Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date.

Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.īelly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Teachers will want to pair this with Mark Pfetzer’s Within Reach: My Everest Story (1998). This and other elements such as the return of the long-lost father, bite-size chunks of information about climbing and altitude, an all-male cast, competition and suspense (can Peak be the youngest ever to summit Everest, and can he beat out a 14-year-old Nepalese boy who accompanies him?) creates the tough stuff of a “boys read.” The narrative offers enough of a bumpy ride to satisfy thrill seekers, while Peak’s softer reflective quality lends depth and some-but not too much-emotional resonance. Peak must learn to navigate the extreme and exotic terrain but negotiate a code of ethics among men. To save him, his long-lost Everest-trekking dad appears with a plan for the duo to make a life in Katmandu-a smokescreen to make Peak become the youngest person in history to summit Mount Everest. 12-15)ĭare-devil mountain-climber Peak Marcello (14), decides to scale the Woolworth Building and lands in jail. The exotic Australian countryside adds a layer of interest to a story that seems to be universal in the minds of young adults.

He skillfully intertwines the lives of the teenagers and resolves the story in a satisfying way. Herrick is a skillful storyteller and a practiced hand at verse novels like this one. Lucy thinks it’s a feral dog that was once her pet, but escaped her father’s wrath. Jake wonders about fate: Is he tied to the land as his parents are? And is his father always right? The two eventually decide to take a pilgrimage into the rocky forest in search of a wolf that they think they hear howling every night, even though wolves are not known to inhabit that terrain. Her story alternates with that of her neighbor, 15-year-old Jake Jackson. The one that weighs most heavily in Lucy’s heart is what to do about her abusive and alcoholic dad who keeps the women in the family in fear of violence. That’s an issue, but it’s not the one that concerns Lucy most. Lucy Harding lives on the appropriately named Battle Farm, located in an isolated and inhospitable area of Australia.

Slice by Steven Herrick