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conulyThe book is pretty much an allegory for growing up, which would be fine except that the author blows it halfway through. (Also, I'm not sure the allegory works, but that's separate.)
The premise is that there is a magical island - snakes and bees and feral kittens are friendly, there's plenty of food, the weather's nice, the sunrise makes beautiful pictures, there's a cliff where if you fall off you just float down - with nine children on it, in age order, alternating girls and boys. Every year (more or less - nobody thinks to count days so they just assume it's a year) a boat comes with a new toddler and the eldest child leaves. The new eldest takes that year to teach the new toddler how to live on the island (reading, swimming, cooking a meal) and then leaves when the next boat arrives, and the children in the middle mostly raise themselves. They have a dwindling collection of aging books, and all the shoes they arrived in are heaped in a pile - forty pairs, nearly all toddler-sized but a few larger ones. Nobody knows why they have to leave, it's just a rule, like the rule about not taking the last of something. Nobody knows where they go after they leave or where they came from. Nobody knows who the girl is who annotated all their books.
Our main character doesn't want to leave at the end of the year, and she spends the whole year dithering about it and trying to skirt the responsibility of teaching the new youngest child, and then at the end of the year she doesn't leave. And things go disastrously wrong - the sunrises get muddy, the fish go away, she gets her period and it's super traumatic because she doesn't know this is expected behavior for her body (truth in fiction, but given the typical age range of the readers of this book I'm giving that narrative decision some serious side-eye), the new child gets sick when a snake bites him, it starts to snow - until she finally gives in and gets on the boat.
If this was it, it'd be fine. I mean, the same oblivious reviewers would miss the point and complain that "nothing really happens" and "questions go unanswered" but since this isn't a plot-based book where questions exist to be answered that'd be all right. But that isn't it. No, instead young "Ess" keeps asking about her Mama that she won't see again and midway through the book our protagonist discovers a letter from long-ago-Abigail, written to her mother and complaining that "before we came I thought it'd be like summer camp but I miss you take me home" and mentioning that this is the last piece of paper and they've run out of pens. Which means we can't just comfortably place this in a vaguely defined dreamlike setting, we are forced to confront the reality that people did this. At some point, 40 kids ago, people made a decision to create this island and they've kept sending kids there but evidently never restocked the paper and the pens and the books and the one edible plant that somebody accidentally made extinct. Why would they do this? Who are these people? These and other questions will never be answered, but you're going to be forced to think about them instead of about the bittersweet process of growing up. (This also raises two very uncomfortable possibilities for the crisis in the book. Either the creators of the island are deliberately putting these children in real risk in order to force the main character to leave, or the entire system is breaking down and nobody is going to fix it. Given that nobody has replaced the books that fell apart, this is very possible.)
I think I like my allegories either a lot less allegorical or a lot more. This muddle doesn't work for me.
But let's address the allegory. Does it work? Eh... sorta. Leaving childhood behind can be scary. But you know what? I didn't both begin and end my childhood with an intensely traumatic experience where I was forced to leave behind everyone and everything I knew to go to a totally unknown place. Entering adulthood is scary and weird and a little smelly, but I did have some idea of what was coming. (I certainly knew about periods, and I'm going to go on record here as saying that if you don't tell your child by ten or so at the latest then you are being neglectful or even abusive.) And if real children linger in childhood longer than their peers, the sky doesn't literally fall. The moral message seems to be "you should definitely follow all the unquestioned rules of your society, even if you don't understand their purpose, because questioning these things can and will bring disaster. Have fun growing up, kids!"
(Also, Jinny tries to teach Ess how to swim the gentle way, and when that fails because the girl is scared another child just tosses her into the water and it works. If this is metaphorical, fine, but in real life this method is as likely to create a lifelong fear of water as to create a swimmer. Swim instructors spend a lot of time rehabilitating kids whose parents thought this was the way to teach their children. Not a fan.)
Of course, readers all get different things out of books, and not everybody is going to see this story the same way. But who is that reader going to be? As noted, it's not the sort of book where things happen and questions are answered. I'm not entirely sure most middle grade readers are going to fall in love with that sort of non-plot-based story. This is the sort of book that seems to me to be very popular among a certain sort of adult reader, but that is going to be extremely niche among the target audience. (Unfortunately, since that sort of adult reader no doubt includes many teachers, most kids exposed to this book are going to be forced to analyze it to death. That's not going to help.)
