The Day War Came by Nicola Davies, 2018

Click to view
on Goodreads 

A moving, poetic narrative and child-friendly illustrations follow the heartbreaking, ultimately hopeful journey of a little girl who is forced to become a refugee.

The day war came there were flowers on the windowsill and my father sang my baby brother back to sleep.

Imagine if, on an ordinary day, after a morning of studying tadpoles and drawing birds at school, war came to your town and turned it to rubble. Imagine if you lost everything and everyone, and you had to make a dangerous journey all alone. Imagine that there was no welcome at the end, and no room for you to even take a seat at school. And then a child, just like you, gave you something ordinary but so very, very precious. In lyrical, deeply affecting language, Nicola Davies's text combines with Rebecca Cobb's expressive illustrations to evoke the experience of a child who sees war take away all that she knows.

(32 pages)


This book arrived the day I left for college in September, so it's taken me a while to get back and get around to reviewing it. My parents and sister did read it, though, and they reported over FaceTime that they found it actually kind of hilarious–hilariously depressing, that is. My sister actually read the whole book to me while I was in the airport, half laughing at it the whole time.

It's not that my family takes pleasure from the pain of children, or that my sister actually thinks the book was meant to be a humorous one. The Day War Came is a very sad story about a girl whose entire world is destroyed, and who struggles to find a place to belong because people don't care about immigrants. Davies is very much making a statement with this book, and she tells a gritty, depressing story to make that statement.

And I think that's what my sister–and I–find so ridiculous about this book: it's a picture book. It's written for kids who barely know how to read. Each page has just a few lines for a child to potentially struggle through on their own. And yet the story it tells is not really age-appropriate for children that small, nor is the tone one that they would enjoy. I can very easily see this book (supported by Help Refugees) traumatising children in its target audience, and for what? Toddlers have absolutely no control over immigration, and stories like this are only going to upset them (or, at best, bore them). And the political agenda is so blatant that it's definitely not going to convince anyone to change their stance on immigration. I suppose the best to hope for is that it might soften the parent's behavior toward an immigrant child they might meet someday?

As an example of the tonal issue, I flipped to a random page and found a picture of the protagonist kneeling in the rubble of her destroyed home. Ash rises to the sky, lumps of rubble surround her, and the words on the two page layout are as follows:

I can't say the words that tell you / about the blackened hole / that had been my home.

All I can say is this: / War took everything. / War took everyone. / I was ragged, bloody, all alone.

I surely can't be the only one, politics aside, who has no interest in reading this to any child, ever.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

 

 

Another D for DeeDee by Bibi Belford, 2018

Click to view
on Goodreads 

Life for Dinora Diaz, DeeDee for short, is full of D's. Missing her dad, who's disappeared. Being diagnosed with diabetes. Feeling dumb in fourth grade at her new school, which she transferred into--leaving behind Sandro Zapote and all her other friends in Miss Hamilton's class--after her family's trailer burned down. It's so many D's that DeeDee's sure she'll never really fit in, much less find the perfect best friend she's always wanted.

Then DeeDee meets River. He's a lot like her: River loves skateboarding, art, and dancing, just like she does, and he misses his dad, too. But they're also different: while DeeDee's still struggling to adjust to life with diabetes and has sworn off her Mexican heritage to get back at her dad for leaving, River seems to have totally adjusted to--even learned to love--being deaf. River promises to help search for DeeDee's dad and to compete with her in the spring skateboard exhibition at their local skate park. Finally, DeeDee has something to look forward to.

But when River transfers into DeeDee's fourth grade class, DeeDee makes a huge mistake, putting not just the exhibition, but her entire friendship with River, on the line. Now she has to make a choice: stand up to her classmates and accept being an outsider, or give up her best friend for good? To keep the best friend she's always wanted, DeeDee will have to learn to love difference--not just River's, but also her own.

(208 pages)

Last year, I read Belford's Crossing the Line last year and really loved it. She dealt very sensitively and thoughtfully with the race issues of the early twentieth century through the eyes of a white boy who befriended a black boy and his family.

That's why I was interested to read her latest novel, Another D for DeeDee. This one is set in the present day, and actually manages to impressively mimic the lifestyle of modern kids (communicating by text and everything). It touches on racism lightly, since DeeDee is Mexican-America, but DeeDee also struggles with the aftermath of a fire, living in a trailer park, fitting in at a new school, finding out where her father has gone, and dealing with her new diagnosis of diabetes.

It's a lot of content to smush into a book written for a younger audience, but once again Belford manages to keep the story humming along engagingly. Even though I normally would have gotten so disgusted with DeeDee's bad behavior (especially toward River) that I would have come away from the book with a bad taste in my mouth, somehow Belford manages to keep DeeDee a sympathetic and relatable character. In fact, the reader also learns from DeeDee's bad behvior: Belford makes an excellent point that sometimes mistakes must be forgiven–and that real people are full of nuances, not all good or all bad.

