a "practical skill called the method of loci, a memory trick in which certain types of data get stored in story like sequences." According to Kyle, his uncle "is a genius and a memory expert." Although he's been a cop, the other part of his life has revolved around competing in memory competitions. Before his accident, he was planning to attend the U.S. Memory Championships for the third time with the intention of winning. The fact that Uncle Matt is able to still practice the method of loci demonstrates to Kyle that despite his physical limitations his mind is still very sharp. When Hannah shows an interest in Uncle Matt and talks to him like he's present, she motivates him to practice his memory trick, leading Kyle to recognize that his uncle is healing and to tell his father that Uncle Matt needs to stay with them.

While Uncle Matt still has his memories, the girl Kyle rescues does not. She doesn't remember her name, is suicidal and dazed when he pulls her off the bridge. After a day or so, she tells Kyle "I keep remembering little things. Bits and pieces. Like those things that flash at the end of a movie reel when the film runs out..." She remembers voices, faces, music and dance steps. Her broken memory is reflected in her broken poetry narrative. Eventually Hannah recovers her memory after spending a few days in a safe place. Her memory of her last conversation with her father haunts her. Hannah's father, John Marconi is the lawyer for Harrison Highfront who is accused of raping a girl. Eventually Hannah's memory is restored when she sees a magazine article about her father and the case in Kyle's apartment. She tells Kyle that the last conversation she had with her father was an argument. The memory of those last words haunts Hannah.

For Kyle, the presence of Hannah helps him forget the reality of what is happening. When Kyle and Hannah are practicing Uncle Matt's memory trick, Kyle forgets the attacks, about Uncle Matt's accident, about Jenny Lynch's dad and Bangor's uncle dying in the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. "I forget that this day isn't normal, that yesterday wasn't normal, that the whole world as we know it has stopped...But then she sits down and sighs, and like that, I'm slammed with the memory of things. The cold hard truth that she doesn't belong here with me, that this is just temporary..." Kyle notes working on the memory trick to remember ten insignificant things makes them happy because for a moment they forget what they can't or don't want to remember.

It's interesting how Polisner has her characters carrying on with seemingly mundane chores and the regular business of living. People need the familiar in times of stress to help them cope. While waiting to hear from his father and his mother, Kyle does laundry and cooks. His father returns home after several days of working at Ground Zero and Kyle wakes in the morning to him making a batch of pancakes. His father explains "It's been tough, Kyle, I won't lie. Brutal. Which is why I needed to get home. See you guys, do something normal. Sit and eat a few pancakes with you and my brother, here." People find comfort in the routine of daily tasks when times are difficult. They also need something to tether them to reality. Kyle is the tether that Hannah needs while she struggles to remember. "Well, it feels like that, Kyle, back there. Like I'm adrift, in soaking wet clothes that are too heavy with the weight of things I don't even know...It's like I'm here, solid, but I'm not connected to anything. I'm completely untethered. I know that makes no sense," she says. It does, I say, 'I think I get it. but you're wrong. You're tethered to me.' "

The Memory of Things is tender, a delicate story about two people who come together unexpectedly and help each other in a time of great distress - the terrorist attacks of 9-11. It is a story about fear, loss, struggle, love and hope. And a brilliant piece of writing by Gae Polisner.

Book Details:

The Memory of Things by Gae Polisner
New York: St. Martin's Griffin    2016
279 pp.