FernFolio » teenaged girls

Lunches with Lenin by Deborah Ellis

fernfolio — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:46:28 +0000

Matthew buys pot from Hammer, the high school football captain and local source for marijuana, though he knows he’s being overcharged and risks discovery by one of the sniffer dogs the school administration regularly bring in. Tahmina is proud of her expertise in harvesting opium from her father’s poppies, until disaster strikes and the local police move in and destroy the crop, leaving her father with few options to repay his debt to the local money lender. Fifteen-year old Brandon reacts with rage when he learns that all of his learning problems, and difficulties controlling his behaviour are consequences of his mother’s drinking when she was pregnant with him. Abandoned in Red Square, when he was a child of five, by his mother who said she was going to visit Lenin’s tomb, Valerin grows up in state institutions until, at sixteen, he is released to make his own way in the world, and is offered a chance at the Gates of Heaven, through an injection of heroin, by his only friend.
Deborah Ellis’ Lunch with Lenin is a collection of short stories that examine the human cost of illegal drugs and substance abuse through the eyes of teenagers in Russia, Afghanistan, Canada, the US, the Philippines, Mongolia, and Bolivia. Searing and tender and brutally honest, Ellis’ stories are nothing short of wonderful. A must-read for Intermediate students.
FernFolio Editor

The Shepherd’s Granddaughter by Anne Laurel Carter

fernfolio — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:18:18 +0000

From the time she was a little child, Amani Raheem knew she wanted to accompany her grandfather, Seedo, each day as he herded his flock of sheep up into the mountain meadows to graze. When she reaches the age of six, Seedo starts to teach her how a good shepherd tends to his, or her, sheep, and, as head of the family, decides that, rather than attending school in the village with her cousins, she will spend her days on Seedo’s Mountain, and study in the evenings at home.
Amani rapidly shows her grandfather, and the rest of her extended family, that she is a skilled and dedicated shepherd, and, when Seedo grows to frail to manage the family’s flock his crook is passed to her. The young girl communicates online with veterinarians, and works to improve her breeding stock, eager to use modern science and technology in a job that her family has pursued on Seedo’s Mountain for a thousand years.
However, politics and religion, and the Israeli occupation, which has long created problems in nearby Palestinian towns and villages, begin to create hardship and growing frustration for Amani’s family. From her vantage point high up the mountain above her family’s village, Amani can see the encroaching roads and settlements of Israeli settlers approach ever nearer. Then one day, while she is tending her flock, she sees markers indicating that a new settlement will be built right next to her family’s olive orchards. As the settlers’ road is pushed through their grape vines, and fences are put up on what has traditionally been her family’s land, Amani finds it increasingly difficult to follow her late grandfather’s advice and pray without anger in her heart.
A chance meeting up on the mountain with Jonathan, an American Jew whose father is leading the building of the new settlement, shows Amani that not all Jews believe that God has given them the right to seize land from Palestinian inhabitants. With the support of volunteers from Israeli and international peace movements, Amani and her family make a desperate bid to save their farm and preserve a centuries-old way of life.
Author Anne Laurel Carter has written a wonderful story in The Shepherd’s Granddaughter, one of courage and love, that serves to underscore the importance of tradition and family, as well as of acceptance and understanding of others. Well worth the read!
FernFolio Editor

