Review of Superstitions by Susan Oloier

Fifteen-year old Ellie Blackwood is having a bad day. Over ice cream, her father reveals that he and girlfriend Greta are getting married, though how can he be getting married when he hadn’t even divorced Ellie’s mother yet? Then, Ellie’s best friend Kyle decides that he’s too old to spend time with her anymore. The babies’ catalogs with Greta’s name on the address label that Ellie finds in the kitchen are really the last straw.

Ellie has a lot to deal with. Her mother had walked out on them five years before, but Ellie has not given up on finding her mother before her father ties the knot. She is starting her sophomore year at school, and now she needs to make new friends while dealing with the realization that she had fallen in love with Kyle, and that he is not in love with her. Worse, he is now dating the popular Tiffany who doesn’t acknowledge Ellie’s existence.

As so often happens in life, when one door closes, a window opens, and in walks Alexander Coon II. Alexander has a surprising taste for poetry, a mysterious background, and a treasure map. He invites Ellie to join him on a hunt for the legendary Dutchman’s Mine, a hunt which will lead them to learn more about love, hope, dreams, and friendship.

Susan Oloier’s Superstitions deals with difficult situations and emotions: abandonment, communication, trust, and most important, the difference between giving up and letting go. In Ellie’s search for her mother, she is resisting the truth. She has not heard from her mother in five years. Her father is getting married. And yet Ellie refuses to hear what her father has to say. She refuses to accept that her mother might never be coming back.

The teen years are a time of transition from childhood to adulthood, of letting go of the old and accepting the new. The need to let go of expectation, of mistrust, and of anger is apparent in Ellie’s relationship with every character in the novel. She does not have to give up the hope of finding her mother, but she does need to let go her hope that her family will get back together as it was before. She needs to let go of her expectations of her father and allow him to rebuild his life the way that he wants to. So much letting go!

Superstitions is romantic and sad, the story of adventure and everyday life. In between her life at school and at home, Ellie finds danger and excitement hiking and camping in the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. Susan Oloier weaves a story that takes place deep in the heart, in the conflict between the soul and the mind, hope and reality, disappointment and love. And as always in life, no easy answers can be found.

Superstitions on the web:
Susan Oloier interview on Examiner
Superstitions on Goodreads
Superstitions on Amazon
Susan Oloier's blog

Buoyed by Friendship -- Review of Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Midway through Kristin Cashore’s fantasy novel Bitterblue I couldn’t help myself. I called my friend’s twelve year old daughter to gush about how she has to put everything down and read this book right now.

“Oh, I already read it,” she said. “It’s great!”

I had intended to do some serious raving about how marvelous the novel is, how much I’m enjoying it,  and how fabulous Bitterblue is as a queen, but my friend’s daughter was way ahead of me.

Still, I have to gush to someone. And I loved loved loved this book. I loved Kristin Cashore’s first novel Graceling with its powerful female protagonist Katsa. I enjoyed her second novel Fire whose mind-reading heroine Lady Fire lived a rich, conflicting (and poetic) inner life. And I finished Bitterblue, holding my breath all the way to the end, watching the young queen as she sifts through the chaos her father left in her attempts to heal her kingdom.

Bitterblue is surrounded by lies. From every direction, it seems, people weave a web of confusion and deception around her, doing their best to keep her in the dark. Are her strange advisers to be trusted? Are her guards really protecting her? Are her spies loyal? Is the information she receives from her clerks falsified? Bitterblue is just one little queen with a lot of good intentions. How can she overcome so much history of terror and fear when she doesn’t even know who’s on her side?

The rule in young adult novels says that the main character must solve her problems on her own, without adult help. Cashore stays true to this rule. The young Bitterblue, with her energy and strong sense of what is just and right fights her battle on her own terms and under her own power. But she is far from alone. Her friends might not solve her problems for her, but they are always there to give Bitterblue their love, their support, and their faith. Her cousin Po might not always hear her calls. Katsa might be away for most of the action. Giddon, Raffin and Bann might be bogged down by council affairs. But when they are there, they have an ear to listen and an arm open in a hug for Bitterblue. And sometimes, perhaps, that’s all a little queen needs in order to conquer ignorance and fear and reach the truth that lies behind.

I love that though the odds against Bitterblue are huge, Cashore does not leave the young queen hanging all on her own without any support circle. Bitterblue does not lie back and allow others to solve her problems, but that does not mean that no one is allowed to give her a kind word. At the SCBWI conference, Tony Diterlizzi said that all of us, in the end, meet our darkest moment alone. But how much stronger are we when even alone we know we have the love of our friends behind us.

My review of Graceling
My review of Fire
Kristin Cashore's blog
Bitterblue on Goodreads

All Eyes to the Target: Boy Ahead!

I read somewhere that young adult plots tend to concentrate on finding love, while middle grade novels depend on character development. I understand why 9-12 audiences are not interested in romantic endings. I also completely get why young adults would find the process of finding love more fascinating than almost any other subject. Love in YA novels, however, often comes hand in hand with the search for an inner truth and independence, an attempt to understand and find a place in a confusing world.

A friend of mine told me that she decided at eighteen to discover who she is alone before finding out who she was in a relationship. I appreciated what she said. I think it is a good lesson to learn, and I tried to follow it after my divorce. I met my ex husband at nineteen, when I did not have the presence of mine or inner strength yet to insist on what I want in the midst of my desire to please him, my craving for his love, and my fear of being alone. I hope, through my writing, to impart to girls the knowledge that facing these fears and needs and finding the “I” behind is possibly the most important and transforming experience in growing up.

I just finished reading Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs. Fluid and fabulous, the novel is a great example to YA love trends. The protagonist, Lily, is a mermaid living on land who must bond with a guy (for life) before her eighteenth birthday, or else she will not inherit her father’s throne. Lily has carefully selected a boy for this purpose. But it’s just so hard to tell him who she is and how she feels! Then Lily’s plans fall apart by another boy who she accidentally bonds with, and now she needs to find a way to put everything to rights again.

I had so much fun reading this novel. I loved Lily, her friends, and Quince, the boy next door. I loved the many fish expressions (like “That Blowfish!” and “curl my fins”). Lily had to find out not only who her true love is, but also what she wants from her life, and in Tera Lynn Childs’ novel the two were inexorably tied together. So maybe Lily doesn’t learn any other life lesson in the novel than that love is stronger than anything. But is that really such a bad lesson to learn? Lily learns to welcome the unconditional and rare love she is given not only from where she least expected it, but from her best friend in the sea and best friend in land and from her father -- all of whom are willing to set Lily free so that she can follow her dream.

And what better lesson is there in the world? What more could I want my teenaged child to know than that love conquers all? In my opinion, there is none.