Tag Archives: YA books

Apr 4 2022

Book Review: What if it’s Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

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Reviewed by Jen Vincent

DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK: Arthur is only in New York for the summer, but if Broadway has taught him anything, it’s that the universe can deliver a showstopping romance when you least expect it.

Ben thinks the universe needs to mind its business. If the universe had his back, he wouldn’t be on his way to the post office carrying a box of his ex-boyfriend’s things.

But when Arthur and Ben meet-cute at the post office, what exactly does the universe have in store for them?

Maybe nothing. After all, they get separated.

Maybe everything. After all, they get reunited.

But what if they can’t quite nail a first date…or a second first date…or a third?

What if Arthur tries too hard to make it work…and Ben doesn’t try hard enough?

What if life really isn’t like a Broadway play?

But what if it is?

MY TWO CENTS: What If It’s Us starts with a super cute meet cute, has it’s fair share of drama and suspense, along with a dose of reality. Arthur and Ben meeting at the post office is totally adorable, but they still have a bit of a rocky start when they don’t exchange phone numbers after that first encounter. Eep!

It’s endearing to read alternating chapters from both of them, each with their different backgrounds, different experiences, and different family lives, coming together at the beginning of their relationship. One of the biggest things they have to navigate is their cultural differences. What I love about this book is that Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli get right the nuances of people from different cultures coming together. As someone who grew up in a mixed family and has been a Latina navigating mostly white spaces, I’ve experienced this many times, but it’s rare to see it in a book. For example, while it’s a stereotype that Latinx people are always late, Silvera and Albertalli don’t play into the stereotype; they get underneath it and show us that at play is an underlying difference in how cultural values are lived out. This could have been written in a superficial way, but instead, they show us what it looks like when characters take the time to go deeper rather than avoid difficult conversations.

I always appreciate when a contemporary romance is honest about relationships and not everything goes perfectly. I’m so glad we have books like What If It’s Us that celebrate being young and the excitement of exploring a new relationship while also showing what it looks like to grow together as a couple and how that’s not always as simple as fairy tales make it seem.

TEACHING TIPS: As a middle school teacher, I love using excerpts from novels as mentor texts with students. Sometimes we use mentor texts to get ideas and sometimes to look at craft. Here are two excerpts teachers can use to inspire middle or high school students to write their own stories, personal or fictionalized.

Chapter One – The first page starts with the line, “I am not a New Yorker, and I want to go home.” And then a paragraph where Arthur explains all the unspoken rules about being in New York and how he’s struggling. I suggest reading this and inviting students to think about a time when they didn’t feel like they fit in, there were so many unspoken rules, they felt out of place, and wanted to go home. I would model my thinking first–thinking aloud about times when I didn’t feel like I fit in–and then ask students to brainstorm. Once they have a list, ask them to choose one situation and write long about it. 

Chapter Six – Ben starts off chapter six with this line, “I wish I felt Puerto Rican out in the world the way I do at home.” Thinking about our unique and complex identities and how we are able to show up as ourselves in different situations is an important self awareness practice. I love that this book gives us an opportunity to think about our experiences in different spaces. In my experience, some students will be able to identify places where they are able to act more like themselves than others, but other students may feel affirmed in their identity and in the spaces they frequent. Invite students to make a list of places they go and then think about how comfortable they feel in each. Then they can write long about either not feeling able to be fully themselves in different spaces or what contributes to feeling able to be fully themselves in different spaces. 

If you read the next paragraph in chapter six, Ben goes on to explain that friends told him he wasn’t really Puerto Rican because he’s white-passing. This is an opportunity for a deeper discussion about what people might assume about us from our appearances and/or what we might assume about other people. Books are such a great way to invite students to think about stereotypes and bias because we get to see a myriad of stories. As someone who has spent much of her life not feeling enough, this is such an important discussion to have. What it means to be Latinx is varied, and we need to share more stories like this to help everyone understand that we are not a monolith. Pairing this excerpt from What If It’s Us with this spoken word poetry 8 Confessions of My Tongue from Noel Quiñones and discussing with students is one way to take this discussion even further.

