LS 5603 LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS

Review of WHAT IS GOODBYE?

A. Grimes, Nikki. WHAT IS GOODBYE? Illustrated by Raul Colon. New York: Hyperion, 2004.

B. Summary and Impressions. Plot is really not applicable to much poetry but it is the centerpiece of this novella in verse. Each page has one poem and they all have their own title but the volume is totally built around one truth. Jaron is dead and he has left a younger brother and sister and two wounded parents behind. The book takes the reader through the first year of family life without Jaron

C. Literary Merit:
This is a strong and powerful book about people who have become so weak their knees want to buckle. Grimes writes with such insight and detail that one is not surprised to find in her introduction and author’s note that she lost her own father at the tender age of fifteen.

Grimes has done a big service to children who have lost someone in their household at a very early age and also the parents, teachers, counselors and clergymen that aim to help these young and impressionable children to heal and move forward.

The artwork appears surreal and sepia colored. Colon chooses almost exclusively blues, greens, and golds. For a young person the pictures are very helpful and add much. Most of the illustrations show the facial expressions of Jesse and Jerilyn as they pass through many different stages of grief. The book would work as well for adults with or without the pictures in my view. The cover however is extreme in it’s beauty with blue teal and aged tomato red backgrounds and the troubled faces of a young boy and girl the size of three postage stamps in the top middle third of the book. In the right corner of the picture of the children is a black bird faced diagonally forward. Whether the bird is a crow or raven the symbolism of death will be familiar to many with previous exposure to myths, legends of many cultures.

The book can be seen as a poetic version of the groundbreaking ON DEATH AND DYING by Elisabeth Kubler Ross. The stages are laid out and as is common and very realistic the siblings move back and forth between the stages. They dream of Jaron. They don’t know how to make their Dad smile or their Mom stop crying and hold their hands. From disbelief, to anger, and acceptance this volume gives anyone much to think about but would certainly be a superior addition to bibliotherapy tools, especially for younger readers. Middle school and high school students would not protest about the simplicity of the book because it resonates deeply early on. There are both rhyming stanzas and free verse in this moving volume. Should be in every grade school library or media center collection as well as neighborhood public libraries.



One of the more poignant lines in the volume for me is this:

“What is goodbye?
Where is the good in it?
One leaves
and many hearts
are broken.
There must be
a better arithmetic
somewhere.”

The book is certainly worthy of a medal or high honor both for its quality and subject matter.

REVIEW EXCERPTS:

BOOKLIST opines: Grimes often chooses rhymed couplets for Jesse's voice, and the singsong sounds and tight rhythm create a young tone that's indicative of Jesse's age but, nonetheless, feels distractingly at odds with the somber subject and raw emotions--feelings that Grimes gets just right. Moving and wise, these are poems that beautifully capture a family's heartache as well as the bewildering questions that death brings, and they reinforce the message in Grimes' warm author's note: "There's no right or wrong way to feel when someone close to you dies." Recommended for Grades 4-8.

SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL comments: Grade 3-8–Grimes's novella in verse is a prime example of how poetry and story can be combined to extend one another. When their brother dies, Jerilyn and Jesse cope with the anger, confusion, and the silence that grief brings to their family. Jesse's rhyming verse faces his older sister's free-verse comments on her experiences. When Jesse hits a home run in a league game soon after his brother's death, he glows, "I took off around the field,/legs pumping like lightning!/I slid into home plate clean./Man, I'm so cool,/I'm frightening!/...What am I supposed to do,/spend each minute crying?/I wish I could please you, Mom,/but I'm sick of trying." Jerilyn muses, "It's his right to smile,/isn't it?/To be delirious?/So what if I don't understand?/This ghost town,/draped in shadow,/is desperate for/a few more watts of light." Grimes handles these two voices fluently and lucidly, shaping her characters through her form. Colón's paintings in muted colors combine imagism with realism to create an emotional dreamscape on nearly every page. The clean design combined with the book's short, easy pace and small size give readers a comfortable place from which to listen to the characters as they make their way from "Getting the News" to "Anniversary," and finally to "Ordinary Days." The book closes with a poem in two voices, and Jesse and Jerilyn come together for a new family photograph. "Smile!"–and readers will. Fans of Vera B. Williams's Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart (Greenwillow, 2001) will appreciate this powerful title.–

REVIEWS ACCESSED FROM:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Goodbye-Nikki-Grimes/dp/0786807784/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7575722-4136600?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192246866&sr=8-1


CONNECTIONS:

The book that immediately comes to mind is Charlotte Zolotow’s MY GRANDSON LEW. Not many books could ever top that one for any age as mother and child grieve for the loss of a father and grandfather.