Not Suitable for Family Viewing by Vicki Grant

fernfolio — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:15:18 +0000

It’s hard to be the overweight and socially awkward daughter of a media superstar. Living in the shadow of her mother, Mimi, whose talk show, You, You and Mimi, is watched by hundreds of millions of people all over the world, seventeen-year old Robin Schwartz struggles with apathy and depression. Burned by classmates who became friendly with her only to meet Mimi and her celebrity friends, forgotten by her fun but irresponsible rock musician father, and ignored by her perpetually busy mother, Robin has everything that money can buy and nothing that she needs. She knows that the only person who loves her is Anita, her mother’s housekeeper, and the only person who listens to her is her senile grandfather. In recent years, the only contact Robin has had with her mother is by watching her on television.
When she finds a high school ring and photograph hidden inside a chair in her mother’s bedroom, Robin is perplexed. She recognises her mother’s face in the photograph, but cannot imagine when and why Mimi might have visited Port Minton, Nova Scotia, or why someone on their high school’s hockey team would have given Mimi his championship ring. Urged by Anita to get off the sofa and do something other than watch reruns of her mother’s show, and goaded by Selena, Anita’s teenaged daughter, Robin decides to go to Port Minton and find some answers.
When the bus driver drops her off at the side of the road in Port Minton, Robin discovers a fishing village that is largely abandoned, following the collapse of the fishery. A guy in a battered old van picks her up and offers to drive her to nearby Shelton, where there is a hostel, and Robin is strapped into her seat before she starts to question the wisdom of climbing into the vehicle of a tall, well-built stranger. She embarrasses herself by screaming and giving him a black eye, when he reaches across to let her out at the hostel, but Levi Nauss will help Robin by telling her about Port Minton, and introducing her to many of its former inhabitants. Too bad she can’t find the courage to tell him who she really is, or why she’s come to Nova Scotia with questions, especially when it becomes clear that someone is trying to kill her.
Written by Vicki Grant, author of Quid Pro Quo, The Puppet Wrangler, and Pigboy, Not Suitable for Family Viewing tells the story of one teenaged girl’s journey in search of some insight into her emotionally absent mother, and about the friends, the self-acceptance and the mother she finds along the way. A terrific book for readers from grade 7 up!
FernFolio Editor

Greener Grass by Caroline Pignat

fernfolio — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:56:04 +0000

During Ireland’s Great Famine, in the 1840’s, the potato crops were struck with blight and turned to rotten mush in the fields. For poor tenant farmers, who for generations had planted potatoes as their only crop, the blight spelled disaster. Without food to fed their families, or a crop to sell for money to buy goods and pay their rent, Irish men left to look for jobs in England, but soon there was no jobs to be had, and people starved.
With her da off in England looking for work, Kit Byrne, fourteen, works long hours as a maid in the house of Lord Fraser, the English landowner, and helps her mother with little Annie, while her brother, Jack, helps old Lizzie, the village wise woman and healer, for an egg a day. Though times are difficult, her mam’s devote belief that God will provide and her abiding hope in the future, help Kit and her brother and sister in the face of growing adversity. Kit delights in her friendship with Millie, and enjoys stolen moments with Tom Lynch, son of the Frasers’ middleman.
But this winter, things turn harder, faster, than the winter before. Kit is fired along with many of the other household servants by Lynch as a cost cutting measure. Though she finds work helping Lizzie alongside Jack, she watches in growing alarm as no letter arrives from her father, and her mam and siblings get thinner.
In the year that follows, Kit watches as, unable to pay their rent, friends and neighbours are evicted from their houses by Lynch, others say good-bye before boarding ships to Canada, Australia and America, and other, too many others, die of starvation, overwork, fever, or grief.
Forced by bitter circumstance to become the head of her own family, Kit discovers in herself the determination to do anything it takes to ensure her loved ones’ safety and survival, even if it means imprisonment or death.
Written by Caroline Pignat, author of the wonderful Egghead, Greener Grass is a gripping account of one girl’s struggle to survive the Irish Potato Famines. Pignat’s story is rich in historic detail, yet simply and movingly told. Terrific!
FernFolio Editor