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The sequel to What if it’s Us is also available. When you’re caught up with the first novel, check out Here’s to Us:

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Adam Silvera is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Infinity Reaper, Infinity Son, They Both Die at the End, More Happy Than Not, History Is All You Left Me, and—with Becky Albertalli—What If It’s Us and Here’s to Us. All his novels have received multiple starred reviews. He worked in the publishing industry as a children’s bookseller, community manager at a content development company, and book reviewer of children’s and young adult novels. He was born and raised in New York. He lives in Los Angeles and is tall for no reason. 

Becky Albertalli is the number one New York Times bestselling author of William C. Morris Award winner and National Book Award longlist title Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (now a major motion picture, Love, Simon); The Upside of Unrequited; Leah on the Offbeat; the Simonverse novella Love, Creekwood; What If It’s Us (cowritten with Adam Silvera); Yes No Maybe So (cowritten with Aisha Saeed); and most recently, Kate in Waiting. Becky lives with her family in Atlanta. You can visit her online at http://www.beckyalbertalli.com.

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ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Jen Vincent (she/her/ella) is a Latinx writer, blogger, and educator. She is a middle school LA/SS teacher and the founder of Story Exploratory where she offers a fun and funky community and curated resources to help amazing humans grow their confidence in using writing as self care. She believes radical self love is our path to change. Connect with her on Instagram and Twitter and her website jenvincentwrites.com.

Mar 21 2022

Book Review: Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

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Reviewed by Alexandra Someillan

DESCRIPTION FROM THE PUBLISHERS: In Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, two boys in a border town fell in love. Now, they must discover what it means to stay in love and build a relationship in a world that seems to challenge their very existence.

Ari has spent all of high school burying who he really is, staying silent and invisible. He expected his senior year to be the same. But something in him cracked open when he fell in love with Dante, and he can’t go back. Suddenly he finds himself reaching out to new friends, standing up to bullies of all kinds, and making his voice heard. And, always, there is Dante, dreamy, witty Dante, who can get on Ari’s nerves and fill him with desire all at once.

The boys are determined to forge a path for themselves in a world that doesn’t understand them. But when Ari is faced with a shocking loss, he’ll have to fight like never before to create a life that is truthfully, joyfully his own.

MY TWO CENTS: After reading this book, I realized that this story is one of the sweetest and most heartwarming slice-of-life novels I have ever read. Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World describes the magic of falling in love for the first time– how terrifying and beautiful it is at the same time. In the first book, Dante opened up Aristotle’s eyes and made him face the truth about himself. Aristotle began to fall in love with Dante, but he still had difficulty opening himself up to others. In this novel, Aristotle’s love for Dante shakes up his whole universe and makes him realize that he shouldn’t shut off the people who love him.

Aristotle learns to open himself up to others along the way, and he makes lifelong friends who help him realize he was never truly alone. Dante, his family, and friends help Aristotle face the demons inside him that have been tucked away for a long time. They also help Aristotle get through one of the most significant life-altering moments of his life. I loved reading about these characters because they reminded me how life is about living it with the people you love. How Ari’s friends and family help him along the way is my favorite thing about this book because they are the exact kind of people anyone would be lucky to have in their life. The people who rally around Aristotle are the people you would want in your life forever.

In the first novel, the reader gets to know all the facets of Dante, but in this novel, he takes a bit of a backseat to other characters. Even though I loved the other characters in the book, I wanted more of Dante, especially since he goes through his life changes in this book and is the impetus for why Aristotle has changed so dramatically.

Besides Aristotle trying to find himself again, he also deals with the tumultuous world in the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic. Being a kid during the eighties and early nineties, I remember the devastation of this virus, but I never realized how much of a cultural impact it had on the entire world. Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Water of the World was the first book I read that eloquently describes the AIDS crisis and how the characters struggle with it and question their own identity in a world that hates who they love.

