One More Step

A title in the new Orca Soundings series aimed at reluctant teen readers. Still angry and hurt over his parents' separation, which happened when he was a baby, 14-year-old Julian is wary of his mother's relationship with Paul. Julian realizes he and his brother must allow their mother to find happiness. But on a road trip with his mother and Paul, Julian finds that love--and happiness--comes in many guises.

"No. It's not okay. You're not going." He used the voice. "Excuse me?" "You heard me. I said no." "You can't tell me what to do!" "Oh yes I can - I'm your father!" "Since when?" Fourteen-year-old Julian's parents separated when he was a baby and he is still angry and hurt. His mother has had relationships since (all of which have ended disastrously) but this time it seems serious. Jean-Paul looks like he might be the real thing. Julian is wary and critical as he comes to terms with the fact that he and his brother may have to let down their defences and allow their mother to find happiness. On a road trip with his mother and her new beau, Julian finds that love and happiness come in many guises. In the end, he realizes that it is not blood that determines true family, but the willingness to stand together. Sheree Fitch is a best-selling author, poet and performer. Her recent title from Orca, No Two Snowflakes, a children's picturebook, was an instant bestseller. This is her first teen novel.

Lucy Schall - VOYA

This is a multi-book review. These three pattern novels, restricted by length, employ interesting but underdeveloped plots and characters. Separated from his father and in new territory with a strong, single mother, a young man in each story meets an attractive girl, receives support from a stable older man, succeeds in an intercultural experience, and makes independent choices with positive results in relation to his father's character. The stories by Butcher and Fitch employ shock openings a gory suicide, purple condoms but authentic teen voices do not have the time to develop the characters' confrontations with complex problems. In The Hemingway Tradition, Butcher's protagonist fears that he is gay, as is his father, a talented writer and athlete. After a racial incident, Shaw writes in an editorial for the school paper, "P is for People-not Prejudice." He wins praise from peers and adults and accepts his father's homosexuality and perhaps his own. The reader, never seeing the article, is unable to judge Shaw's realization. In One More Step, Fitch's character deals with his dysfunctional biological parents and his "steps". Mom marries her third serious boyfriend. Dad has a new family and a drinking problem. With two brief and mild rebellions, the protagonist adjusts even though his grandfather, his stable father figure, dies unexpectedly. In Refuge Cove, Gregg rescues and hides boat refugees. The fearful family, because of an infatuation between Gregg and their daughter, trusts him. Immigration briefly takes Gregg's mother into custody, but both the government and the town support the family. Other novels such as Jean Ferris's Eight Seconds (Harcourt, 2000), Caroline Cooney's TheTerrorist (Scholastic, 1997) and David Klass's Home of the Braves (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2002) present more thought-provoking, realistic, and motivating treatments of similar issues. VOYA CODES: 3Q 2P J S (Readable without serious defects; For the YA with a special interest in the subject; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2002, Orca Soundings/Orca, 91p,

Sheree Fitch is an educator, literary activist and author of award-winning poetry, picturebooks, non-fiction, plays and novels for all ages. In 1998 she won the prestigious Vicky Metcalf Award for a body of work inspirational to Canadian children.