Anke’s home is not one of love.  It’s one of abuse.  Anke, her brother, her sister and mother all live with a dark secret.  Anke’s father abuses them all.  Her mother, brother and sister through emotional, physical and sexual abuse.  But for Anke, it’s neglect.  It’s a complete lack of attention from her father.  She might as well be invisible.  In fact, she might as well just be a piece of furniture in the home.

I am always there.
But they don’t care if I am
because I am furniture.

I don’t get hit
I don’t get fondled
I don’t get love
because I am furniture.

Suits me fine.

Anke despises the abuse.  Wishes she could speak up about it.  Wishes she had the power to stop it.  But she fears that her father would kill them all if she stepped up to him.  So the abuse continues.  Her father comes home at night and goes into her sisters room.  She knows the hell that her sister is going through but does nothing but listen.

I appreciated where the author then took the story of Because I Am Furniture and the thought process of Anke.  Anke was jealous.  Why did her sister receive her father’s attention?  Was she herself not pretty enough?  Not worthy enough?  In some sickeningly, round-a-bout way she equated love with the abuse.  They were worthy enough to gain the attention of their father.  She was not.  I found this thought process fascinating.

Anke makes up for her feelings of insignificance by trying out for the volleyball team at school.  Volleyball opens up a whole new world to Anke.  One where she is forced to be powerful on the court, one where she must yell to be heard.  She finally learns how to have a voice and to truly be in a comfortable environment.  She also makes a friend, somebody else with an abusive background.  Despite never sharing the nightmare of a home she lives in, she’s happy to have somebody who  understands her and doesn’t ask to many questions.

As Anke’s voice grows, her father’s abuse also increases.  But this time, he’s beginning to notice Anke’s classmate, a girl who thinks that he’s the best dad ever and doesn’t understand why Anke doesn’t think her dad is even cute?  The story accelerates to a devastating climax where Anke finally uses her newly found confidence to step up and do something.

Because I Am Furniture is heartbreaking.  I truly felt pity for each of the characters and fury at the father.   I was invested in these characters.  They were alive to me on the pages and I wanted to yell at them to get help.  Get out of there.  Leave.  Do something!  It’s so frustrating to see characters don’t do something that when you are on the outside looking in, seems so apparent and easy.   You never know what is going on in the house next door.

If abuse, especially abuse of children, is a subject matter that you can handle, I’d recommend this one.  It was powerful.  Obviously, if it’s a topic that you wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole , I’d stay far far away.

How do you feel about reading books about abuse?  I know many refuse to read them.  Many want happy books.  Or find that they emotionally can’t handle it.   Which side of the fence are  you on?

Links of interest:  Thalia Chaltas website.
Genre:  YA Novel-in-Verse
Publisher:  Viking Juvenile.  April 16, 2009
Hardcover, 368 pages.  ISBN: 0670062987
Because I am Furniture is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

After losing their parents in a fire Lonnie and his little sister Lilli are put in separate foster homes.  The story is told in a series of very loving letters from Lonnie to Lilli.  After a rough road, Lonnie is beginning to feel at home.  But that doesn’t mean he takes it well when his sister begins to call her foster mother mom and is gradually beginning to forget her parents.  He knows that he must capture their memories for both of them.  Lonnie is torn between the life that they now have and the life that they’ve left behind.  There are a lot of deep issues in this very short book and it’s beautifully told.  Such a short review for a book I really enjoyed.  Highly recommended.  The more I read Jacqueline Woodson the deeper I fall in love.

Other books I’ve reviewed by Jacqueline Woodson:  Show Way, Feathers,  If You Come Softly and Behind You.  Jacqueline Woodson’s website.

You never know what’s going on behind closed doors.  The picture perfect American family may not be so perfect after all.  Identical is about two identical twin sisters, Kaeleigh and Raeanne, whose family spirals out of control after a car accident, but on the surface you’d never tell.  Their father is a well respected judge and their mother is running for a senate seat.  But Kaeleigh and Raeanne are falling apart.

