The Red Pencil - Andrea Davis Pinkney

One--thud!--then another,
then one more,
until many men
and women
and boys and girls
littered our land.

What fell
was anyone
who tried to flee
on that violent day
when bullets flung
from no place I know.

 Anyone who knows me will understand that while I don't automatically dislike novels in verse, I am rather picky when it comes to such texts. That being said, I was delighted with The Red Pencil and hope that many more will pick up this book when it comes out in September!

 Andrea Davis Pinkney is a remarkable author. I don't say that lightly, either. Not only does she give incredible speeches at various conferences and at other author events, but she is a gifted writer of the highest degree. Again, I do not say this lightly. Her descriptions and turns of phrase truly enveloped me into the narrative of The Red Pencil. This story is uncomfortable and will many will find it difficult to read without at least a few tears.

When it comes to schooling,
my mother is the most tight-minded of anyone.

She does not like the idea of Gad*
or any place where girls learn
to read
or write,
in Arabic or English
or think beyond a life
of farm chores and marriage.

Muma, born into a flock of women, 
locked in a hut of tradition.

 The book follows Amira, twelve-years old and hopefully mature enough to attend Gad, a a school that would allow her to learn to read and write and understand more about her world. But her dreams are just that, for now. Her mother is very much against the idea of education, desiring instead that Amira get married and learn to love motherhood and being a wife: "Someday, / when you marry, / you will not need to read. / A good wife lets her husband do the reading." Amira isn't convinced.

 When her father gets killed in an ambush from the Janjaweed, a notorious militia group, Amira, her mother, and a few surviving villagers evacuate their homes and move to a refugee camp for protection. And even though they're protected from the Janjaweed, they are living under horrific conditions, leaving Amira with little opportunity to become better educated. That is, until she finds a tutor in the camp, and finds inspiration to set out for a better life.

 Though I'm not entirely convinced of the necessity of the illustrations which accompany Pinkney's text, I'm not against them either. It could be that I'm just not a huge fan of Shane Evans' style for this specific novel, even while others may be. I'm not an art major, so I don't always know what works and what doesn't, only what I prefer and what I don't. In this case, I'm not a huge fan, but I'm totally willing to see the necessity/benefit if someone wants to talk to me more about this particular style.

 Pinkney's writing is both spare and beautifully descriptive, and I can't recommend this The Red Pencil enough.

 Highly Recommended

 (Note: This review is from an Advance Reading Copy - Out September 16, 2014)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Living - Matt De La Peña

Image
The Living  recently received an Honor from the Pura Belpré committee. The award recognizes of a work which best portrays the Latino cultural experience in a work of literature for children or youth. As I was at the awards announcements, and having known people who served on the committee in the past, I was intrigued. I had read the winning title and the other honor titles, and was impressed with the choices. So here's my review of The Living : The novel begins with Shy, a young guy working for a snazzy cruise line, offering water to people on the Lido Deck of the ship to combat the heat. Everything is going pretty well until an older gentleman comes out and starts spouting of weird, disconcerting phrases: "You have seen the face of evil."Shy doesn't quite know what to think, so he moves on to a couple of ladies on the other side of the deck. Just as he's handing them their water bottles, he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and realizes the old guy h
Read more

The Music of What Happens - Bill Konigsberg

Image
Max: Chill. Sports. Video games. Gay and not a big deal, not to him, not to his mom, not to his buddies. And a secret: An encounter with an older kid that makes it hard to breathe, one that he doesn't want to think about, ever. Jordan: The opposite of chill. Poetry. His "wives" and the Chandler Mall. Never been kissed and searching for Mr. Right, who probably won't like him anyway. And a secret: A spiraling out of control mother, and the knowledge that he's the only one who can keep the family from falling apart. Over the course of one summer, two boys will have to face their biggest fears and decide what they're willing to risk -- to get the thing they want the most. This is a phenomenal book, in my humble opinion. There aren't too many books dealing with male sexual abuse, particularly in YA. Sex and sexuality are messy parts of young adulthood, but what this book does really well is discuss consent and the ways in which physical cues can be misinte
Read more

Girls Like Us - Gail Giles

Image
I have now gone out and made sure that I have all of the books longlisted for the National Book Award. I read and reviewed a number of these previously, so now I have five left to read and review. This is one of those five (but would I expect anything less from the fabulous team at Candlewick?) Girls Like Us  is a unique novel in a number of respects, most notably in the fact that both protagonists are identified (and self-identified) as mentally disabled in some way. Biddy has a learning disability that she was born with, while Quincy is a young girl who is disabled due to the fact that her mother's boyfriend hit her in the head with a brick, disfiguring her and damaging her brain. Once the two girls graduate from school, they move into a house together, becoming caregivers for both each other and an older woman, Elizabeth. The two must rely on each other for comfort, knowledge, and emotional strength, and Elizabeth manages to help them along the way. While I had moments of wo
Read more