We had a
beautiful array of delicious snacks at our last meeting, and we began our
discussion with our novel, Dig by A.S. King. We had a variety of opinions
on this somewhat complicated (at first) story. A few readers said that they
didn't really 'care' about any of the main characters, four teenagers,
only two of whose actual names we learned near the end, who each let us into
their thoughts and various aspects of their lives in somewhat
dysfunctional family situations. But most of us kept reading, partly because
there was some really terrific writing, and because we got swept into their
lives and the way they finally realized that they were cousins, the
grandchildren of a pretty selfish and obnoxious couple, Marla & Gottfried,
who were the reason they, and their parents, were all estranged and separated
from one another. We had mixed feelings about "the Freak," who was
actually a ghost/spirit of a fifth cousin, a girl who had been killed
several years earlier, and who kept appearing and actually knew everything
about what they all needed. We all agreed that there were some excellent
plot developments as the story unfolded, but we also agreed that parts of the
book were quite 'preachy,' and that these teenagers were
'mouthpieces' for the author's point of view regarding racism, white privilege,
urban development, and finding one's own 'self'. We felt that young people
would probably enjoy this book though, and might also feel empowered after
reading it, since these teenagers figured out a way to unite and become a
family of people who cared about each other, even given some of the dire
circumstances of their lives.
We were
pretty unanimously un-thrilled by our picture book, The Curious Garden by
Peter Brown. We appreciated that it tried to tell the story of a little boy who
went up a creepy stairway to an abandoned rail line, and magically made
beautiful plants and trees take over what looked like a wasteland. But we just
couldn't relate to the fact that it was The Garden that was curious,
which is why it kept spreading farther and farther out from its source until it
covered everything in sight. We weren't huge fans of most of the illustrations,
although we did like a few of them, especially the ones that showed other kids
helping the little boy, and the 'before-and-after' double-paged spreads of the
area, which showed how ugly smokestacks and tracks and rocks and dirt had
blossomed into beautiful areas by the end of the story. We realized that the
author/illustrator had been inspired by the High Line in New York City, which
had been re-purposed from a long-abandoned elevated rail line into a vibrant
green space, and we thought it was an admirable subject for a picture
book, but that it could have been told in a much better way.