Breakout by Paul Fleischman

fernfolio — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:58:25 +0000

Early one July morning, a seventeen-year old girl named Del Thigpin sneaks out of the home of her foster parents, and down the street to where she has parked her 1983 Datsun, purchased secretly with the money she’s earned working at a video store. After staging her own death from drowning at a nearby beach, she begins her journey into a new life as Elena Franco.
With a six-month supply of food, camping gear, and 134 dollars, Del plans to drive to Arizona, camp near a small town, and get a job to support herself. Though frightened, at times, by her complete lack of family or friends, and uncertain about the future, Del is determined to leave behind the endless foster homes and social workers, and the cynical, mouthy and defensive young woman she has become to survive the circumstances of her life. Adapting regularly to new foster parents and siblings, and new schools, has taught Del to keep her thoughts to herself, lie with creativity, and become whoever she needs to be in order to get by. It has also made her a reader, and a lover of old movies, especially French and Italian films, and she has cobbled together a convincing set of stories about her part Italian family from her reading and viewing. Del is also an observer of others, and has learned to mimic the behaviours of those around her as a way of entering into, in effect, borrowing, their lives.
On that July day, Del plans to get as far from Los Angeles as she can before her foster mother reports her missing, but a serious collision on the Santa Monica freeway stops traffic for hours, and she, and all of her fellow travellers, find themselves stranded in their vehicles.
Breakout is the story of that traffic jam, and what happens to Del and the others stuck on the freeway that day. It is also the script for Elena Franco’s one-woman show about a day-long traffic jam on the San Diego freeway, that opens in Denver eight years after Del stages her escape from L.A. Written by Paul Fleischman, it explores people’s obsession with running away from themselves and what happens when, for one day, they are forced to stop and confront that face in the rear-view mirror. Fleischman’s insights into the human psyche, as represented first and foremost by Del and her alter ego Elena, are both tender and searing.
FernFolio Editor

Looks by Madeleine George

fernfolio — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:25:36 +0000

Grade 10 student Meghan Ball is perfecting the art of invisibility. Her extreme obesity makes her both the target of vicious verbal attacks by J-Bar, Valley Regional High’s star athlete, and renders her a non-person in the eyes of staff and fellow students. Abandoned in Grade 7 by her only friend, Meghan strives to pass through her days at school without drawing attention, without being called upon in class, without having to endure the humiliation of co-ed gym classes. She spends as much time as she can get away with in an overlooked music room whose locked door she has learned to finesse, or lying prone on a cot in the nurse’s office, with another one of her “migraines.”
Then, one day when she is lying on that cot, her daydreams are interrupted by the arrival of a second student, Aimee, who claims to be having an allergic reaction to something she’s eaten. Accustomed to making them up herself, Meghan recognises an excuse when she hears one. Her curiosity is further piqued when she sees that Aimee is so thin her elbows and knees are knobbly and her bones are sharp, and that the girl uses her body and her facial expressions to push people away. Meghan recognises something in the strange girl in the velvet hat, and she decides that they are meant be friends.
Aimee is working as hard as Meghan at invisibility. Her allergy to a couple of foods seems to have blossomed to the point where most any food threatens to evoke an allergic reaction. Despite her mother’s constant worrying, she eats only sugarless Jell-O, apple slices and raw carrots. Hunger has become a constant presence, one whose sharpness Aimee has grown to welcome. Bill, a poet and her mother’s long-time live-in boyfriend, who understands Aimee better than anyone in the world, has recently moved out, taking with him his books of poetry and his gentle, supportive presence. Though Aimee has called Bill from time to time to talk to him about school and her poetry, she’s going to learn that their relationship cannot go on as before.
One thing Aimee wants to talk about with Bill is the gigantic girl who seems to be following her around. Another thing she wants to talk about with him is Photon, the school literary review, and its facilitator, grade-ten student Cara Ray, whose love of poetry, and admiration of Aimee’s poems has lured the lonely and prickly teen out of her shell enough to attend Photon meetings and share her writing with the enthusiastic and understanding Cara.
When the fat girl shows up in her driveway to warn her to, “Be careful with Cara… You think you can trust her, but you can’t,” Aimee reacts angrily, and threatens to call the police if Meghan approaches her again. But, when Cara betrays her trust, Aimee has cause to remember Meghan’s warning, and finds herself seeking out the enormous girl, and asking her for help.
Written by Madeleine George, Looks is a brutal and sensitive examination of adolescence and body image, and eating disorders. Stripped of the comfort of platitudes or happy endings, George’s story reads like scouring pad poetry; each word scrapes up against the soul.
FernFolio Editor