There are also thought-provoking discussions about what it means to be queer in a heteronormative society, especially the Latine culture’s reluctance to accept members of the LGBTQ community. The characters also deal with racism; the book perfectly analyzes the meaning of racism and delves into what makes someone racist. I enjoyed how the book made me think about serious issues and why people are the way they are. However, what I love most about this novel is its beautiful message — that learning how to love again could save us from ourselves.

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TEACHING TIPS: Since Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World takes place during the AIDS epidemic, this would be an excellent opportunity to teach about the history of AIDS and how it has influenced society, then and now.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from his website): Benjamin Alire Sáenz (born 16 August 1954) is an award-winning American poet, novelist and writer of children’s books. He was born at Old Picacho, New Mexico, the fourth of seven children, and was raised on a small farm near Mesilla, New Mexico. He graduated from Las Cruces High School in 1972. That fall, he entered St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado where he received a B.A. degree in Humanities and Philosophy in 1977. He studied Theology at the University of Louvain in Leuven, Belgium from 1977 to 1981. He was a priest for a few years in El Paso, Texas before leaving the order.

In 1985, he returned to school, and studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso where he earned an M.A. degree in Creative Writing. He then spent a year at the University of Iowa as a PhD student in American Literature. A year later, he was awarded a Wallace E. Stegner fellowship. While at Stanford University under the guidance of Denise Levertov, he completed his first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, which won an American Book Award in 1992. He entered the Ph.D. program at Stanford and continued his studies for two more years. Before completing his Ph.D., he moved back to the border and began teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso in the bilingual MFA program.

His first novel, Carry Me Like Water, was a saga that brought together the Victorian novel and the Latin American tradition of magic realism and received much critical attention.

In The Book of What Remains (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), his fifth book of poems, he writes to the core truth of life’s ever-shifting memories. Set along the Mexican border, the contrast between the desert’s austere beauty and the brutality of border politics mirrors humanity’s capacity for both generosity and cruelty.

In 2005, he curated a show of photographs by Julian Cardona.

He lives and works in El Paso, Texas.

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ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Alexandra Someillan is a freelance book reviewer and teacher who lives in Miami, FL. She has written for Frolic Media, where she has raved about her favorite Latinx romances. Currently, she has been accepted in the Las Musas mentorship and is working on her Latinx contemporary novel with Nina Moreno. Usually, you can find Alexandra obsessing over nineties pop culture and eating too many pastelitos.

Mar 7 2022

Book Review: The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky

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Review by Katrina Ortega

DESCRIPTION: New girl Rachel Chavez is eager to make a fresh start at Manchester Prep. But as one of the few scholarship kids, Rachel struggles to fit in, and when she gets caught up in a prank gone awry, she ends up with more enemies than friends.

To her surprise, however, the prank attracts the attention of the Mary Shelley Club, a secret club of students with one objective: come up with the scariest prank to orchestrate real fear. But as the pranks escalate, the competition turns cutthroat and takes on a life of its own.

When the tables are turned and someone targets the club itself, Rachel must track down the real-life monster in their midst . . . even if it means finally confronting the dark secrets from her past.

MY TWO CENTS: Last year was a good one for YA thriller and horror novels, but The Mary Shelley Club really stands out as exceptional in their midst. 

First, we’re presented with a solid plot that is very action driven, urging readers to race through this thriller. Goldy Moldavsky pulls the reader in with a plot line that is unique and riveting, keeping us guessing until the very, very end. The main character, Rachel Chavez, avidly watches horror films as a coping mechanism after suffering a traumatic event while at home alone on Long Island. After the event, she and her mom move to Brooklyn to give her a fresh start. In New York City, as an outsider at her new prestigious Manhattan school, Rachel finds herself without an ally — until the pranks begin. Once she’s falsely accused of pranking the most popular girl in school, Rachel finds a group of potential friends in a very unexpected way. This group, who call themselves the Mary Shelley Club, vie against each other to see who can come up with (and implement) the scariest prank, one which will incite real fear. 