There is a huge twist that I did not see coming and I enjoyed it that much more because of it.  I do have to admit that although I didn’t see it coming, I was suspicious of a few things that made sense after the reveal.  Another admission, it took me about a quarter of the way through this fat 585 page book before I kept the characters straight with each other.  Maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention.

Identical is raw, stark, and disturbing.  One of those books that you can’t say that you particular enjoy but you don’t quite forget.

Fifteen year old Ava has just helped bury her boyfriend Jackson.  As if that isn’t hard enough, she thinks that his death is her fault.  She has a hard time letting go.  Her parents encourage her to get out of the house and hang out with her friends.  But she doesn’t want to.  Why would she when she realizes that Jackson has never really left?  He’s back from the dead and Jackson makes his presence known.  Ava can feel him, the room is cold (think Sixth Sense here), she can see him in the mirror sometimes.  She can’t wait to get home each day so she can spend time with him.  But as time goes on, she meets somebody new and  Jackson becomes possessive.  I Heart You, You Haunt Me explores what we all want.  Love.  And how to move on when the one we love won’t let us go.

I Heart You, You Haunt Me is told in free verse, making it raw, stark, and very poetic.  I’ve enjoyed many free verse novels this year, and while this one wasn’t one of the most memorable, it was well done.  A very simple, easy read.  I believe many teenagers will like it.

The book trailer:

Lisa Schroeder’s website and blog.

Although life is silent for Paula Becker she’s happy in her home with her parents and sister.  But in 1939, Hitler creates T4, the program to euthanize citizens with disabilities and mental illness simply because they would be “better off” and they were not fit for life.  Paula’s parents realized that life is no longer safe at home for Paula, so at the age of thirteen they send her into hiding for the duration of the war.  While hiding she realizes that she’s not the only one who has reason to be afraid:

I shared my shawl and cloths
With the other children.  I liked
Six-year old Nelly.  She
Reminded me of Clara.
We huddled together
All nine of us.
And watched the door.
I darned my stocking
With the needle and thread
I brought along.
Nobody spoke.
We told stories
With our eyes
As we stared into
One another’s faces.

I realized
I wasn’t the only one
Who was hated.

The free verse in T4 is simple, short and to the point but it’s very powerful.  LeZotte gives enough background information about the Holocaust for young readers to understand, but it’s one of those books that would be good to discuss together.  T4 is a quick read (I read it under twenty minutes) that leaves a lasting impression.  Although the subject matter is “no fun” this book leaves me wanting more.

T4 is Ann Clare Le Zotte’s debut novel and like her main character she is also completely deaf.  I’m looking forward to more!  She maintains a blog at Amazon and has a interview that you can check out at Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature.

Where I Live is a free verse novel about Diana who loves her yellow house with white shutters, the daffodils in the spring, her blue walls in her room, and playing with her best friend Rose.  Diana starts to worry when her dad stops telling jokes and her mom stops laughing.  She’s afraid that they’ll get a divorce.  But instead they tell her that they have to move in with her Grandpa Joe who lives six hours away.  Diana is devestated to leave everything that she loves behind.  She misses Rose terribly and keeps hoping that theyll be able to move back.   But Diane soon learns that her heart can be happy again.

I’d recommend this one all around.  I loved the free verse form and the illustrations kept me turning the pages for more.  If you have a child who’s dealing with change, this is a good one to have them read.

Eileen Spinelli’s website.
Matt Phelan’s website.

Libertad lives with his mother and little brother inside the Guatemala city dump scavenging for anything of value that could be sold.  After a freak accident kills their mother, Libertad and his brother struggle to survive.  Their father immigrated to the United States earlier in hopes of providing a better life for their family and had hoped to send for them later.  But know they have lost track of them and only have a address to go on.  Libertand decides that their only hope is to make the dangerous journey from Guatemala City and try to cross the border into the United States unaccompanied by any adults.  The only thing they both have is each other and the promise of a better future.

