The Lost Marble Notebook of Forgotten Girl & Random Boy

February 15, 2015
Trying to escape their broken worlds, two teens fall in love with devastating results. The story begins with the first meeting between Random Boy and Forgotten Girl. They are never given proper names, and their labels indicate their template relationship-"insert your name here," Jaskulka seems to invite readers. Forgotten Girl and Random Boy write their first-person free-verse poems in notebooks-this is the structure of the narrative-sharing their doubts, fears, hopes and needs as they fall in love and hope to erase the pain of their home lives. Readers learn that Forgotten Girl's father has recently abandoned her, and Random Boy's father physically abuses both Random Boy and his mother. Eventually the love between Random Boy and Forgotten Girl teeters into obsession and then worse. "As much as he loves / is as hard as he hits, / which makes the pain / reassuring / in a sick way." Why Random Boy begins abusing Forgotten Girl and why she stays with him (ultimately getting herself out) is told with such complete believability that the descent seems almost foregone, given the wounds that each has brought to the relationship. Jaskulka's narrative explores the hows and whys of an abusive teenage relationship with heartbreaking honesty, and her delicate touch renders the dark story even more powerful. Graceful. Searing. Haunting. (Verse fiction. 12-17)

April 1, 2015

Gr 9 Up-Two unnamed teenagers find each other on a street corner and realize that they share a love of the written word. Forgotten Girl's parents have just split up and her mother has started drinking. Forgotten Girl copes by journaling about her life, feelings, hopes, and dreams. She meets a very cute boy on the corner one day, and their flirting really takes off when she discovers he is more than just a dude smoking and hanging out on the street; he, too, works through his feelings with a poetry journal. Their romance is chronicled in their verses-they grow close, meet each other's families (with little success), and eventually wind up sleeping together. When Forgotten Girl begins feeling smothered by Random Boy and befriends a boy from her school, things take a scary, violent turn. The book is intense, much like the young couple's relationship. Poetry perfectly captures the heightened emotions of first love. The novel's conceit (that it is Forgotten Girl's notebook and that Random Boy writes in it from time to time) does not always hold up-does he still get to read her journal after they break up? At times, the sophisticated phrasing and vocabulary hint at the adult author rather than reflect the authentic voices of two teens. Nevertheless, the story is realistic, gripping, worrisome yet hopeful. VERDICT Give this to fans of Sonya Sones and Ellen Hopkins.-Geri Diorio, Ridgefield Library, CT

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