I just - JUST- closed Kevin Henkes' book
Sweeping Up the Heart, (contented sigh). So calm, yet so dramatic, I got what I expected from Kevin Henkes, who is one of the best authors and illustrators out there. Also, rabbits.
I read somewhere that Kevin Henkes - who has written and illustrated lots of books about mice and kittens and rabbits - has taken to sculpting small rabbits from clay. I can't find that interview so maybe I dreamed it up! No matter. Amelia, the hero of this new book, sculpts animals of all kinds and in this book, she concentrates on rabbits.
The book is about emotions, not clay rabbits, - especially the emotions of confusion and sadness. And the book is about communicating with all kinds of people. It covers a few days of Spring Break, meeting and making a new kind of friend, seeing adults in new lights, appreciating what has always been and worrying about the future.
The set up is simple. 12-year-old Amelia lives with her father because her mother died when she was only two. Her father seems uncomfortable in his own skin, perhaps because of this great loss. They are lucky that their neighbor, Mrs. O'Brien, is there for them as housekeeper and friend.
During this Spring Break, Amelia runs to the clay studio, her home away from home, and meets Casey, the studio's owner's 12-year-old nephew! A new friend and a new kind of friend, Casey introduces Amelia to the idea of "signs" and he points out a red-haired woman as a "sign" for Amelia.
This red-haired woman ends up being more important than Casey or Amelia could imagine and not in the ways they both hoped.
Quiet, calm drama - no action scenes, no high-impact blow-ups, pulled me effortlessly along to the last page. Read it.
I do have afterthoughts.
When I was 12, I had an insight so profound that nothing before in my life prepared me for it. My life was devoid of trauma. The most disrupting thing that ever happened in our life - I mean permanently re-arranging - was the arrival of a new sibling. That happened with such regularity that by 12, I was no longer excited by yet another kid. There were 6 of us by then.
Still, the emotions that Amelia feels; the magical possibilities, the sudden appearance of adults as people with unexpected facets, the realization of change as a constant, - I felt all of those things with aching force.
But without that trauma, or other upsetting traumas, such as moving to a new home, the end of a friendship, a divorce in the family, the death of a beloved older relative, - without a life altering trauma to initiate the plot, can an author write effectively about these emotions? I mean SOMETHING has to happen in the book. Something has to change. Without a missing mother, that red-haired woman would have had little or no significance to Amelia or Casey.
Of course, other things do happen in this book. The sculpted rabbits, the friendship with Casey, Casey's home situation, - in themselves they do not make a compelling story line. It is that one fact of Amelia's person-hood, her motherless-ness, that moves everything along.
I am sure that someone has written a book that displays this time of change in a pre-teen's life, in a stable family without a huge catastrophe, effectively and well. And I suspect that I probably read some of those books. Still, a major shake-up grabs the reader's attention. That is not a bad thing.
A sudden afterthought: If the reader is a more literal person than I am, will he/she relate to a character whose situation is so very different than his/her own? Just wondering.