It’s very easy to root for Rachel, even though her decisions might seem interesting, or even strange, given her past trauma. You want her to belong to a group that cares about her (though whether TMSC does that or not is debatable); you want to see her come to terms with her trauma (though, again, whether her horror fixation and TMSC do that is not immediately evident). Moldavsky is so good at writing horror, though, that it’s hard not to fall into the traps that horror movies often set up for their protagonists. The cast of characters emphasizes how hard it is to trust our instincts as readers. The four club members, including Rachel, are all mysterious in their own ways. 

I’m not a big fan of reading about pranks, as they often make me exceedingly uncomfortable. However, Moldovsky weaves them in such an integral way into the plot that they do just what good horror should do — make the reader terribly uneasy while making it impossible to look away. With a cast of characters that we cannot quite trust doing awful things to the people around them, readers will fly through this book wondering with a growing sense of foreboding, worried that Rachel is in mounting danger, unsure if she’s going to make it out without becoming a victim herself. The changes in point of view during the pranks also jars the reader with a sense of the unknown; after becoming comfortable with Rachel’s point of view, the flow is thrown into confusion with the sudden introduction of a new narrator. It hammers home the awareness of something awry, but it’s impossible to pinpoint exactly what. Once the reader is sure that they know who to look to for safety, the twist hits. 

The Mary Shelley Club is a truly thrilling read, full of terrifying moments, untrustworthy characters, and tons of horror movie trivia. It’s perfect for any readers who are looking for some hair-raising pranks and a twist like you’ve never seen before.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Goldy Moldavsky was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Brooklyn, where she still lives. Her novels include the New York Times bestseller, KILL THE BOY BAND, NO GOOD DEED (Scholastic), and THE MARY SHELLEY CLUB (Henry Holt). Her books have appeared on numerous Best-Books lists and have been translated to other languages. Her love of 80s movies, 90s boy bands, and horror flicks hugely influences her work.

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The paperback of THE MARY SHELLEY CLUB releases 8/30/22. Goldy’s newest book, LORD OF THE FLY FEST also releases on 8/30/22. Here’s the amazing cover:

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ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Katrina Ortega (M.L.I.S.) is the manager of the New York Public Library’s College and Career Pathways program. Originally from El Paso, Texas, she has lived in New York City for six years. She is a strong advocate of continuing education (in all of its forms) and is very interested in learning new ways that public libraries can provide higher education to all. She is also very interested in working with non-traditional communities in the library, particularly incarcerated and homeless populations. While pursuing her own higher education, she received two Bachelors of Arts degrees (in English and in History), a Masters of Arts in English, and a Masters of Library and Information Sciences. Katrina loves reading most anything, but particularly loves literary fiction, YA novels, and any type of graphic novel or comic. In her free time, if she’s not reading, Katrina loves to walk around New York, looking for good places to eat

Mar 26 2020

Book Review: We Unleash the Merciless Storm by Tehlor Kay Mejia

 

Review by Cris Rhodes:

DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK: Being a part of the resistance group La Voz is an act of devotion and desperation. On the other side of Medio’s border wall, the oppressed class fights for freedom and liberty, sacrificing what little they have to become defenders of the cause.

Carmen Santos is one of La Voz’s best soldiers. She spent years undercover, but now, with her identity exposed and the island on the brink of a civil war, Carmen returns to the only real home she’s ever known: La Voz’s headquarters.

There she must reckon with her beloved leader, who is under the influence of an aggressive new recruit, and with the devastating news that her true love might be the target of an assassination plot. Will Carmen break with her community and save the girl who stole her heart—or fully embrace the ruthless rebel she was always meant to be?

MY TWO CENTS: In this action-packed follow-up to her debut novel We Set the Dark on Fire, Tehlor Kay Mejia continues her revolutionary queer romance with a bang. Picking up moments after We Set the Dark on Fire ends, We Unleash the Merciless Storm shifts vantage points from Dani, the Primera wife whose secret identity as an undocumented immigrant from beyond Medio’s rigid borders complicates her life and causes her to tenatively join the resistance, to Carmen, who seemed to embody the social mores of Medio’s stratified and exclusive world, but is actually an undercover operative for the revolutionary group La Voz.

