Speak

By Laurie Halse Anderson.

Published in 2006 by Puffin books, New York. Originally published in 1999.

I cried. I rarely cry when reading, but every so often a book is able to touch the emotional as much as the intellectual, and I am opened a bit. That happened today. Speak is about rape. But more than that, it is about what happens after trauma, when a person keeps it inside, and feels like they are breaking into pieces, are made up of different people - none of whom is the self they know. It is about being silent. It is about breaking silence.

Melinda is the narc who called the cops at a big high school party over the summer, and she starts ninth grade as an outcast because of it. What no one knows is that she dialed 911 because she had just been raped. She hasn't told anyone. She goes to school every day where IT (her rapist) is a senior. Her parents and teachers don't understand why her grades have plummeted. Melinda stays quiet, while she rages inside. Melinda is beautifully rendered and real; she is intelligent, insightful, pained. She is painful. She is glorious.

It surprised me to look at the back cover and see that this book is categorized for ages 10 and up. That said, I am glad. I think Speak will be a very healing book for many people, from children to adults. It is an important book. It is astoundingly well written (Anderson's world is so well wrought that I could feel myself in high school again). I loved it.

10/10.
Ages 10+.

Coraline

Released in 2009. Directed by Harry Selick. Produced by Laika, distributed by Focus Features.

This is what they mean by crossover appeal (well, among the many, many definitions, apparently). I saw Coraline in 3D with a group of friends, all of us in our 20s and 30s. Elsewhere in the dark theatre we could hear small kids making occasional comments. I'm pretty sure we all loved it.

Coraline is a young girl (I'm not sure how old she is supposed to be, but I would put her at 11 or 12) who has just moved with her busy, distant parents to a small Oregon town. When the constant rain keeps her inside, she discovers a small door that leads to an alternate reality, one in which her parents are charming and entirely devoted to her amusement. At first this other world is delightful, and provides for Coraline all of the things she feels she is missing at home (foremost being attention). Upon closer inspection the new reality is much darker than she is prepared for, and her wits are tested as she struggles to make her way back to her real parents.

Coraline is visually so new, appealing, and spellbinding, that I think even skeptical teenagers will be able to look past the fact that it is animated (and could thus potentially be relegated to the world of "kid stuff"). Young teens will definitely be drawn to the film's style and themes (Coraline's battles with her mother(s) are something I think most adolescent girls will relate to), and older teens will appreciate the film's mastery of form and its pedigree (originally born as a Neil Gaiman novella, then a graphic novel).

Seeing Coraline in 3D is something I highly recommend - it sort of felt like I was in the audience of a 1895 showing of the Lumiere Brothers's Arrival of A Train - the experience was so new and real. Even on DVD, however, I have no doubt that this film will wow audiences of all ages.

9/10.
Ages 10+ (rated PG).

How I Live Now

By Meg Rosoff.

Published in 2004 by Wendy Lamb Books, New York.

There was a moment, towards the end of reading How I Live Now, that I had the thought that it was among the best books I had ever read. Only it wasn't so much a thought as it was a sort of floating feeling, because I couldn't bear to remove myself from the narrative enough to have something so separate as a thought. Reading this book is like reading a dream.

Daisy, a 15 year old New Yorker, is sent to live with her Aunt and cousins in the English countryside. With the country on the brink of war her Aunt leaves to help with peace talks in Oslo, and the children are left behind to a seemingly idyllic existence of no school and no rules. This can't last. I moved slowly with Daisy from love and light and summer and freedom into war and loss and grief and survival. Daisy's voice is so clear and true that I felt the weird sense of normalcy that is maintained in the heart of chaos - despite the horrors Daisy faces, she keeps living. In her words, "We couldn't go on. We went on" (155). The style of the novel is abstracted, grammatical conventions have been left behind, but the resulting sense of flow is hypnotic. "Magical and utterly faultless," proclaims Mark Haddon (author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - a book similar in its stylistic explorations) from the novel's cover. I concur.

10/10.

Ages 12-1000.