The Braid (in all its permutations)

I wrote one of my local history pieces not too long ago about a family forced off their land in Scotland who eventually made their was to the west coast. With that era of history on my mind, plus my love of Cape Breton and interest in verse novels, I was primed, ready and eager to read The Braid by Helen Frost.

It's 1850 and The Highland Clearances are forcing people off the land. The landlords have decided it's more profitable to raise sheep than to collect rents from tenants. Sisters Jeannie and Sarah, along with their family, are being forced off their land on the Isle of Barra. They are due to sail to Canada (destined for Cape Breton) in a few days. The night before they are to leave, the sisters weave their hair together in a braid and then curl up to sleep. When Jeannie awakes, she sees that Sarah has cut off the braid and left half for her sister. As we will learn, Sarah has gone to stay with her grandmother on a nearby island, rather than take the voyage to Canada. With this scene, we have the first braid.

But there are more. In The Braid, Frost alternates narrative poems by Sarah and Jeannie. In between each narrative poem, is a praise poem, which praises something in the narrative. We see the girls' lives unfold, the tragedies and sadness, but also moments of hope and joy. All of the family except Jeannie, brother William, and their mother, die on the journey to Canada and they arrive with nothing. Back in Scotland, Sarah goes to live with her grandmother, on the nearby island of Mingulay, where life is also hardscrabble but, for now at least, they can stay on the land.

For those intrigued, a bit of Googling will find more of the plot laid out for you, but I think it's better to let it unfold as you read. There was also a huge surprise for me at the end, which made it all the better. SPOILER -- if you plan to read this book, don't read on.

Frost has taken the metaphor of a braid, and Celtic knots, to make literal braids through the story with her poetry techniques. First, the praise poems are braided horizontally. so, the last line of one praise poem is braided into the first line of the next praise poem.

So, for example, the last line of Mussels is: white inside, shining like the sun. The first line of the next praise poem, Hair, is: white, shining in the sun, Grandma's/hair winds round her head, a braid,....

Then, the longer narrative poems are braided vertically. The last words of each line in one narrative poem are the first words of each line in the following narrative poem (sometimes slightly varied). Here's one line of The Braid: Willie fussed, and wouldn't go to sleep. It was late, we were/ and the corresponding line of After Three Days: Were they angry? Could they understand how this place holds me, so/....

And...at the end of the story, when Jeannie is weaving a braid, images and words from the first two narrative poems, as well as the subjects of all of the praise poems, are woven into the lines of the last two narrative poems.

But wait, there's even more! Each line of the narrative poems has the same number of syllables as the narrator's age. When Jeannie is fourteen, each line has fourteen syllables and so on. Finally, each praise poem is composed of eight lines, each with eight syllables.

So, having read all this you may be wondering, Is this a gimmic? I doubt it, and if so, what a HUGE amount of work to go to in order to pull it off. The story is a solid one -- it is solidly grounded in historical fact with enough tension and passion created for the characters to pull you along. I enjoy historical fiction and poetry, so it was a shoe-in for me. When I finished it and clued in (duh) to the intricate style I just wanted to read it over again.

I have one small quibble. In Sarah's narrative poem Such Immense Love, Sarah and Murdo are out on the cliffs of Mingulay where they are wont to wander. After I read this: Waves crashed onto the cliffs below us, and we -- kissed./In love, they say, as if love is a place you enter-- as if we/ slice open time and find a whole new island inside one moment./I'm shaken by the strength of this. Does what we did together mean/I'm going to have a child? Why did no one warn me?... Okay, so I read that and figured that Sarah, like so many other girls through history who have no knowledge of sex, assumed that kissing meant you could get pregnant. But, no, as we learn, "what we did together" was actually having sex. When I later learned she's pregnant, I went, Hey, wait a minute, and had to go back and re-read this passage. Did I miss something? Obviously. This "loss of virginity passage" was just a little too vague and cagey for moi. Overall, a small quibble, however, in a very enjoyable, and ambitious, verse novel.

You can read some more reviews here, from Fuse #8 and here's an interview with Frost from School Library Journal. The author also has some great links about the location, the history, the book (including review excerpts) on her website.

What My Mother Doesn't Know

In my constant search for verse novels, I have just finished What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones, published in 2001. Short, pithy poems of a young girl's first loves and trying to fit in make this story zip along. Nice to see that Sophie wades through the morass of trying to be one of the cool kids to find what really matters. This is the blurb from the jacket cover:

My name is Sophie.
This book is about me.
It tells
the heart-stoppingly riveting story
of my first love.
And also of my second.
And, okay, my third love, too.

It's not that I'm boy crazy.
It's just that even though
I'm almost fifteen
I've been having sort of a hard time
trying to figure out the difference
between love and lust.

It's like
my mind
and my body
and my heart
just don't seem to be able to agree
on anything.