Readers will need to be familiar with We Set the Dark on Fire to fully grasp the extent of We Unleash the Merciless Storm. I found myself returning to the previous book to remember the intricacies of Medio’s social codes and to remind myself of character names and traits. This is not a stand alone book, and, I would wager, it’s a sequel best enjoyed immediately following reading (or rereading) the first novel.

The switch to Carmen as the main character proves an interesting counterpoint to Dani’s narrative in the first novel. Whereas Dani is largely unaware of the mounting resistance to Medio’s restrictive government, Carmen is deeply involved in the resistance. Carmen seems superficial and catty in the first novel, but We Unleash the Merciless Storm unravels that narrative, posing Carmen as an astute and powerful member of La Voz. But, her relationship with Dani was an unforeseen complication to her mission to unravel Medio from the inside.

It would be a typical narrative maneuver to have Carmen torn between her love for Dani and her loyalty to La Voz, but Mejia resists that stale plot. Rather, Carmen sees her loyalties to both Dani and La Voz as intertwined. Mejia’s explorations of Carmen’s motives seem authentic and they reflect the complex and competing emotions of resistance and love. Those who are looking for nonstop action may be frustrated with Carmen’s frequent reflections on her relationship with Dani, but these thoughts don’t seem out of place for someone like Carmen who was undercover for the majority of her formative years. Not only is Carmen contending with the loss of her love, but she’s also relearning how to be a part of La Voz after years away. Carmen’s wondering also reveals important questions about revolution. Is a political uprising necessarily violent? Can change be made without pain? As Carmen grapples with these questions, her loyalties to La Voz are questioned and she must prove herself while also remaining true to her values.

As with my feelings toward We Set the Dark on Fire, I found We Unleash the Merciless Storm to be the kind of novel that I longed for as a teenager (and, frankly, enjoyed immensely as an adult). The romance is there, of course, but it’s not the entire focus–and it shouldn’t be! I love a good romance, especially a queer romance, but the complexities of Medio’s government and La Voz’s revolutionary ideals give contemporary teens an important counterpoint to our own global politics.

 

Photo & Styling: Tia Reagan Photo Editing: Adrian King

Photo & Styling: Tia Reagan Photo

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from her website): Tehlor Kay Mejia is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult fantasy novel We Set the Dark on Fire and its sequel, We Unleash the Merciless Storm, and the forthcoming Miss Meteor (co-written with National Book Award nominee Anna-Marie McLemore). Her middle grade debut, Paola Santiago and the River of Tears, releases from Rick Riordan Presents in 2020.

Her debut novel received six starred reviews, and was chosen as an Indie’s Next Pick and a Junior Library Guild selection, as well as being an Indiebound bestseller in the Pacific Northwest region. It has been featured in Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, and O by Oprah Magazine’s best books of 2019 lists.

Tehlor lives in Oregon with her daughter, a dog that matches her hair, and several rescued houseplants. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @tehlorkay.

 

 

 

Cris Rhodes is an assistant professor of English at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. She teaches courses of writing, culturally diverse literature, and ethnic literatures. In addition to teaching, Cris’s scholarship focuses on Latinx youth and their literature or related media. She also has a particular scholarly interest in activism and the ways that young Latinxs advocate for themselves and their communities.

Feb 27 2020

Book Review: The Cholo Tree by Daniel Chacón

 

Review by Elena Foulis

DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK: “Do you know what a stereotype you are?” Jessica asks her son. “You’re the existential Chicano.” Fourteen-year-old Victor has just been released from the hospital; his chest is wrapped in bandages and his arm is in a sling. He has barely survived being shot, and his mother accuses him of being a cholo, something he denies.

She’s not the only adult who thinks he’s a gangbanger. His sociology teacher once sent him to a teach-in on gang violence. Victor’s philosophy is that everyone is racist. “They see a brown kid, they see a banger.” Even other kids think he’s in a gang, maybe because of the clothes he wears. The truth is, he loves death (metal, that is), reading books, drawing, the cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, and the Showtime series Weeds. He likes school and cooking. He knows what a double negative is!