There are too many things going on in this book to go through all of them, but one story aspect I really resonated with was DeeDee and River's conversations about representation. When DeeDee says she might want to enter the talent show as a skateboarder, her nurse is thrilled because she will be a representative of kids with diabetes, showing how her condition is not holding her back. DeeDee is very uncomfortable with this, and indeed spends some time worrying that she could win the competition for her diabetes, because the judges feel sorry for her or want to seem inclusive, rather than because of her actual talent. She doesn't want it to define her. River also grapples with the fine line between personal achievement, representation/paving the way, and handouts.

It's a fascinating question, dealt with in a pretty thoughtful way. I have some very limited experience with these sorts of questions because I am a girl in computer science. There are a lot of extra resources for encouraging women in technology, including special workshops and networking events and even internships. I have always been uncomfortable about taking advantage of these opportunities, and have largely turned them down, because I don't like the idea of getting special help just because of my gender. I can definitely relate to DeeDee and River's thoughts on the topic, and watching them explore the issue actually helped me some.

Anyway, Bibi Belford is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Do go back and read Crossing the Line, then read Another D for DeeDee, then join me in waiting for her next book. I'm sure it also will be an engaging and thought-provoking read!

Washed Ashore by Kerr Thomson, 2017

Click to view
on Goodreads 

On a wild Scottish island, a tragedy washes up on the storm-beaten shore: the bodies of a whale and a man. Fraser, desperate for adventure, and Hayley, visiting from Texas, become tangled in the mystery.

But Fraser's younger brother Dunny is distraught by the discovery. He hasn't spoken in years, and lately he's been acting more strangely than ever.

Together, the three meet a man living in the abandoned caves nearby. They start to wonder if he might lie at the center of something darker than they had previously thought. For the whispering sea conceals a terrible secret, and to discover the truth, one of them must learn to listen...

(320 pages)

Washed Ashore showed up unsolicited on my doorstep one day. I picked it up, shrugged, and read it with basically no expectations about the story (except that there would probably be a whale involved).

Now that I think about it, it's good that I didn't read the description too closely because it basically has nothing to do with the actual story. I mean, the bare-bones idea of the bodies washed ashore and Fraser, Hayley, and Dunny's presence in the story is right, but I'm still not sure who the synopsis is talking about what it says that "one of them must learn to listen." I have inklings, but no firm idea.

Anyway, moving on. What did I think of the book? I thought it was pretty good. I think it's awesome that it's set in Scotland and written by a guy who lives in Glasgow, because I'm actually moving to Scotland in a few months to attend college in (the essentially small fishing town of) St. Andrews, Scotland. My copy of Washed Ashore actually came before I'd made my final decision to go there, and then I read it soon after the decision was made. That's a pretty cool coincidence! I like getting a peek at what life is like on the small Scottish isles, definitely. Though I have to say that I struggled to connect with Hayley at first–I just couldn't believe that there was no part of her that could stop moping about leaving home long enough to look around and appreciate the fact that she was living among the natives on a beautiful little island in gorgeous-freaking-Scotland! Honestly, travel is simply wasted on some people. The only time she ever seems to acknowledge the "other-ness" of Scotland, besides one time when she notices that the shoreline looks kind of nice, is when she's referring to Fraser as "the Scottish boy." This phrase is thrown around almost constantly throughout the book, and from context I think it's basically supposed to have the same connotations as "the boy next door" (i.e. "the boy we've put a special label on and who will eventually be a love interest for the female protagonist"). Meh. Both of these phrases really don't tell us anything about the boy in question, so I don't really like them.

Anyway, the romance plotline is actually handled quite well and I enjoyed watching how all the characters interacted with each other. My favorite character may have been Dunny (who is autistic, though the way Thomson chose to incorporate that into the plot was . . . interesting), just because he seems really sweet and Hayley and Fraser aren't all that nice to or understanding with him. I also felt for Hayley, who is struggling big-time with her parents' separation and upcoming divorce (after her father left them for another woman), and I'm rather horrified about what her mother almost does while on rebound. I liked Fraser least of the three main characters, just because he has the most advantages–knowing everything/everyone on the island, unlike Hayley, and being able to communicate with other people in a way that Dunny can't–and yet is still such a jerk at times to both of them. He's especially thoughtless with Dunny, which is hard to see. Fraser does grow on me, though.

As for the plot itself, I can't discuss much without spoilers. There are some interesting themes explored, that's for sure. I can't say that I love the way everything ends up–it's a little too mystical for my tastes–but I suppose that could just be part of the Scottish culture. There are some interesting ethical dilemmas brought up in connection with immigration and the like, which really got me thinking. I can't go much into this here, so I suppose I'll just say that I don't blame immigrants for fleeing hopeless situations but I also think countries should have the right to decide who they admit into their borders.

Anyway, though, Washed Ashore was a pleasant book that I enjoyed reading but which didn't blow my socks off. It would make a perfect summer read for any of you still looking for something to pass the time with in the next few weeks.

Disclaimer: I received an unsolicited, complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher.