Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman

This book was so gripping. And while I loved and sympathize with Kiko and exalt with her every victory, it is her awful, horrible, narcissistic mother that caught my imagination so much. She is just SO HORRID. Really. Like no redeeming qualities at all. There is something so fresh and freeing about a character you can hate with no reservations. You don't have to feel conflicted and try to see their good points. Nope. Nada. 

Kiko is a Japanese-American teen dealing with rejection from her only college application--Prism, the prestigious art school she had set her heart on. A chance encounter with her childhood best friend  after a particularly painful episode with her mother leads to a cross the country road trip, romance, (I mean, a cross country road trip and romance is already pretty fabulous, but there is MORE) an incredible mentor and a second chance at dreams. 

I really, super-le-douper loved this book. I mean, obviously her mother is painfully despicable, but that means your emotions aren't pulled out of whack. You are 100% for Kiko and you can follow her story with no reservations or side interests. 

A great quick read! 

Wildman by J.C. Geiger

I just read this last night. Until midnight. Good books encourage poor choices in me. 

At the beginning of the book, there is a Mary Oliver quote--

Tell me, what is it your plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

For Lance "Wildman" who is graduating from Bend, Oregon high school next week, that takes all the following pages to figure things out. Of course, at the end of the book, he is still 18, so maybe he doesn't have it all figured out. But he does at least know he doesn't want to do what everyone else is telling him to or expecting from him. 

When things get iffy, Lance repeats his mantras, gathering his courage around him. 

You are valedictorian.

You are the first chair trumpet player.

You have a full-ride scholarship.

Miriam Seavers is in love with you.

All the good and important things in his life. Until his '93 Buick Century breaks down in the Wenatchee Wilderness in Washington and all those good and important things amount to nothing. (Side note, I love that he has a '93 Buick. And throughout the book, a car is never "the car," each car has a description and model. Cars are important here.) Lance loves that car and refuses to take the easy way out and junk it as his mother expects him to do. This requires him hanging around in this wilderness for five days as his car is sorted out by several inept mechanics (one of whom is really an artist but thinks he should be a mechanic) In this unexpected world with unexpected situations, he reacts differently than he has before, gaining a reputation vastly different from his mantras. He is a bad boy. Sort of. He still carries his trumpet carefully in his case where ever he goes. 

But he is seeing the possibilities in his life as he is stuck in a seedy motel in nowhere, Washington. He falls in with a local crowd, a somewhat depressing crowd of kids who aren't really going anywhere. But there is A Girl, Dakota, who sees things the way Lance does. And there is a guy, Stone, who Lance rescues from a car accident on his first night in town. 

(Aren't trumpets such pretty things?!)

Dakota helps him see the possibilities of this one wild and precious life. And somehow, Lance is able to see Stone in a way that the locals cannot see him at all. Toward the end of the book, Stone asks "How can a total stranger understand you better than the people you've known your entire life?" Awesome line! Stone (whose real name is James, but everyone calls him Stone because he smoked weed when he was younger and they think he is so dumb) shows him that it is easy to fall into everyone's expectations for you, but those expectations can be more of a trap you can't escape than anything else. 

This is a gritty book, touching alcohol and drug use, fights, hopelessness, teenage pregnancy, sex, and suicide. It isn't a book to give to a child of tender years. But it is a book that is also full of hope, of future potential, of overcoming the rigid expectations you have grown accustomed to. 

And it is good. Reading-until-midnight kind of good. 

It is easy to forget how much pressure is on teens at this pivotal point in life, and look back on high school graduation as a time of so much potential. But that is just nostalgia. Sure, there are hours, days, when you feel like you are ten feet tall when you are 18. But there are also days, weeks, months when you just wish you knew what to do. 

This book deals with all of that--the potential, the uncertainty, and the need to make decisions right now. 

Read it. 

Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace, Illus by Vera Neville

(I have decided I am rotten at quick synopsis of books. I go into way too much detail. So I am now going to be more concise and brief. Ha! It is just so hard when there is so much to say.)