But he can’t convince his mom that he’s not in a gang. And even with a genius girlfriend and an art teacher who mentors and encourages him to apply to art schools, Victor can’t seem to overcome society’s expectations for him.

MY TWO CENTS: Daniel Chacón’s novel, The Cholo Tree, is a story that confronts stereotypes within one’s own community and family. Told from the perspective of a young Chicano protagonist, this story exposes not only obstacles a young teen in a impoverished neighborhood might face, but also what contributes to perpetuating a cycle of violence, gang-culture, and drugs when young, Latino men repeatedly hear assumptions about who they might be or what they are destined to become. The protagonist, Victor, navigates hearing these messages from people like his own mother or teachers who assume he is a gangbanger, although he is not. Chacón tells the story of a young Chicano teen who is navigating school, a single parent household, and his gift as an artist.

After his near-death experience, Victor navigates high school life, confronting stereotypes on a daily basis. One thing that catches the reader’s attention is the school administrators’ and teachers’ insistence that Victor must belong in a gang because he is Chicano, plus the clothes he wears and his attitude. However, this does not stop at school. Often, his own mother, who he calls Jessica, accuses him of being a gangbanger, a cholo. While Victor is no angel, the reader can come to understand the impact of placing labels on Latino youth, and how, in particular, young artists risk being boxed into stereotypes that see them as dangerous or a menace to society.

Victor is often a spectator, an observer of his environment and surroundings, which he realizes contributes to many of the negative labels society puts on young brown men like him. Indeed, through his interactions with a group of young men, who are involved in drug using and selling, he tries to rescue two sisters getting caught in this lifestyle. He uses his drawings to engage with them and possibly persuade them to see themselves as young women who deserve better lives, and he remembers what his friend Freddy once said to him when Victor became interested in Iliana, a genius girl he had met at a party and Victor’s love interest,  “Every Chicanita is my sister.”

One of the things that saves Victor is his relationship with an art teacher, Mr. García, who is possibly the only person who sees his gift as an artist and helps him see himself as something different than what society expects of him. Mr. García not only lets Victor use his own studio, he encourages Victor to apply to prestigious art schools, which he has not considered as a possibility for himself. Chacón uses imagery and fantasy and the complexity of family dynamics to make this a story worth reading.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Daniel Chacón is the author of Hotel Juárez: Stories, Rooms and Loops (Arte Público Press, 2013); Unending Rooms (Black Lawrence Press, 2008), winner of the Hudson Prize; and the shadows took him (Washington Square Press, 2005) and Chicano Chicanery (Arte Público Press, 2000). A professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, he is co-editor of The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: The Selected Works of José Antonio Burciaga (University of Arizona Press, 2008).

 

 

 

headshot2016ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Elena Foulis has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Arkansas. Her research and teaching interests include U.S. Latina/o literature, and Digital Oral History. Dr. Foulis is currently working on a digital oral history project about Latin@s in Ohio, which is being archived at the Center for Folklore Studies’ internet collection. Some of these narratives can be found in her iBook titled, Latin@ Stories Across Ohio.

Jan 30 2020

Book Review: Dark and Deepest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore

 

Review by Cris Rhodes

DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK: Summer, 1518. A strange sickness sweeps through Strasbourg, France.  Women dance in the streets, some until they fall down dead. As rumors of witchcraft spread, suspicion turns toward Lavinia Blau and her family, and Lavinia may have to do the unimaginable to save herself and everyone she loves. 

Five centuries late:  A pair of red shoes seals to Rosella Oliva’s feet, making her dance uncontrollably. They draw her toward a boy who knows the dancing fever’s history better than anyone: Emil, whose family was blamed for the fever five hundred years ago. But there’s more to what happened in 1518 than even Emil knows, and discovering the truth may decide whether Rosella survives the red shoes.

