> SMALL PRINT DEIRDRE BAKER
CLOUD AND WALLFISH by Anne Nesbet Candlewick, 390 pages, $23.00, ages 10-14
Nesbet, scholar of Slavic literature, here turns to a story set in East Berlin, 1989, just before the opening of the Wall. Eleven-year-old Noah is amazed when one day, his parents pick him up from school and tell him his name isn’t Noah; he isn’t 11; and they’ll be living in East Berlin for six months, where he must remember many rules, including: “They will always be listening and watching. Don’t forget that!”
Living under constant surveillance is creepy, but Noah is even more disoriented by what he wonders about his parents’ real purpose in East Germany. Then there is his only friend, Claudia, whose parents died in a car crash. Or is that really what happened to them? Nesbet’s narrative voice, jaunty and personable, slides fluently from downto-earth equanimity (Noah’s parents’ approach) to Noah’s increasing anguish and mystification at the fate of Claudia’s parents. Informative indeed for a young reader, this is even more memorably a moving, suspenseful story of courage and friendship. Highly recommended.
THE BEST MAN by Richard Peck Dial, 232 pages, $22.99, ages 10-13
Sixth-grader Archer Magill gives us a sort of time-lapse narrative, a fast, deadpan account of his first six years of school — from when he was a ring bearer at age 6, to when, after sixth grade, he is best man at his uncle’s wedding to Archer’s favourite teacher. “Call it ‘A Tale of Two Weddings’,” he says, then tracks his time from year to year — his best friend Lynette; his teachers; the vicissitudes of growth, the events that led to the wedding. Like many of Peck’s novels, this is quick, laconic and wryly funny — and has much more substance in it than might first meet the eye, from keen, critical insights on standardized testing (“What did they test you on?” “Dad, if I knew, I’d tell you.”) to the strong, tender love Archer holds for the men he wants to emulate: his grandfather the architect; his father, chef and vintage car restorer extraordinaire; his dashing Uncle Paul — and now Uncle Paul’s husband, Mr. McLeod.
EVERY HIDDEN THING by Kenneth Oppel HarperCollins, 361 pages, $19.99, ages 13 and up
In a romantic page-turner, Oppel delves into the passions and skulduggerous tactics of two competing paleontologists in America’s Badlands in the late 19th century — and those of their teenaged children, Sam and Rachel, star-crossed scientists-to-be whose thirst for discovery surpasses even that of their fathers. When the two teens end up on their fathers’ fossil-hunting expeditions in the same area of the Badlands, they pursue a romance first begun back home, daring their fathers’ enmity. But as each group is frustrated in its search for the “king dinosaur,” violence erupts between them, and also against the local Sioux, propelling Rachel and Sam to strike out as partners — elopement, digging implements and all. Oppel’s a past-master of the tricks of plot and action; here the historical matter of nineteenth century paleontology, of the violence enacted against the Sioux by white encroachment, and of a clever girl’s yearning for education, give heft to an entertaining, thoughtful — and sometimes downright funny — yarn. WATCHING TRAFFIC by Jane Ozkowski Groundwood, 190 pages, $16.95, ages 14 and up It’s almost September, and now they’ve graduated, Emily’s friends are departing — to travel the world, to start university elsewhere. But Emily can’t get out of the little Ontario town where she’s been stuck for so long, known mostly as the girl whose mother killed herself. Then she meets Tyler, a newcomer, and figures she can have a relationship with someone who doesn’t see her through her traumatic past.
But deceit makes for awkward romance . . . Ozkowski conjures the confusion and passivity that can await the uncertain graduate, as well as the liberation that arises with the chance to start over, to speak one’s own history. But it’s the eccentricities, dark humour and sharp observation that give this poetic depth and zing — at times sensual and passionate; at times wacky and amazing. Emily’s hoarder grandma with her free-floating notions of fun is particularly startling: a box of gold-filled teeth, memories of playing dog-with-rabies — such details are too strange not to be memorable, evidence of the cluttered psychic space Ozkowski explores.