Systematic Student:
poetry

The free-verse poetry is as powerful as even, invoking images and emotions within the reader easily. I've read several authors who use verse to tell their stories, and none of them are as powerful writers as Hopkins. The intensity she writes with with astound you. It is painful, stark, real. This much honest emotion in a story takes my breath away, even as is breaks my heart. None of these children have had an easy time with life and the legacy Kristina has left for them is heartbreak, addiction and destruction. Not very hopeful, is it?

Life is never all about you. There will always be other people hurt or affected by our decisions, and I think it is important to realize this. You are always able to chose your own actions, but you do not get to chose your consequences for yourself or those around you. I once again commend Hopkins for an amazingly powerful story, one that will stay with me for a long time.

Note: I received this copy for review courtesy of the author.

A few weeks ago, I was contacted to review the collection of personal poetry, A Journey into Tomorrow by Veronica Camille Tinto. I enjoy the occasional bit of serious poetry, and hadn't read one in a while, so I accepted her offer.

While I'm not sorry that I accepted the book for review, it was definitely not what I expected. Some of the writing (pause) techniques that were used confused me and left me unsure of what she was trying to convey. Her overly frequent use of the ... symbol got old really fast. It really broke up the flow of the poetry and stunted my ability to truly appreciate the emotions being conveyed. I admit to using the ellipsis occasionally when it suits my mood. But, I use it occasionally. Tinto uses it copiously. In the first 10 poems (all less than one page long), the ... showed up 96 times. Trust me, I counted.

I also feel that Ms. Tinto was trying a little too hard to be eloquent, expressive and literary that the emotions and the point were often lost along the way. It's not really easy to explain unless you've read the poems, but some of them feel really stiff. I think she just tries too hard.

I know that each of these statements sound negative, but I don't mean to imply that I got nothing out of this book. More often than not, I was able to understand the emotions she must have been feeling as she wrote, especially toward the end of the book as I became more accustomed to her writing style. It was obvious reading these poems that she really felt what she was saying. She wrote these poems as a way to help her get a handle on the challenge's life was sending her, and a lot of them do portray that emotion very well. It's not a book that you can just breeze through, the poems are best read slowly and spaced apart. I think that this book and these poems have a lot of potential. I think that with some editing, and a little bit of work, these poems could be really good.

I want to like Shel Silverstein. Really, I do. I feel like I failed a part of childhood because I've never been much a fan. I read a few books when I was younger (or had them read to me) and I didn't much care for them then (The Missing Piece, The Giving Tree) although everyone else seemed to love them. The Missing Piece was repetitive, dull and completely pointless by the end, and The Giving Tree is about a horribly selfish little boy who thinks he can talk to a tree... I guess I just missed how it's more about unconditional love, because I don't think love should inspire selfishness.

Anyway, in the last little while, I've tried again to read Silverstein because everyone I know loves him. So, I read my nephews' favorite, Don't Bump the Glump, my brother-in-law's favorite, Where the Sidewalk Ends, my friend's favorite, The Giving Tree (tried it again, still didn't care for it) and a few others just for good measure. I read Falling Up, A Light in the Attic, and Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book. I genuinely enjoyed A Light in the Attic and I thought Uncle Shelby's Adult Primer was morbidly funny but was not at all impressed with any of the others. Each book does contain some poems that I really enjoyed, but as a whole, I felt that there were better things I could be doing with my time.

I do enjoy reading these books with young kids, because they just seem to love them, but reading them by myself is boring. I think perhaps the utterly and absurdly ridiculous is wasted on me. I like a little ridiculous in my life, but these just seem to much, almost like they are trying so hard to be funny. Some of them are legitimately great but most of them just don't do it for me.

So tell me — what am I missing? What is it about Shel Silverstein that everyone loves but I just can't seem to get?! Can any one fill me in here? I'm at a loss.

(Not to mention his pictures igg me out... I can't decide if he's a lumberjack or a creepy old man...)

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins is further proof that Ellen Hopkins is made of awesome and is a brilliant writer. She writes a lot of tough stuff, and she writes it honestly. I could say a lot about Hopkins brilliant poetry, but it's all been said before. I've said it before. So this time, I'm going to focus on the characters, and their stories. (Although the poetry really is genius.)

Tricks is the story of 5 teenagers. Some of them come from normal, happy families, some of them do not. Each of them have something they struggle with, and that struggle ultimately leads them on a path that none of them ever expected to take.

Our main characters are: Eden, whose father is an Evangelical preacher, and whose mother is abusive, hypocritical, and self-righteous; Seth, a gay teen struggling to accept himself in a small mid-west town, where everyone, including his father (and his dead mother), believes homosexuality to be a sin against God; Whitney, a girl struggling to be herself in the shadow of the 'perfect' older sister, loved and coddled by her workaholic mother, ignored by her mother, and desperate for someone (anyone) to love her; Ginger, who has spent her whole life looking after her younger siblings while her mother earns money as a prostitute; and Cody, whose awesome mom, and lovingly supportive step-dad are keeping a secret that will change their family forever.

While each of these characters have their own independent struggles, they are, for the most part, surprisingly well-adapted and well rounded characters. They all seem like good people. But it was incredibly scary to watch how quickly their lives spiraled down into disaster. It's amazing to me to see how fast it can all fall apart.

As you might have heard, or guessed from the title, this is a book dealing with teen prostitution. I don't know anyone who actually believes that this is a life that could ever touch them. I admit I myself have wondered how anyone could reach the point where they would be willing to sell their bodies to support themselves. It boggles my mind. But now, after reading this book it scares me. Because it can happen to anyone. None of these characters set out with the idea that becoming a prostitute was a great way of life. Ginger personally abhors it, because of her mother and the damage it has caused to her mother and their family. But each of them finds themselves in a situation where they don't believe they have any choices left.

Each of these stories are strongly emotional, which, I believe is the real strength to Ellen Hopkins writing style. I've read many books written in poem form and have never felt the emotion in the writing that seems so effortless in a Hopkins novel. Each character is painfully real and demands that we see them as real people, with real feelings, and real struggles. They dare us to judge them. Dare us to say we would have done any differently and beg us to understand and love them anyway. There is depth to these characters, not just on the pages, but that pores out around us. We need more writers like Hopkins that understand what it means to live, to hurt and to keep on anyway.