The premise is that there is a magical island - snakes and bees and feral kittens are friendly, there's plenty of food, the weather's nice, the sunrise makes beautiful pictures, there's a cliff where if you fall off you just float down - with nine children on it, in age order, alternating girls and boys. Every year (more or less - nobody thinks to count days so they just assume it's a year) a boat comes with a new toddler and the eldest child leaves. The new eldest takes that year to teach the new toddler how to live on the island (reading, swimming, cooking a meal) and then leaves when the next boat arrives, and the children in the middle mostly raise themselves. They have a dwindling collection of aging books, and all the shoes they arrived in are heaped in a pile - forty pairs, nearly all toddler-sized but a few larger ones. Nobody knows why they have to leave, it's just a rule, like the rule about not taking the last of something. Nobody knows where they go after they leave or where they came from. Nobody knows who the girl is who annotated all their books.
Our main character doesn't want to leave at the end of the year, and she spends the whole year dithering about it and trying to skirt the responsibility of teaching the new youngest child, and then at the end of the year she doesn't leave. And things go disastrously wrong - the sunrises get muddy, the fish go away, she gets her period and it's super traumatic because she doesn't know this is expected behavior for her body (truth in fiction, but given the typical age range of the readers of this book I'm giving that narrative decision some serious side-eye), the new child gets sick when a snake bites him, it starts to snow - until she finally gives in and gets on the boat.
If this was it, it'd be fine. I mean, the same oblivious reviewers would miss the point and complain that "nothing really happens" and "questions go unanswered" but since this isn't a plot-based book where questions exist to be answered that'd be all right. But that isn't it. No, instead young "Ess" keeps asking about her Mama that she won't see again and midway through the book our protagonist discovers a letter from long-ago-Abigail, written to her mother and complaining that "before we came I thought it'd be like summer camp but I miss you take me home" and mentioning that this is the last piece of paper and they've run out of pens. Which means we can't just comfortably place this in a vaguely defined dreamlike setting, we are forced to confront the reality that people did this. At some point, 40 kids ago, people made a decision to create this island and they've kept sending kids there but evidently never restocked the paper and the pens and the books and the one edible plant that somebody accidentally made extinct. Why would they do this? Who are these people? These and other questions will never be answered, but you're going to be forced to think about them instead of about the bittersweet process of growing up. (This also raises two very uncomfortable possibilities for the crisis in the book. Either the creators of the island are deliberately putting these children in real risk in order to force the main character to leave, or the entire system is breaking down and nobody is going to fix it. Given that nobody has replaced the books that fell apart, this is very possible.)
I think I like my allegories either a lot less allegorical or a lot more. This muddle doesn't work for me.
But let's address the allegory. Does it work? Eh... sorta. Leaving childhood behind can be scary. But you know what? I didn't both begin and end my childhood with an intensely traumatic experience where I was forced to leave behind everyone and everything I knew to go to a totally unknown place. Entering adulthood is scary and weird and a little smelly, but I did have some idea of what was coming. (I certainly knew about periods, and I'm going to go on record here as saying that if you don't tell your child by ten or so at the latest then you are being neglectful or even abusive.) And if real children linger in childhood longer than their peers, the sky doesn't literally fall. The moral message seems to be "you should definitely follow all the unquestioned rules of your society, even if you don't understand their purpose, because questioning these things can and will bring disaster. Have fun growing up, kids!"
(Also, Jinny tries to teach Ess how to swim the gentle way, and when that fails because the girl is scared another child just tosses her into the water and it works. If this is metaphorical, fine, but in real life this method is as likely to create a lifelong fear of water as to create a swimmer. Swim instructors spend a lot of time rehabilitating kids whose parents thought this was the way to teach their children. Not a fan.)
Of course, readers all get different things out of books, and not everybody is going to see this story the same way. But who is that reader going to be? As noted, it's not the sort of book where things happen and questions are answered. I'm not entirely sure most middle grade readers are going to fall in love with that sort of non-plot-based story. This is the sort of book that seems to me to be very popular among a certain sort of adult reader, but that is going to be extremely niche among the target audience. (Unfortunately, since that sort of adult reader no doubt includes many teachers, most kids exposed to this book are going to be forced to analyze it to death. That's not going to help.)
no subject
Date: 2018-07-11 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-11 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-11 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-11 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-12 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-12 02:50 am (UTC)I'd be in big trouble if I'd never heard of periods by the time I was 10 because I started puberty when I was only 9. I'm a big freak.
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Date: 2018-07-12 04:49 am (UTC)If you don't spend much time reading new YA and MG fiction then I wouldn't expect you to be up to date.
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Date: 2018-07-12 10:29 am (UTC)Metaphors are tricky. It sounds like maybe she got halfway through a straight-up allegory and someone convinced her to come up with an "explanation" for why the island exists and how people got there, which is always a mistake. Kids don't need a Why for their fantasy. That's a shame. Sounds like it was going smoothly otherwise.
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Date: 2018-07-12 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-12 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-12 06:11 pm (UTC)