Review of Lily's Crossing

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Giff, Patricia Reilly. Lily's Crossing. New York: Delacorte Press, 1997. ISBN 0385321422

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Lily and her grandmother travel to their summer cottage while Lily's father, an engineer, is headed overseas to help the Allies in World War II. Lily spends her holiday in what feels like the same quiet summer town she has always known while the rest of the world is in utter turmoil. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
The year is 1944 and Lily is in fifth grade. She feels stifled by her traditional Catholic school upbringing and cannot wait until summer arrives. Every summer her family heads to Rockaway Beach on the Atlantic to her grandmother's summer home to enjoy ocean breezes, fishing and swimming. But this year is decidedly different for Lily. World War II has made her best friend's family relocate from Rockaway Beach to a war town. Her father, an engineer, is headed overseas to help the war effort, and Albert, a young refugee boy from Europe, moves in with her neighbors.

Giff says in her "Dear Reader" letter at the end of the book that Lily's summer town of Rockaway Beach was inspired by her own summers on the Atlantic. She captures the emotional effect of the war on the small town community, as people pull down blackout shades at night in case German pilots cross the Atlantic and attack America, the bakery hangs "Loose Lips Sink Ships" signs to discourage talking about possible tactical maneuvers, and even Lily feels the need to scold her mailman when he engages her in conversation about what her father might be working on overseas with the military.

With her father absent, and her mother deceased, Lily lives with her grandmother, who she has a love/hate relationship with. Lily has a hard time seeing her Gram as anything other than a disciplinarian. "Lily couldn't picture it, couldn't picture Gram skinny, and swimming all the way across Jamaica Bay... she had a braid to her waist, and she was a seal in the water" (47).

In the true tradition of the time, Lily focuses on simpler things in life. She plays outside all day, visits the library, sneaks into picture shows, and listens to the radio with her Grandmother. Giff portrays Lily accurately as a pre-teen girl, with her purse and lipstick, who hates to practice the piano, returns library books late, and buys day-old cookies at the bakery out of politeness to appease the owner's desperation over the lack of supplies, like butter and sugar, during war time to run her business.

But Lily also has a problem with lying. She recognizes it as a personality flaw, and also part of her affection for creative writing, but she cannot seem to keep her stories contained. Her lies to Albert about someday sneaking onto a boat headed to Europe to find her father inspire him to attempt to return to Europe to find the family he was forced to leave behind. After all, if Lily could do it, couldn't he? Her lies compel the story's climax and risks the life of her only friend, who has already lost so much.

Lily is a highly relatable little girl. Giff portrays her as being very self-aware of her flaws and, therefore, she is very easy for readers to identify with. Stuck between childhood and impending adolescence, Lily is looking for her place in a world that is ripping itself apart. Giff handles the hometown concerns of war with care and tenderness and without being too scary for middle grade readers.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S) and AWARDS
Newbery Honor Award, 1998
ALA Notable Children's Book, 1998
Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book

From School Library Journal
"History is brought to life through Giff's well-chosen details and descriptions...Giff's well-drawn believable characters and vivid prose style make this an excellent choice." 

From Publishers Weekly
"Exceptional characterizations and a robust story line turn this WWII homefront novel into far more than a period piece." 

5. CONNECTIONS
Other historical fiction books by Patricia Reilly Giff:

• Maggie's Door. ISBN 9780440415817
• Nora Ryan's Song. ISBN 9780440418290
• Water Street. ISBN 9780440419211

Other historical fiction books about World War II for children ages 10+:

• Farrell, Mary Cronk. Irena's Children: A Young Reader's Edition. ISBN 9781481449915
• Park, Linda Sue. When My Name Was Keoko. ISBN 9780547722399
• Wolk, Lauren. Wolf Hollow. ISBN 9781101994825

Oftentimes American children focus on their own country's influence on World War II, forgetting that it is a world war and that it affected children globally. Reading historical fiction can create a bridge based on empathy for children of other cultures who were also impacted by the war. In addition, helping children to see a scope of emotions outside of their own time can inspire thoughtfulness about where the world is headed and what kind of caring adult they may want to grow up to become. Though adults might not want to admit it, between age 10 and 12, children often get a real sense of how unsafe their world actually is. Fiction books about anxiety, fear, loss and personal growth can help children cope with those emotions as they are undoubtably what makes us human. How does one continue with life after they survive a Concentration Camp? How does one deal with being an orphan? How did all of this pain and separation of families start with hate for those who are different from ourselves, and what can be done to prevent such atrocity in the future? How can these stories be related to current world events?

