Teeny Little Grief Machines

September 22, 2014
It’s never been easy for 16-year-old Lexi to live with her dysfunctional family. But when her infant stepsister dies suddenly, her father goes to jail for his second DUI, and her autistic stepbrother goes missing on Lexi’s watch, the cumulative grief and pressure cause Lexi to come unmoored, and she suffers a depressive breakdown. Lexi unflinchingly shares her emotions as she narrates her experiences in the brief poems that serve as chapters in this Gravel Road Verse volume, which is written at a third-grade reading level. Though Lexi lacks a strong support system at home, High depicts Lexi receiving professional medical help for her illness while introducing positive adult figures at her school. Lexi makes a solid and hopeful recovery in a way that suggests a new phase of her teenage life and doesn’t come across as pat or predictable. Simultaneously available: Otherwise. Ages 15–up.

August 1, 2014
An outcast at school and within her own family, "Lexi / (rhymes with sexy) / Mcleen, sixteen," articulates a life of desperation and determination in this verse novel. The format keeps readers moving quickly through familiar teen-literature motifs (pot smoking, critical classmates and family, first crushes and their "intoxicating / fumes from / across the room"). But beyond the standard challenges, Lexi's first-person account is like a run-on sentence of personal sadness: alcoholic dad in jail; overwhelmed, critical, anorexic and bipolar stepmother; autistic half brother; infant half sister claimed by crib death one year earlier. During a health-class project, traumatized Lexi-recalling the lost sister-paints her "Almost-Real Baby" girl doll blue because "Pink stinks. / It makes me think too much." Mental health intervention, a supportive librarian and meeting the right guy all help pull Lexi back from the brink. With varying verse structures and styles, High uses typeface changes and word placement to magnify the message, with varying degrees of effectiveness. At its best, it ranges from the cleverly contemporary ("Zelda's a walking, talking Google search. Yahoo!") to the credibly evocative ("I like / to open my / window / this time / of the year. / / It smells / like a painting / by Norman Rockwell"). So swiftly do the pages turn, however, the story may stay with readers, but the poetry probably won't. (Verse fiction. 12-18)

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October 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-Issues of teen pregnancy, drug use, self-harm, alcoholism, autism, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrom all shape High's verse novel. Narrator Lexi, 16, lives with her previously incarcerated father, a vacuous and uneducated stepmother, and a brother who is severely autistic. Her mother was a stripper and saddled Lexi with what her a classmates call a "stripper" name. This could be-and sometimes is-a heavy-handed problem book. But the verse form serves the voice of Lexi well, and the poems feel authentic. The initial couplet ("My name is Lexi/(rhymes with sexy") is initially cringe-inducing, but readers begin to understand its aptness as more is revealed about Lexi and her family history. When the teen's life burdens become too much to bear, she goes to a psychiatric hospital, is healed, and eventually emerges strong enough to survive in her relatively unchanged circumstances. A quick read and a useful one, with some interesting examples of concrete verse, especially, "Life Eats Me Alive," which screams Lexi's anguish in varied fonts.-Nina Sachs, Walker Memorial Library, Westbrook, ME

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