MY TWO CENTS: As with any Anna-Marie McLemore book, Dark and Deepest Red is like watching a particularly colorful sunrise breach over a murky, ominous landscape. It’s illuminating, warming, but also bears with it a hint of darkness that makes the sunlight that much sweeter. Their distinctive prose, full of lush and elegant language, is immediately recognizable as is their attention to telling the stories of people history would try to forget. Dark and Deepest Red takes that task to a new level, pairing the historical narrative of Lala and Alifair in Strasbourg in 1518 with that of Rosella and Emil in a contemporary world. Their stories parallel, sharing common themes and motifs.

The Strasbourg narrative retells the dancing plague, in which roughly 400 people were struck by a shared affliction: dancing incessantly, sometimes to death. McLemore frames this historical moment as not just a time to examine socio-religious and early medicinal practices, but as a backdrop for xenophobic concerns about the Romani peoples. Lala, also called Lavinia to avoid being coded as Romani, flees her homeland to avoid persecution, but anti-Romani laws follow her. With the onset of the dancing plague also comes speculation that Lala or her aunt are the culprits. Her assumed involvement is further compounded by her relationship with the transgender Alifair. Lala is the focus character for the chapters recounting Strasbourg in 1518, making her a key character alongside Rosella and Emil.

Meanwhile, Rosella and Emil alternate chapters. Rosella’s told in the first person and Emil’s in the third. That we only get into Rosella’s mind is important, as she is afflicted with a similar plague: when she resews a pair of shoes originally made by her treasured grandparents and tries them on, she quickly learns that she cannot remove the shoes, and, to make matters worse, the shoes force Rosella to dance and, indeed, act independently of her body, often putting her in danger. The shoes also lead Rosella into Emil’s arms. Emil, who has rejected his own Romani heritage, must tap into his roots to help save Rosella.

The alternating chapters are a dance in and of themselves, leaping from Rosella to Strasbourg to Emil back to Strasbourg and resuming the sequence. This alternation, however, does possibly overemphasize the Strasbourg chapters, potentially at the risk of subordinating Rosella and Emil’s stories. When reading, I did find myself more invested in Lala and Alifair, rather than Rosella and Emil. (And, to be fair, this may just be a personal preference, but I do wonder if this is tied to the narrative structure, or my own personal interest in dance and the dancing plague…) While each story is deeply intertwined and McLemore does an artful job of drawing them together, the dual narratives may appear too divergent, at least initially. To be clear, they do come together. And they do so in the intricate, special, and supernatural ways typical of McLemore’s work.

Importantly, as well, for an audience invested in Latinx children’s literature, this text does not centralize Latinidad or problematize it. It’s incidental but nevertheless present. I find this so significant. Rosella’s ethnicity and racialized body are certainly something that inform the plot, but she is not the one who largely experiences xenophobia, Lala does. Regardless, Latinx readers will find mirrors in Lala’s experiences. That McLemore poses this shift in representation offers a wider appeal to this text. Rather than being seen as a “Latinx text,” or a “Romani text,” or a “queer text,” it’s all three. At these intersections we find a lovely, challenging, and poignant read.

TEACHING TIPS: The historical narrative of this text would lend it well to a paired text with a lesson on history. It may also be an interesting discussion tool to aid in explorations of the treatment of queer peoples in history. 

It would also pair well with discussions of Andersen’s “The Red Shoes,” as McLemore notes thus tale as a major influence on their writing of the novel. Students may read both and write about the similar themes. Students may also consider other Andersenesque stories and write their own retelling wise diverse casts. 

 

Anna-Marie McLemoreABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) is the queer, Latinx, non-binary author of THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature; WILD BEAUTY, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist Best Book of 2017; BLANCA & ROJA, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; DARK AND DEEPEST RED, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List title; and THE MIRROR SEASON, forthcoming in 2021. 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:  Cris Rhodes is an assistant professor of English at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. She teaches courses of writing, culturally diverse literature, and ethnic literatures. In addition to teaching, Cris’s scholarship focuses on Latinx youth and their literature or related media. She also has a particular scholarly interest in activism and the ways that young Latinxs advocate for themselves and their communities.