Freymann-Weyr, Garret. My Heartbeat. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
Annotation: Ellen's first love happens to be her brother's best friend. Only, maybe the two boys were more than friends...
Justification for rejection: Ellen's narration of her first year of high school is a well-paced and highly thoughtful story. A smart, quiet girl whose academic development is closely watched by her determined, exacting father, her only friends are her older brother Link and his best friend James. Ellen has had a crush on James since the seventh grade and when James and Link's friendship falters under the weight of questioned sexual orientation, James and Ellen's romantic relationship takes off.
The world these teens inhabit is an elite and privileged one. Ellen's father gives her Jane Austen and Edith Wharton novels to read; they watch foreign films and visit art museums; they attend a private Manhattan high school; money is not in short supply. This book takes on both homosexuality and the intense pressure that gifted and groomed teens endure as they face decisions about the shape their future will take. Link is the more obviously gifted of the siblings (he's a math whiz) and must bear the substantial weight of his father's hopes and expectations of great success. The possibility that Link is gay looms as a large and mostly not-talked-about elephant in the family room; their father couches his objections to homosexuality in terms of Link's future opportunities. Ellen learns a lot about love and sex as she comes of age, but the bigger lesson is her realization that the world is riddled with "unwritten social laws" that everyone must decide for themselves how to contend with.
This book is full of keen observations and "a-ha", quotable sentences - perhaps to a fault. All of the characters are so well-spoken and terse as to be slightly unbelievable, lacking some of the rough qualities that flesh them out of the literary world and into a breathing, imperfect and curious human. While it's certainly an intelligent and memorable treatment of many adolescent issues, it falls short of exceptional.
Genre: Coming-of-age/Printz/realistic.
1 comment:
ooo, things are starting to shape up for the voting table at the end of the semester. Thanks, Alaina, for providing the opportunity to highlight an example of a contrasting view on a nominated title!
As we progress further into the semester, this kind of back and forth dialogue will accelerate as more attention begins to pivot towards the voting process. There have been cogent arguments presented on the nomination side and now, with this dissent, a well-articulated contradictory perspective.
Ongoing synthesis of each contribution will influence the shaping of each new assessment as more and more of you hone in on the nominees, and will help each student weigh the amalgam of criteria factors involved in making that often difficult final decision. At the real world voting table, a lot of soul searching goes into the selection process; each committee member struggles with the various criteria expectations in their own way, all intent on their mission to sift out the most extraordinary from a pool of strong titles. Like a loving parent who cares deeply for all their children, committee members agonize over which beloved "child" to pass over in order to select the one (or in our case, 2--one fiction, one non-fiction) that models the exemplary and merits the highest level of recognition. It's not that each book doesn't have qualities that merit notice--they wouldn't have made the nomination list if that weren't the case; it's the difficult and sometimes heartbreaking need to sift out the rare gems that will withstand the test of time and scrutiny.
I can already see that organic process begin to unfold within our group and am so very impressed by the calibre of serious and insightful evaluation of each title. As an instructor, I can tell you it's pretty darn exciting to see that passion ignite in all of you and to watch the dialogue evolve and rise to the same standard of professional exchange I have observed over many an award table.
Thanks again, Alaina, for the opportunity to highlight this aspect of the Mock Printz process--it's just wonderful to watch all the pieces start to fall into place (and hopefully make a lot more sense now that there's been some experience with the process).
adela
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