I thought that this book was simply beautiful.  It was also eye-opening.  I had no idea that people actually lived inside of dumps.  It’s heartbreaking to learn that people really live like that.

On her website, Alma Fullerton states the following:

During my research of the Guatemala City garbage dump, I learned that approximately 10,000 people reside in shacks on the rim of the dump.  These shacks are made with whatever can be salvaged from the garbage-tin, cardboard, and broken furniture. Some of these shacks have power, others don’t. There are about 100 people who live in large cardboard homes inside the boundaries of the dump. All of the  inhabitants make their living recycling garbage, often  specializing in looking for specific items like glass, plastic, cans, or cardboard. Up until 2005 children as well as adults worked inside the dump. After a huge fire that year, city officials no longer allowed children to work inside the dump walls.

Of trying to make it across the border she also says:

Each year, over 80,000 unaccompanied migrant children attempt to enter the United States. The average age of these children is sixteen but there are some as young as six or seven – some younger if sent by coyotes (people who charge a great deal of money to take immigrants over the border). If the children survive the journey, only a few of these children remain in the US. The rest are deported, usually within two days.

I found the following video created from an organization not associated with Safe Passage, the one that Fullerton mentions, but found it to be very similar to what those at the Guatemala City garbage dump must go through.  This video is filmed in Honduras:

I highly recommend reading Libertad which will be released on September 13th.  A portion of the royalties goes to the non-profit organization, Safe Passage which gives Guatemalan children an opportunity to attend school by paying for tuition and school supplies and giving families food in return (because the children are often needed for work to help pay for food, many families won’t send their children to school).

Visit Alma Fullerton’s website.  I for one, am now looking forward to reading her previous novels, which includes Walking on Glass and In the Garage.

Read this book.

A Middle Grade Fiction book, Yellow Star tells the true story of Jennifer Roy’s aunt. From the prologue, an excerpt from an interview with Sylvia Perlmutter, March 2003.

In 1939, the Germans invaded the town of Lodz, Poland. They forced all of the Jewish people to live in a small part of the city called a ghetto. They buildt a barbed-wire fence around it and posted Nazi guards to keep everyone inside it.

Two hundred and seventy thousand people lived in the lodz ghetto.
In 1945, the war ended. The Germans surrendered and the ghetto was liberated. Out of more than a quarter of a million people, only about 800 walked out of the ghetto. Of those who survived, only twelve were children.

I was one of the twelve.

This was an amazing story! Everything surrounding the Holocaust and WWII is incredible in the fact that everybody who survived it has a story to tell. Sylvia spent six years of her young childhood (age four to ten) in the ghetto. She didn’t understand the things she saw or heard around her. It was only through the sheer cunningness of her father that she was able to survive, especially as all children were systematically taken emptied from the ghetto and taken to concentration camps where they were killed.

Told in beautiful free verse, Yellow Star was a quick read that lingers with you far after you’ve finished the last page. I would highly recommend this book to anyone.

Visit Jennifer Roy’s website here.

Lakshmi is a poor, thirteen-year-old girl who lives in a tiny hut in the high mountains in Nepal. Life is hard, but simple and pleasurable for Lakshmi as her and her mother dream of what they would do if they just had a bit more money. Lakshmi’s stepfather gives Lakshmi to an “Auntie,” and the innocent girl thinks she will be working in a glorious city for a wealthy employer as a maid. It isn’t until she arrives at the red light district in Calcutta and is brutally shown to her first “customer” does she realize that she has been sold into prostitution. Her life becomes a nightmare, but above it all Lakshmi not only endures but triumphs.

Although, this story was brutally honest, heart wrenching, and a difficult subject matter, the storytelling in itself was refreshing. Told in poem like vignettes, McCormicks’ writing style was a pleasure to read. So much so, that I couldn’t wait to read more of her. I now have her two other books, My Brother’s Keeper and Cut, waiting for me at the library. I’ll let you know what I think.

Visit Patricia McCormick’s website for book reviews, summaries, and more.

Update: Looks like I’m not the only one who puts stock in the jacket cover art: