Quicksand Pond

March 20, 2017
Echoing the themes and tone of Lisle’s Newbery Honor–winning Afternoon of the Elves, this loss-of-innocence novel traces the delicate friendship built between two girls from different backgrounds. Irritated with everyone in her family, 12-year-old Jessie Kettel is in a “separatist mood” when she arrives at a rented Rhode Island cottage for summer vacation. While her father and siblings find other ways to occupy their time, she goes off by herself to the nearby pond, where she finds a dilapidated raft and later meets Terri, a local girl. Terri is eager to help Jesse fix the craft, and as the girls make repairs, Jessie becomes unsettled by Terri’s stories about the downfall of her family, her destructive home life, and her dreams to get away. With characteristic subtlety and enormous compassion, Lisle expresses complex family and social conflicts while showing how Jessie’s understanding of the world and her newfound friend expand, even as the views of those around her remain narrow. Terri’s struggle against oppression and prejudice will have as profound an impact on readers as it does on Jessie. Ages 10–up. Agent: Gina Maccoby, Gina Maccoby Literary.

Starred review from March 15, 2017
A summer beside Quicksand Pond on Rhode Island's coast transforms a reluctant 12-year-old white girl. When Jessie arrives at her family's rental cottage, she's in -a separatist mood.- Immediately drawn to the pond, Jessie's content to stand, -breathing in the place, listening and watching.- Discovering an abandoned raft, Jessie explores on her own until she encounters Terri, also white, a local outcast with an abusive, dead-end father. Bonding quickly, Jessie and Terri spend quiet days on the raft. Terri tells Jessie about the boys who disappeared in the pond and the family murdered years before whose surviving child, Henrietta, is now an elderly woman still living in the big house by the pond. Indeed, Henrietta stealthily watches Terri and Jessie using the raft she built as a child. When Terri's suspected of stealing Jessie's father's laptop, Jessie adamantly defends her friend, but after Terri's blamed for setting a fire in Henrietta's garage, where the girls had borrowed some tools to repair the raft, Jessie's support for Terri wavers. Unfolding slowly in simple, quiet prose, this sensitive, compelling story alternates between Jessie's present experiences and Henrietta's befuddled memories until they collide in a disturbing, pivotal climax. A suspenseful, realistic, finely crafted story exploring friendship, trust, and how we judge others. (map) (Fiction. 10-13)

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March 1, 2017

Gr 4-6-Tween Jessie travels with her English professor father and her siblings to the titular Rhode Island setting for a summer away from her workaholic lawyer mother. Tired of her "perfect" older sister and bug-loving younger brother, she prefers to explore nature by herself. Jessie discovers an abandoned raft and soon meets the nearly feral Terri, who divulges all the town gossip, except for that about her own abusive father. The partnership of clandestine raft repair seals the friendship and introduces the raft's original owner, Miss Cutting, a dementia patient who is unable to leave her home, who secretly watches the girls with envy from the mansion where her parents were murdered when she was a child. Jessie and Terri have a falling-out when Jessie accidentally insults the wild child by repeating town chatter. When Miss Cutting's home is robbed and her garage set on fire, adults press Jessie to incriminate her friend, who has been camping out rather than living at home. Miss Cutting's mental meshing of past and present, along with the robbery and fire, leads her to recall details about the long-ago murder. Meanwhile, Terri is facing juvenile detention and Jessie must decide if she will speak up. The author's writing, as always, is filled with rich imagery and atmospheric descriptions. Readers will come away feeling as if they have visited the locale themselves. VERDICT This complex tale is aptly bittersweet and invites reflection about justice, judgment, and loyalty. A strong purchase for fans of layered, realistic mysteries and drama.-Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA

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Starred review from February 15, 2017
Grades 5-8 *Starred Review* When Eddie Carr was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, the family dairy folded, the family barn burned to the ground, and the family name, too, suffered irreparable damage. In fact, five decades later, 12-year-old Terri, Eddie's great-granddaughter, is still paying the price, living at the west end of Quicksand Pond with her abusive, alcoholic father. But Jessie Kettel, a vacationing outsider, hasn't heard the rumors. And when a mysterious old raft appears at the water's edge, the two girls work to repair it, developing a profound, if precarious, friendship. As town gossip and the Kettel family's judgment simmers in the backgroundand long-misunderstood local Henrietta Cutting staggers into the foregroundJessie comes to a most unsettling conclusion: the closer she gets to Terri, the closer she could be to unknowable danger. Deftly navigating a diverse array of socioeconomic statuses and the discriminatory nature of the justice system, Newbery Honor Book author Lisle crafts a stirring story that raises crucial questions about the assumptions we make, the distances we keep, and the vulnerable voices we often fail to hear. As Lisle details Terri's determination to cease a vicious cycle, Henrietta's resolve to remedy an unjust past, and Jessie's aching ambivalence between the cautionary advice of others and her own hard-won revelations, readers are sure to listen. Striking, enigmatic, and haunting all around.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)