Two Haiku and Two Novels

Welcome to Poetry Friday! Today we are hosted by Carmela at Teaching Authors. Here. Stop by and see what she has for us today.

What is Poetry Friday? Find out more HERE.

I didn’t post last week. Things have been hectic but I’ve been reading and there are two novels I’d like to share them with you.

But first, an haiku.

The following greeted me in my in-box from Poets.org this week.

ONE FLOWER
by Jack Kerouac 1922-1969

One flower
   on the cliffside
Nodding at the canyon

This little verse captures a moment, and the beauty in it for me is the image of something small and beautiful, calm, simply there, and brave in the face of an abyss, here in the form of a canyon. It seemed a perfect beginning to this post as both novels are about courage. They are both written in prose.

The first is a fabulous middle grade novel entitled ONE SMALL HOP, by author Madelyn Rosenberg, published in 2021 by Scholastic Press.

The abyss in this novel, like the canyon in Kerouac’s haiku, is climate change. The main Character, a seventh grade boy named Ahab, and his friends live in a dark futuristic setting. The young characters in this novel their reality head on.

Most animals are extinct. The sea has risen, the water is toxic and children live inside most of the time. But when a lone male frog is discovered by one of Ahab’s friends, the kids focus on the possibility of saving the frog species. To do it, they must smuggle a frog across toxic terrain into Canada, where they have located a lone female frog. Will the kids introduce the frogs and create a new future?

I expected to find this book devoid of hope. Read it and I promise you will be uplifted by Rosenberg’s story and humor.

The other novel I read is HEARTS UNBROKEN, a YA novel by bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith. Like her main character Louise, She is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

Louise sits on the canyon/ abyss of racism. She is working on the school newspaper. Her little brother, also Muskcogee, has been cast as the Tin Man in the school play, The Wizard of Oz, and a black girl, a talented singer, has been casted as Dorothy.

When the wrath of the parents in this mostly white school come down against the casting of the play, (Obviously, complained white parents, they got the parts only because they were minorities). Louise and her brother get caught up in the swirl of anger which leads to a grave threat of physical danger.

But Smith has crafted a page turner and we see believable conflict play out in several compelling story lines as truth battles misinformation and prejudice. Readers will see, and understand, through this story, the hatred all minorities are up against day after day in America.

One last haiku.

SUMMER READING

On a beach, at home,
or shadowed by deep green leaves,
stories fill the hush.

©Janice Scully 2022

Thank you, Carmela, for hosting.