Review: I Was Here (Assignment 1, 12 - 18 years)

Forman, Gayle. (2015). I Was Here. Great Britain, London: Simon & Schuster. 

"I regret to inform you that I have had to take my own life." That is the first line of Meg Garcia's suicide note, sent to her friends and family on a time-delayed email. By the time they realize what she's done, it's too late to help her.

Cody has been Meg's best friend since childhood, and is haunted by guilt in the weeks following her death. How could she have not seen this coming?

On the behest of Meg's parents, Cody drives to the University of Washington to pick up Meg's belongings. Once there she begins to investigate the mystery of her friend's death, suspecting that someone else was involved in Meg's decision to end her life.

Like The Nest, the story is told in first-person narration, but is also written in present tense, giving events an immediacy that suits the YA target audience. The author confronts the issue of suicide head-on, but also references drug use, sex and parental abuse.

Forman doesn’t flinch from the difficulties Cody faces in coming to grips with her friend's suicide, and never speaks down to her audience. Using the first-person narrative means Cody's thoughts and feelings are conveyed directly to the reader, and Foreman provides a sense of hope and closure to her narrative without a trite happy ending.

Review: The Nest (Assignment 1, 7 - 12 years)

Oppel, Kenneth. (2015). The Nest. New York, USA: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division.

It's unusual to describe a book aimed at middle school children as a "psychological thriller", but that's exactly what The Nest is.

First-person narration is provided by Steve; a boy old enough to not want a babysitter, but young enough to still be afraid of the dark, and whose family is currently struggling with the congenital illness of Steve's baby brother.

While his parents remain preoccupied with the newborn, Steve begins to have strange dreams in which angels promise him they can fix his brother and restore happiness to his family. All Steve needs to do is say "yes". But yes may not mean what Steve thinks it means.

Because the story is told from Steve's point-of-view, the reader is privy only to his limited understanding of the world around him. He can record his experiences but not their wider context, such as his parents' visits to the hospital, their whispered conversations, and the fraught atmosphere of the house.

There's also evidence that Steve suffers from anxiety and OCD, but Oppel never explicitly spells it out. In keeping certain details opaque, he can explore heavy subjects such as death, duplicity and human imperfection by "concealing" them within a story that focuses on more fantastical elements.

Jon Klassen's evocative graphite illustrations are also worth mentioning – like Oppel's prose, they're crafted as though through the eyes of a child; from low angles that make everything seem large and vaguely threatening.

Review: Waiting (Assignment 1, 0 - 6 years)

Henkes, Kevin. (2015). Waiting. New York, USA: HarperCollins Children's Books.

There are a lot of children's stories about toys, most famously A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh and Pixar's Toy Story trilogy. Kevin Henkes's Waiting follows in their footsteps, a picture book that depicts the daily existence of five toys upon a windowsill.

There is a pig, an owl, a dog, a bear and a rabbit, each one waiting for something in particular. But what? For the owl it is the moon, for the dog it's the snow, and so on.

Henkes portrays a tiny world that contains only the toys and the windowsill they live on. The contrast between the smallness of the sill and the vastness of the sky beyond the glass is a lovely representation of a child's limited worldview – and in fact there are a few hints of an unseen child nearby. Sometimes a toy is taken away, only to be returned later, and sometimes other bits-and-pieces (like shells or stones) appear on the sill.

The prose is very simple, as are Henkes's illustrations; all rounded edges and soft colours. Some pages have no text at all but are full-page spreads of the toys watching thunder or fireworks from their vantage point.

Altogether the book manages to be rich and thought-provoking despite its unlikely subject matter: waiting.