What My Mother Doesn't Know Review by Dana G. Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sones, Sonya. What My Mother Doesn't Know. Simon & Schuster: New York, 2001. ISBN 9781442493858

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Sophie is doing her best to survive the ninth grade. She's wild about boys, but doesn't know anything about relationships: how to start one, how to maintain one, or what kind of person to have one with, so she's just following her gut instincts. She's also at odds with her parents, who are emotionally absent from her life, but with her two best friends by her side, a good heart, and a fierce sense of self-preservation, Sophie uses her poetry to keep herself grounded.

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Sonya Sones has written many young adult books using free verse to tell the teenage perspective on adolescence. What My Mother Doesn't Know focuses on the life of a girl in the ninth grade named Sophie. Sophie has broken up with her first boyfriend and is pursuing her classmate, Dylan. The physical attraction between the two is undeniable and sparks fly. "And it's true./ Dylan's kisses/ seem like something/ much better than kissing."

Sones allows the poetry to flow as if it comes directly from Sophie as a diary. It is as a first person not-often-rhyming, free verse narrative. She uses simple words that teenagers would use and that directness helps the language flow so that the words Sones chooses seem more like a teenager's stream of consciousness than an adult putting words to the page. Describing the way her mother's nervous reaction to her dating in "Mom's the Word": "she hovers in the hall/ and keeps wringing her hands,/ like she's scared that/ I'm going to get pregnant or something./ And if I ever did,/ which of course I won't,/ it would serve her right" brings out the rebellious words and emotions of a teenager whose mother, perhaps, stopped parenting too soon. The imagery is dry and caustic, and doused in vindictiveness, but spot on in accuracy.

The text also uses different font styles to illustrate online chatting when Sophie's infatuation with Dylan runs thin, and she is on the prowl for a new, more exciting relationship — online.

What is refreshing about Sophie is that she isn't soulless. She's struggling to balance social expectations with reality, as most teens do, but she also has a good sense of what is right and what is wrong, and she identifies that her parents aren't only not relating to her any more, they also aren't relating to each other. She observes their behaviors and how they often don't make any sense. Along the way she decides to stand up for herself by asserting her independence like when she decides to take herself on a spring break around Boston, her hometown, since her parents had nothing planned for the vacation time.

Throughout the book, readers are taken on a typical roller coaster of the teen years watching Sophie as she engages with friends, a depressed mother, an absent father, and boys. The only illustration used in the book, given its teen audience, is a small cartoon in the lower right-hand pages toward the end  that allow the reader to flip through the pages and see man and a woman holding each other and kissing. It is very indicative of some of the drawing you might find in a journal, but not overwhelming, so it doesn't deter from the poetry.

Sones' ability to juggle the difficulties thrust onto children as they enter the adult world are phenomenal. Her choice to use free verse makes the book an excellent read for teens interested in poetry or those who want a relatable storyline that is also easily read.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
ALA Best Books for Young Adults 2002
ALA Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
Booklist Editor's Choice
California Collections
Iowa Teen Award 2005
Texas Lone Star State Reading List 2003

From Booklist
"The poetry is never pretentious or difficult; on the contrary, the very short, sometimes rhythmic lines make each page fly. Sophie's voice is colloquial and intimate, and the discoveries she makes are beyond formula, even while they are as sweetly romantic as popular song. A natural for reluctant readers, this will also attract young people who love to read." 

From Publisher's Weekly
"Drawing on the recognizable cadences of teenage speech, Sones (Stop Pretending) poignantly captures the tingle and heartache of being young and boy-crazy."  

5. CONNECTIONS
Other free verse poetry books by Sonya Sones:

• One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. ISBN 9781442493834
• Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. ISBN 9780064462181
• To Be Perfectly Honest: A Novel Based on an Untrue Story. ISBN 9780689876059

Other poetry books on the teenage experience: 

• Aguado, Bill. Paint Me Like I  Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorps. ISBN 97800644723647
• Burg, Ann E. All the Broken Pieces. ISBN 9780545080934
• Franco, Betsy. Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls. ISBN 9780763610357
• Franco, Betsy. You Hear Me: Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys. ISBN 97807636115990

In middle school and high school, teens are often told what to write. The population is overrun by typical writing assignments like 5-paragraph essays, research papers and poetry that is meant to emulate authors like Shakespeare and Robert Frost.

But what if teens were welcome to follow Sonya Sones' lead and write a book of stand-alone free verse poems that created a narrative about their own teen experiences? What would it look like? Would it have more illustrations? What ideas about parents, school, dating and identity would they be able to communicate channeling their inner thoughts into a journal-like book? Perhaps one of the strongest things connecting Sophie to the world was her ability to self-reflect, to wonder, to think without any kind of judgment. Would this connection also hold true for real-life teens the way it did for fictional Sophie?