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

fernfolio — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:32:46 +0000

Sixteen-year old Kim Cameron’s world seems to be defined these days by the painful consequences of love: her parents’ marriage cancelled due to lack of interest; her classmate Katie Matthews dumped by her boyfriend, John Reddear, who then commits suicide, it’s rumoured, because of his feelings for another boy on the volleyball team; Kim’s own complicated relationship with Ms. Archer, the drama and English teacher.
Nicknamed Skim by her classmates, because she isn’t, Kim dresses Goth, sneaks cigarettes behind the garage and in the woods near her private school, and, with her best friend, Lisa, devotes a lot of time to becoming Wiccan. But gatherings with witches from Lisa’s sister’s coven seem pointless and vaguely sleazy, and, besides, Lisa is prone to getting on Skim’s case every time she doesn’t do as expected. John’s suicide has the administration at their school suddenly focused on promoting good mental health, and eyeing girls who dress in black with concern. Though Skim assures her parents, her teachers and her friends that she’s okay, she is depressed, because, as she notes, being sixteen is the officially the worst thing she’s ever been, and, in particular, by her unacknowledged feelings for Ms. Archer.
But Skim is no victim and, despite the persistent questions of adults and the annoyingly upbeat activities of the GCL Club (Girls Celebrate Life), she follows her own path to a new point of equilibrium and maturity. In so doing, Skim becomes fast friends with Katie Matthews, whose boyfriend’s suicide has led to a trip off a garage roof which has landed her with two broken arms and a lot of unresolved rage of her own.
Written by Mariko Tamaki and wonderfully illustrated by Jillian Tamaki, Skim is an honest and compelling story about a young teen’s first experiences with love. It is recommended for Intermediate students and older.
FernFolio Editor

Scat by Carl Hiaasen

fernfolio — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:12:01 +0000

Dragged on a day-long field trip to the Black Vine swamp in Florida’s everglades by Mrs. Starch, their terror of a science teacher, Nick Waters, his friend Marta Gonzalaz, and the rest of their class from Truman School scramble to record the names of plants and animals knowing full well that they will be tested on their knowledge. But the field trip ends abruptly when a wildfire breaks out and everyone is ordered back to the buses by Mrs. Starch who then disappears into the fire zone.
Though Dr. Dressler, the school’s headmaster, claims that he has received a letter from Mrs. Starch requesting a leave of absence due to a family crisis, Nick is suspicious. He happens to know that Mrs. Starch doesn’t have any family. So Nick decides to nose around and get to the bottom of his teacher’s sudden disappearance, one that is in marked contrast to her usual perfect attendance. Anything is better than sitting around worrying why his soldier father hasn’t sent his daily e-mails from Iraq.
Accompanied by a reluctant Marta, Nick checks out Mrs. Starch’s house, which turns out to be every bit as creepy as students have rumoured, and gets caught inside her house by a strange man named Twilly. Things heat up when the local fire investigator decides that the fire at Black Vine swamp was deliberately set, and police start questioning students in Nick’s class, particularly Duane Smoke Scrod Jr, who happens to be on probation for two previous convictions for arson.
But how does the Red Diamond Energy Corporation pen, found at the scene of the fire tie into the story, and did Marta and Nick actually hear a panther scream in Black Vine swamp just before the fire broke out?
Carl Hiaasen’s Scat is a terrific story about some kids and their teacher who join forces with a mysterious environmentalist to expose the illegal activities of an oil company and save an environmentally threaten animal. Written with humour and passion, this adventure is a sure winner!
FernFolio Editor