Maud Hart Lovelace is famous for her Betsy-Tacy books, but this book, about another girl in Deep Valley is just as good. It has brief mentions of Betsy and Tacy's crowd, but really and truly, this is Emily's book. 

This is the story of an intelligent girl, stymied by graduating school and not being able to afford college. Eventually she finds useful occupation in Deep Valley and makes new friends to augment the friends away at college. 

(That was pretty brief wasn't it?)

I adore Vera Neville's girls. They are all so beautiful and elegant!

Emily lives with her grandfather, so she isn't at liberty to make plans without considering him. She doesn't have the freedom of heading off to college without a backward glance. Her grandfather is very kind and generous, but in his day, things were done differently, so he can't see the point in scrimping and saving for seeming trifles.

At the beginning of the book, her grandfather is completely consumed with plans for Decoration Day (Memorial Day) when he and his fellow Civil War veterans will march in the parade. Emily, on the other hand is busy with end of school activities. She and her grandfather are very close, but they are of completely different generations, so see the world and what is important very differently.

Graduation

The summer is a lovely mix of quietness in her slough, which Emily loves, and a whirlwind of friends and parties. When September comes, however, everyone leaves town. Emily has always loved the quietness of where they live, but suddenly, instead of quiet peacefulness, it seems oppressively empty and lonely.

Despite her best intentions, she falls into a little bit of a depression about the whole thing. For Grandfather's sake, she does her best to be cheerful and do the things that need doing.

Finally, the day before the first home football game, after a chance comment from a new coach at school about how she looked like a school girl with her hair in braids, she pulls herself together and decides she is not going the game. She isn't in high school anymore, and she is not going to languish around trying to pretend she is.

"The reason I didn't put up my hair was that I was clinging to high school," she thought. "There doesn't seem to be anything in my future, so I'm cling to the past. 

"But I can't stop living. I can't tie up my life like Chinese women do their feet. I've got to go on somehow."

"I don't know just what I can do, stuck here in Deep Valley.... But I know I'm going to do something, and I'm NOT going to go to the game this afternoon." 

 At church she hears the minister quote Shakespeare--"Muster your wits: stand in your own defense." When Emily pulls herself together, she does so quite admirably. She takes up piano lessons once again, starts a book club, takes dancing lessons, and buys a new dress.

While skating on the pond, she sees some boys treat a little Syrian immigrant she had befreinded earlier in the year very badly. She brings him home to her grandfather and feeds him up. Thus is born the idea for a Boys club for these immigrants.

Emily sets her plans in motion, and while she is still a little lonesome, she is busy and happier.

Her crowd comes home for Christmas, but somehow it isn't as joyful as Emily thought it would be. The boy she wants is obsessed with her cousin, as are all the other boys it seems. After a disastrous party, in which her cousin inveigles one of her hanger-ons to resentfully squire Emily, Emily is thankful for the quiet loneliness of her slough.

Emily realizes, "I tag them around, but I'm like a shadow. Well, I won't do it any more!" 

She wasn't tired of her friends, but she was tired of pursuing them as though her own life were worthless.

In an effort to be more on her own, Emily and her grandfather decide to give a Christmas party for some of the Syrians. As fall and winter progressed Emily had become more and more interested and involved with the immigrant community

Dancing at the New Year's Eve Party. Emily has some encouraging words from Betsy Ray about the usefulness of seemingly "wasted" years after high school.

Through her work with the Syrian's, Emily becomes friends with the new coach at the school who had innocently commented on her hair looking like a high schooler's and set off all of Emily's changes, Mr. Jed. 

It is interesting to me how timeless things are. Syrian refugees and immigrants are very current subjects in our world today, as current as they were at the turn of the last century.

Jed and Emily get to be quite friendly through their involvement with the social services they create and supply to the Syrians. 

Eventually, there is a love interest of Emily's own. 

I love Emily. I love her natural responses of disappointment and dejection at not doing what she wants to do. And I love her resolution and plans to make her little world better rather than wallowing in the past or in her injustices. She becomes her own person and realizes it is possible to do so much good in the world without going about it in the prescribed manner she had in her own mind.