Learning to Swim

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Using spare vignettes laid out like poetry, Turner (Nettie's Trip South) recalls the summer she was six years old, when she was sexually abused by a neighbor. Convincingly assuming a child's voice, the narrative blends Annie's routine activities such as playing with dolls and swimming lessons with darker images of the neighbor boy's transgressions (the boy "telling me to touch him/ in a hard, breathless voice, and I didn't even know/ I could say/ no"). Because Annie lacks the vocabulary to describe what is happening to her, it is her actions that most often imply her emotions (she draws an angry picture, she brushes her teeth five times a day, she tries to hide). Turner also describes Annie's painful longing to confide in someone (she says of her father, "I wish my words/ were smoke/ he could breathe in") but she is silenced by fear of what the neighbor boy's might do if she tells--until Annie's mother extracts the truth. Throughout the volume, the narration shifts, sometimes addressing the reader, a few times her abuser; sometimes speaking in the immediate present and others recalling the recent past. The narrative itself may be at times disjointed, but the emotional truth comes through clearly. If older readers can get past the youth of the narrator they will likely appreciate the poetic voice and courage of the heroine. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

"Using spare vignettes laid out like poetry, Turner recalls the summer she was six years old, when she was sexually abused by a neighbor," wrote PW. "The emotional truth comes through clearly." Ages 12-up. (June) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Children's Literature

Although this book may help most readers to achieve a better understanding of the effect of sexual abuse upon a young child, it is to be especially recommended to those recovering from such an experience and their friends and family members who are attempting to help them cope with their pain. The poet deftly juxtapositions the idyllic summer days she spends at the family's vacation home with a secret horror. Particularly touching are the lines about the blue willowware plates. She felt as though the people pictured on the plates moved when no one was looking and later she wishes she were able to enter their world, but then a plate falls and breaks. The author draws a comparison between overcoming trauma and learning to swim and urges other victims of abuse to tell so that eventually they will feel "light and airy" after they have lifted the secret burden from their shoulders. Several help lines are listed in the back of the book. 2000, Scholastic, Ages 12 up, $14.95. Reviewer: Carolyn Mott Ford

School Library Journal

Gr 6 Up-"Telling is what matters./You have to catch/the words you've been hiding/inside-pulling the words up/and out-dropping them into someone's/surprised face that/is what matters-." In this honest, touching, subtle book of free verse, the author examines a summer she'd rather forget. A long ago season of swimming and picking blueberries sent her spirit sailing, until one dreaded day when the child's world was shattered. An older neighborhood boy sexually assaulted her over the course of that vacation, and Annie was silenced. Her days of floating and buoyant joy left her gasping for air and sinking instead of swimming. Each illuminating one-page poem is filled with images of pain, longing, and questions. She imagines herself, "flying out/of my body/to the corner of the room-I will stay here/until it is safe/to come down." Once the child realized that admitting her pain would free her, she could return to learning to swim-both figuratively and literally. The metaphor is carried throughout the pages effectively, and the book is divided into three chapters-"sailing," "sinking," and "swimming." It closes with a brief insight into the author's personal experience with assault, and the final page is a list of related hot lines and Web sites. A moving and powerful memoir.-Sharon Korbeck, Waupaca Area Public Library, WI Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In episodic free verse, Turner tells of the summer she was raped repeatedly by a neighbor boy. The six-year-old narrator relates both joyful and horrifying scenes in short lines of three or fewer beats: "the motor purrs and drips, / we speak softly / as if in church," "and I am cutting you / into little pieces / that I will bury / in the meadow / outside / when there is no moon / and no stars." Each scene is completed in less than a page, and as the verses are printed only on odd pages (facing blank white), each stands alone sharply, then fades to the next, as if they were episodes in a home movie, with Turner's ever-present rhythm running in the background like the projector's motor. Her language is regular and prose-like, and though no one poem stands on its own, the entire narrative works together as one. The book is divided into three sections, "sailing," "sinking," and "swimming," harking to the tenacious metaphor of the title. Two longer poems, in italics and in Turner's adult voice, ceremoniously commence and complete the exorcism of the memoir. Though not as strong as the main narrative (and not necessary to it), they provide a contextual entry for the teenage audience the book is intended for (and will appeal to, despite the character's age). Teen readers will appreciate this work not just for its story, but for its illustration of the writing process and the power one can wield with words. Three national 24-hour help lines are listed in the back. (Fiction. 12+)Urban, Betsy WAITING FOR DELIVERANCE Orchard (192 pp.) Oct. 2000 In a setting on the New York frontier in the Finger Lakes region during the 1790s, orphans Deliverance (Livy) Pelton and her younger cousin Ephraim(Eph) become burdens on the town and are sold to a seemingly uncouth and ignorant frontiersman, Gideon Gunn, at a Pauper's Auction. What follows details the lives of the Seneca Indians, especially the young Seneca, Rising Hawk, the Gunn family, Livy, Eph, and a host of other, sometimes confusing, figures who are germane to the story but who are not sharply enough defined for immediate reader identification. Thus, it becomes a matter of, "Now, which one was that?" Livy is sent away to teach spinning and weaving to Gunn's Seneca family further west on the frontier. Rising Hawk, whom we learn is Gunn's brother, serves as her guide on the long trek, making it inevitable that the clashes between the two will eventually lead to romance. A reader will gather details of life among the Seneca, their history and that of other people of the long house, and some of the cultural battles between the alien settlers, i.e., Europeans who have won the Revolutionary War, and foreshadowing of war battles to come. But readers will not know if such battles do take place and, if so, who will be victorious. Although copious and interesting notes, "A Glossary of People, Places, and Concepts," is provided, some of the information might have been easier to digest if woven into the text. Fewer characters, fewer cliff-hanging incidents, fewer stereotypes, some portraying disgustingly nasty, filthy, savage, brutal folk—Europeans all—would have strengthened the action-packed historical fiction. But some questions need responses: once, most negative stereotypes were of Native Americans; now it has gone the other way and the characters whom readers love to hate are the conquerors, those of European ancestry. Is such characterization fair or needed and will readers be aware of the dangers of such a misuse of both fiction and history? (Historical fiction. 12-14) van Laan, Nancy WHEN WINTER COMES Illus. by Susan Gaber Atheneum (40 pp.) Oct. 1, 2000