Out of the Wilderness, by Deb Vanasse; Clarion Books: New York, 1999; $15 When I dimmed the lights and sat down, I expected a good book. That is not what I got. I got a great book. In Out of the Wilderness, Deb Vanasse’s extremely descriptive writing complements the vast complexities of the Alaskan wilderness. The symbolic artwork on the jacket depicts a howling wolf set in front of a beautiful aurora borealis. I believe it shows the sheer beauty and harshness of the wild. The characters are each unique in their own way. Nathan, brother to Josh, is to wildlife as Picasso was to art. He sought cover in bears’ dens, and claimed to have a mystical connection with them. He’s willing to sacrifice himself to live by his high standards. Josh, the main character, is disgusted with his brother’s feelings about wildlife. However, they aren’t considered when his brother is hurt by his own obsession. Shannon and Pete, who are brother and sister, are opposites when it comes to wildlife. Shannon has feelings for wildlife as Nathan does, but she is not obsessed with the subject. Pete makes Josh his idol, even though he is not exactly comfortable around dead animals. Another character in this book is the father of Nathan and Josh. He always worries about Nathan, his son. Frank, father to Shannon and Pete, is caring and generous. He gave up the cabin that his friend let him use to Nathan. Now that I’m done with the long list of confusing characters, I am going to tell about how I felt as I turned the pages of this book. I can relate to Nathan’s obsession because of, surprisingly, my obsession with the Internet. What I mean is that I make the Internet my top priority, instead of focusing on my schoolwork or anything else. That is similar to Nathan’s thoughts, as he makes his own safety, and even that of others, less important than his desire to bond with animals. This shows when Nathan camps out in a bear den and is attacked by a female bear protecting her cubs. I can relate to Josh in that sometimes I ignore a friend I am angry at, but if they need help with something, I forgive them and try to help. That’s like Josh, because he is annoyed with Nathan because of his thoughts about animals, but when Nathan is injured by the bear, Josh risks his life to save Nathan’s. All in all, Deb Vanasse’s Out of the Wilderness is a great book that arouses thoughts about the wilderness. Steven Yenzer, 11Columbia, Maryland
July/August 2000
Song of a Wanderer
They say guilt is a staggering burden, but I think change is the heaviest load of all. All my life I had faced it head on, and I’m surprised that I was older when I finally decided that all of the wandering wasn’t fair. I still remember driving into the tiny, midwestern town in Iowa. The sky looked troubled and angry, and I recall that it looked formidable and opposing. It was November, and I was sure that the bleak landscape would soon be covered with a blanket of sparkling, white snow. I sat with my brother Rob in the back of the old VW van. We were both sullen and cross, angry with our parents for dragging us to yet another town. We glared at them from the back seat as they bubbled over at every little thing like ecstatic children at a birthday party. “Look at that adorable little house!” “It’s so darling!” “And all the little shops! Oh, how exciting!” I had heard it many times before as we entered a new place when roaming about the country on my parents’ vagabond trip. Our vagabond trip. They called themselves wanderers, but I referred to them as middle-aged hippies. This was the thirty-second town I had lived in throughout my life. I was thirteen, adaptable and, most importantly, accepting. Too accepting. Inside I was sick of the traveling and the wandering. I wanted a place of my own. I still remember driving into the tiny, midwestern town in Iowa My parents loved the traveling. They had been real hippies back in the sixties. They had attended rowdy rallies, smoked one or two joints in the hope of reaching an astounding level of intellect and insight, and had tramped around Woodstock in baggy bell-bottoms. They had married at twenty, gone to college, earned degrees in philosophy, and hopped in the old van. Thus began their life on the road. I was born at their sixteenth stop, in a tiny little town in Vermont in a red barn filled with fragrant hay. It was October, and my mother says that the trees were all boasting their brilliant fall colors of red, orange, yellow and brown, creating a dazzling sight visible through the open door. She says that I was born with my eyes wide open, as if the vibrant colors shocked me into silence. That’s why I’m so observant, she says, because I was born gaping at the world in awe and wonder. My mother was born in a New England state too, New York. She was born in the Catskill Mountains where the air is crisp and fresh. I went there once to visit my grandparents, and spent most of the time running through the little town of Cooperstown, marveling at the clear air and the abundant wildlife of squirrels, deer and countless others. I’ve never lived in a house; the van was always home to us. We slept and ate in the back of the van where my father took out the seats and nailed in a soft couch, an old wooden table, two cots, a refrigerator and a stove. I never knew what I was missing out on until I went over to a friend’s house when we were camped out in Alabama. It wasn’t a Georgian mansion or a Victorian painted lady, just a normal, suburban house. But it made my heart ache to see each person’s room, the tiled bathroom, the orderly kitchen. The privacy of a house made me want one desperately. I saw plenty of other houses. I saw cheap duplexes in Newark, enormous mansions in Beverly Hills, unoriginal ranches in Nebraska and Wyoming, beach houses in North Carolina and Maryland, even long houses in Washington State. I wanted all of them. As we drove past charming bungalows and farmhouses I grew miserable. I knew that I would forever envy