The Sky is Everywhere ~ by Jandy Nelson

There's something powerful about the use of words...and when an author has a gift for describing things in exactly the right way, a book can be absolutely magical. The Sky is Everywhere is one of those magical books.

Lennie's sister has just died and she's feeling completely lost. She doesn't know how to be around her best friend, Sarah ("For the first time in our lives, I'm somewhere she can't find, and I don't have the map to give her that leads to me"). She's suddenly and overwhelming confused about two boys: the new guy in town, Joe, whose musical passion and zest for life overflows, and Toby - her sister's boyfriend, who is the only person who seems to understand her grief.

The Sky is Everywhere was one of the most beautiful books I've read in quite a while. The author - Jandy Nelson - knows exactly how to combine words to perfectly capture feelings and settings....probably because she is a poet - this is her first novel. Interspersed throughout the book are poems that Lennie writes and scatters around her town...every one breaks your heart a little:

Grief is a house
where the chairs
have forgotten how to hold us
the mirrors how to reflect us
the walls how to contain us
Grief is a house that disappears
each time someone knocks at the door
or rings the bell
a house that blows into the air
at the slightest gust
that buries itself deep in the ground
while everyone is sleeping
Grief is a house where no one can protect you
where the younger sister
will grow older than the older one
where the doors
no longer let you in
or out
(Found under a stone in Gram's garden)

This is one of the Teens' Top Ten nominees...and I will be stunned if it's not in the Top Ten - or even top 3!

Novels in Verse

April is Poetry Month here in Canada and the United States. To celebrate, I've created a display in the library (check out the orange floating cart) and have created this list of "verse novels"...these are all novels that are written in poetry (verse) style, and all are available in the library @ Rez. (Book descriptions are taken from NoveList - which you can use to search for similar books, with the password from the library).

• Bronx Masquerade ~ Nikki Grimes (FIC GRI)
  While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high school read aloud poems they've written, revealing their innermost thoughts and fears to their formerly clueless classmates.
• CrashBoomLove ~ Juan Felipe Herrera (FIC HER)
  After his father leaves home, sixteen-year-old Cesar Garcia lives with his mother and struggles thorugh the painful experiences of growing up as a Mexican American high school student.
• Crank ~ Ellen Hopkins (FIC HOP)
  Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter, but she meets a boy who introduces her to drugs and becomes a very different person, struggling to control her life and her mind. Also try the sequel, Glass.
• A Dangerous Girl ~ Catherine Bateson (FIC BAT)
  (description from the back of the novel)
  All I had were some plans that went awry and a woman whose skin wore my fingerprints for nearly a summer.Merri, John, Leigh and Nick are positioned like the four points of a gameboard. Gentle John is Dungeon Master and craftsman of wood, but can he master the manipulative and ambitious Leigh? His sister Merri is seduced by the glamour of the stage, but her attention turns to Nick and his email haikus...
  Also check out the sequel, The Year it all Happened.
• Dark Sons ~ Nikki Grimes (FIC GRI)
  Alternating poems compare and contrast the conflicted feelings of Ishmael, son of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, and Sam, a teenager in New York City, as they try to come to terms with being abandoned by their fathers and with the love they feel for their younger stepbrothers. Winner of the Coretta Scott King Honor award, as well as other starred reviews.
• The Death of Jayson Porter ~ Jaime Adoff (FIC ADO)
  In the Florida projects, sixteen-year-old Jayson struggles with the harsh realities of his life which include an abusive mother, a drug-addicted father, and not fitting in at his predominately white school, and bring him to the brink of suicide. Also try Jimi & Me by the same author, where twelve-year-old Keith James moves from Brooklyn to a small midwestern town where his mixed race heritage is not accepted, but he finds comfort in the music of Jimi Hendrix and the friendship of a white classmate.
• I Heart You, You Haunt Me ~ Lisa Schroeder (FIC SCH)
  When her recently deceased boyfriend, Jackson, reappears as a ghost, Ava is thrilled to have him in her life in any way she can, but when she finally begins to move on with her life, Jackson must find a way to let her go.
• Jinx ~ Margaret Wild (FIC WIL)
  With the help of her understanding mother and a close friend, Jen eventually outgrows her nickname, Jinx, and deals with the deaths of two boys with whom she had been involved. Also try another of Margaret Wild's books, One Night, where a teenaged girl decides to have her baby and care for it on her own after a "one night stand" results in pregnancy.
• Keesha's House ~ Helen Frost (FIC FRO)
  Seven teens facing such problems as pregnancy, closeted homosexuality, and abuse each describe in poetic forms what caused them to leave home and where they found home again.
• Love, Ghosts and Facial Hair ~ Steven Herrick (FIC HER)
  Sixteen-year-old Jack woos beautiful Annabel, and through their relationship, copes with his mother's death. Also see the companion novel, A Place Like This.
• Make Lemonade ~ Virginia Euwer Wolff (FIC WOL)
  In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother of two. A beautiful book - also check out the sequel True Believer.
• Out of the Dust ~ Karen Hesse (FIC HES)
  In a series of poems, fourteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.
• Rubber Houses ~ Ellen Yeomans (FIC YEO)
  Relates seventeen-year-old Kit's experiences as her younger brother is diagnosed with and dies of cancer and as she withdraws into and gradually emerges from her grief.
• Sold ~ Patricia McCormick (FIC MCC)
  Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape.
• Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy ~ Sonya Sones (FIC SON)
  A younger sister has a difficult time adjusting to life after her older sister has a mental breakdown. Also try other verse novels by Sonya Sones: What My Mother Doesn't Know and One of those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies.
• Street Love ~ Walter Dean Myers (FIC MYE)
  This story is set against a background of street gangs and poverty in Harlem in which seventeen-year-old African American Damien takes a bold step to ensure that he and his new love will not be separated.
• Things Left Unsaid ~ Stephanie Hemphill (FIC HEM)
  After a lifetime of conforming to the image of what her parents and high school friends want her to be, Sarah must come to terms with her own identity when her destructive best friend tries to commit suicide.