Sonya Sones has a great web site, including a blurb on the cover design as well as the idea behind the little flip book (that ends with a kiss), which runs from pages 231 to 259.

Tackling Tragedy - World's Afire

I'm continuously searching for children's/YA stories told in verse -- it's a form I love. I've been enjoying Paul Janeczko's poetry, most recently A Kick in the Head, so was delighted to find he'd written a verse novel -- World's Afire. The subject of the novel was an interesting choice though -- the 1944 Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus disastrous fire in Hartford. I wonder if a lesser-known writer would have even been considered if they'd suggested writing about such a tragedy? I find that my younger daughter is particularly afraid of fire, so I wouldn't suggest she read this, but, perhaps, for kids who need something a little edge to draw them into a story -- and to poetry -- it would be a good choice.

Of course it was wonderfully crafted. Told in three parts, through the eyes of 29 characters (e.g., Willard Owens, Circus Buff; Dixie Levine, Circus Attendant; Eddie "Freak Man" Carlyle, Sideshow Fan, etc.), each of whom is given a poem. Here's an excerpt:

Ralph Nesbitt
Eighteen-Year-Old Animal Trainer

I was working with the elephants
near the main ten
when the fire started --
a lick of flame
in the top of the tent.
My first thought was,
How're those people going to get out of there?
Then somebody yelled,
"Get the elephants out!"
Nobody wanted 'em to charge the crowd.
I started shouting,
"Tails! Tails!"
and the herd lined up
tail-to-trunk
just like they'd been taught.
I was too scared to be proud of them.
We marched them out,
prodding them with bull hooks
when they dawdled.
I kept one eye on the herd
one on the tent,
black smoke pouring out
like from a hundred locomotives
and wondered again
about those poor people:
How're they ever going to get out of there?
When the herd was safe,
I cried.

- Paul Janeczko, World's Afire

Here's a summary:
Janeczko focuses on a twentieth-century tragedy that has been the subject of several prose works in his original 2004 work Worlds Afire. On July 6, 1944, a tragic fire erupted in the main tent of the Barnum & Bailey Circus as the greatest show on earth performed in Hartford, Connecticut. In its wake, the fire left 167 men, women, and children dead and over 500 others injured, in one of the greatest New England tragedies of the twentieth century. In twenty-nine poems that recount, first, the circus opening, then the fire and, finally, the tragic aftermath, Janeczko gives voice to the survivors, as well as those destined to die. Even the arsonist is allowed to express himself through the poet's free verse in a "verse novel" that a Kirkus Reviews writer described as a "rich, challenging poetry experience" that "creates an overview of a community in tragedy." Although his verses capture the human tragedy rather than the graphic horror of the event, as Booklist reviewer Hazel Rochman noted, "the combination of a thrilling circus and true catastrophe will grab middle-schoolers" cautious about investing in reading poetry.

While I'm glad I read this, and enjoyed each of the "stories in miniature" that each poem provided, I just can't imagine the children I would recommend or read this to. I'm sure a skillful teacher or librarian could craft a way of introducing this book to children. Your thoughts?

The Aleutian Sparrow

After the wonderful introduction to Karen Hesse's writing through Out of the Dust (see my post on July 24th), I've got a few more of her titles to read through. I finished another verse novel, Aleutian Sparrow, last evening. Although I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Out of the Dust, I did learn quite a bit about the history of the Aleuts during WW2. This story is told by an Aleut girl, Vera, as she and her friends and family are moved from the Aleutians to Ward Lake near Wrangell. Another sad tale of misunderstanding and mistreatment and I wasn't left with the same sense of hope I had after finished the very heart-wrenching Out of the Dust, but I appreciated learning more about this period and these people. Beautiful cover and interior linocuts by Evon Zerbetz.

The Crazy Man
As any of you interested in children's lit. will know, The Crazy Man by Pamela Porter won this year's GG in the children's lit. category. I'd read a few reviews and decided to give it a read. My copy from the library arrived just as we were to go on a road trip so I read it to my family as we were driving. All of us, ages 9 to 52, were captivated by the story of Emaline and "the crazy man", Angus. The story is told in a prose poem, which was intriguing to me and new to my children, but it really worked. My husband, who once worked at a "mental" (a terrible name, I know, but that sentiment was fairly common I believe) and grew up in a town that could very well have been the one in the novel, said it captured the essence of small prairie town life in the '50s wonderfully. Emaline, Angus, the mother, father, Mei, the neighbours (who think the presence of the "crazy man" next door is a threat to their safety), ... every character is very believable and you've just got to love a character "who can speak meadowlark" and "see colors around people." After that weekend, I bought the book. It is one I know I will come back to time and again.

The Crazy Man is published by Groundwood Books.
Cover illustration above by Karine Daisay