the people who lived in them, and would always be jealous of those that lived here simply because they had a home. I hadn’t wanted to leave our last home in Wisconsin. It was in the northern part of the state, a place called Boulder Junction. There were thick forests of tall, straight pines that stood like a regiment of dignified soldiers. There was a main street of prim shops and little houses. The school was small, the people were friendly, and finally I was accepted as an individual. I had friends, I had good grades, and, for once, was content with who I was. And then my parents announced that we would move again. “We haven’t been to Iowa yet,” they explained. “We ought to experience the sights and sounds of the Hawkeye State!” But Rob was on many of the athletic teams, and I was on the honor roll and the student council. We cried and sulked for three days until Mom and Dad pulled us into the van and started up the engine. “Look at those little buildings!” “Aren’t they precious!” “This is such a darling town, don’t you think?” Mom turned and smiled her bubbly smile at us. We just stared back. Mom’s smile faded and she turned back to the window to gawk at something else. We stopped at a dumpy little place for Chinese take-out for dinner. I squinted at the menu. Though we had always taken out Chinese, McDonald’s or Pizza Hut for meals, I had never become familiar with the exotic names on the Chinese menus. I pointed at a dish and held it out for the waiter to see. “I don’t know how to pronounce this name,” I told him apologetically. He mumbled something, scribbled onto his pad, and shuffled into the kitchen to get the food. We walked back to the van with our little white cartons of chow mein, dumplings, beef and broccoli, or whatever we had decided upon. “This is good!” Dad exclaimed after tasting his chop suey. “We’ll have to come here more often.” I sighed. I had heard
Multiple Choice
Multiple Choice by Janet Tashjian; Henry Holt and Company: New York, 1999; $16.95 “I wish my brain were a toaster.” That’s how Monica Devon feels about the way she obsesses over everything— from the amount of beans in a beanbag to the word she spelled incorrectly in a spelling bee three years ago. Multiple Choice, by Janet Tashjian, is the story of Monica Devon, a fourteen-year-old girl whose one wish is to stop obsessing. Although she has always been a perfectionist, her condition seems to be getting worse. Since Monica has had a passion for word games and anagrams for most of her life, she creates a game, Multiple Choice, with Scrabble tiles. It’s supposed to help her become more spontaneous by making decisions for her, and for a while, it does. Monica feels as if she can do anything without having to worry because she can’t go against Multiple Choice’s solutions. However, when one of the game’s decisions results in a young boy getting hurt, Monica knows she has gone too far. One aspect I particularly liked about Multiple Choice was the creative way in which the author explained Monica’s feelings. At the beginning of many chapters were word games or anagrams which set the tone for the events to come, such as I’M THE WORLD (I’m on top of the world!). These titles, as well as Monica’s general sense of humor, “. . . and the whole point of this stupid game is to liberate me. Liberate me straight into a padded room is more like it,” result in a lighthearted tone even as Monica’s problems develop. Reading this book made me realize that obsession can be as much of a disorder as anorexia. Although everyone worries about problems they face throughout the day, some people spend so much time analyzing that they become depressed, constantly thinking about mistakes that were made years ago. Small problems that might be viewed as meaningless become monstrous ones that must be tackled, no matter how insignificant they may appear. Monica, for instance, tries to scoop beans from one beanbag to another to try to equal out their sizes. Although Monica Devon is a fictitious character, there is a little of her in all of us. There have been times in the past year when I became obsessed over my schoolwork and other things. For example, once our social studies class was assigned a report on a country in South America. I wanted to do a perfect job on the report, so I collected pages of research. By working nearly constantly on the report and staying up late on the last night, I felt that my paper would be pretty good. When I printed the report out, however, I wasn’t satisfied. I then printed out as many pictures of the country as I could find to try and make the report longer. When everyone else handed in five- and six-page reports, I might as well have made a whole book—I had twenty-one pages of text and nine of pictures! While my experiences have never been as dramatic as Monica’s, I can understand why she felt compelled to try and break out of her usual perfectionism—even if that meant hurting her family and friends. Overall, I think Multiple Choice should be a top pick for kids, particularly ones who like realistic fiction. Janet Tashjian is a talented author who makes the characters in this story seem lifelike and the many anagrams Monica includes with her humor, such as Maybe the letters in Lynn’s name saved her—that since Lynn can’t be rearranged into something else, she’s destined to live a simple, easy life without complications. I, on the other hand, have IN COMA to deal with, among other things. are both amusing and give readers a sense of her desperation. The undertones of Monica’s disorder are balanced by this story’s lighthearted feel, which come together nicely at the end of the book, along with Monica’s realization about who she is inside. Readers will find themselves, as I did, both sympathizing with Monica and feeling angry with her as she unknowingly loses control of her life. All of these elements mixed together make this story an excellent read for kids and adults alike. Lauren Porter, 12Berlin, Connecticut