Things Not Seen by Andrew Clements

fernfolio — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:56:37 +0000

Peering into the bathroom mirror, one morning after his shower, fifteen year-old Bobby Phillips is shocked by what he sees. Or, rather, by what he doesn’t see, for Bobby has disappeared, become invisible. His parents, both exceptionally intelligent and well-educated university professors, are initially taken aback by their son’s invisibility, but quickly draw up plans to keep him safely out of sight at home while they think about how best to tackle the problem.
Unfortunately, Bobby’s absence from school, and the neighbour’s nosiness brings the State Department of Children and Family Services to the door, and the Phillips find themselves caught between the state and their need to keep Bobby’s invisibility a secret. Fed up with his parents’ failure to listen to him as well as with their persistent habit of talking at and not to him, and ready to climb walls with boredom and worry, Bobby decides to take matters into his own hands.
Bundled up for the winter weather in hat, scarf and dark glasses, he sets off for his favourite place in the world, the university library, locks himself into a cubicle in men’s washroom, strips off his clothes, and then takes a walk through the library, invisible to the many students working there. But, on his way out of the library a couple of hours later, he bumps into a young girl and sends her – and his dark glasses – flying. Frantic, at first, that she will notice his invisible state and raise the alarm, Bobby then realizes that the girl is blind. So begins his friendship with Alicia, whose sudden blindness, two years previously, has left her angry, frustrated, and alone.
Somehow, confiding his secret to Alicia seems right and easy. Since becoming blind, she, too, has become invisible to her old friends from school, to the people she comes across as she navigates her way through the streets, white cane in hand, and to her parents, who see her disability far more clearly than they see her. Together, Bobby and Alicia try to make sense out of what has happened to him, try to examine the evidence, while his father explores scientific theories at the table in the Phillips’ front parlour, and become close friends in the process.
Things Not Seen is a wonderful story about a teenaged boy who has to lose himself before he can see, really see, what’s important.
FernFolio Editor

The Way Lies North by Jean Rae Baxter

fernfolio — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:58:54 +0000

Escalating hostilities between Tories, loyal to the British Crown, and Whigs, who demand independence for Britain’s Thirteen American Colonies, have exacted a heavy price on fifteen-year old Charlotte Hooper. Her three older brothers have all ‘accepted the King’s shilling,’ and two have been killed in fighting. The third is missing and feared dead. She has had to shoulder a large part of the chores on her family’s farm in New York’s Mohawk Valley, helping her father in the fields and with their livestock. She has not seen her sweetheart, Nick Schyler, for five months, ever since they quarrelled about politics. Though Nick has sworn that he will always love her, their prolonged separation sets Charlotte to wondering if he has forgotten her.
When stories reach the Hooper family that Tory friends and neighbours are being attacked, robbed of their possessions, and turned out of their homes or, worse, burned to death in them, Charlotte’s father announces that it is time for them to leave. After burying the family papers and their silver tea service, Charlotte and her parents set out on the long walk to Lake Oneida where Charlotte’s father has arranged an old Mohawk friend to meet them and take them by canoe Fort Haldimand, the British encampment at Carleton Island, in the St. Lawrence river near the mouth of Lake Ontario. The journey is long and dangerous. Forced to travel by night, since roving gangs of thugs who call themselves the Sons of Liberty regularly assault and kill fleeing Loyalists, the Hooper family struggle through bad weather, accidents, and a casual attack to reach the shores of Lake Oneida by the agreed-upon date. Along the way, they are joined by other refugees, often travelling with babes in arms and nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
Charlotte’s experiences, both on the journey to Carleton Island with her fellow refugees and the Mohawk warriors, and then living in a cold and crowded tent encampment at Fort Haldimand, confirm her strength of character, but she watches with growing concern as her mother’s health weakens and her father grows old. And she thinks about and longs for news of her sweetheart, Nick.
The Way Lies North is an historical adventure set against the backdrop of the American Revolutionary War. The main character, Charlotte, is a young woman tested by war and adversity, but whose indominable spirit is never broken.
Fern Folio Editor