Something Terrible Happened

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gillian's life in New York with her mother and grandmother is idyllic in many ways; cocooned in the culturally rich circle of their generous love, she has been raised to consider herself an ``Island'' girl-even though her forebears left the West Indies when her great-grandmother was three years old. But when her mother is diagnosed with AIDS, 10-year-old Gillian is sent to stay with her dead father's ``all white'' family in Tennessee, strangers to her. Coping with her mother's death in this alien setting forces Gillian to rely on strength gathered from her mother's stories. This unusual book charts its own serendipitous course, stopping at the whim of the storytelling narrator's remembrances (Porte has previously demonstrated her storytelling gifts in such picture books as When Grandma Almost Fell Off the Mountain). Because the speaker takes little part in the action here, her self-referential asides can be distracting at first. But in these interpolations are windows that peer candidly into the soul, at the same time introducing timeless remedies for modern crises in the form of culturally diverse and often funny folktales. Once in concert with its unique rhythm, the reader will burrow into this story and relish its nuggets of insight. Ages 11-14. (Oct.)

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-Raised by her mother and grandmother with a strong sense of her Caribbean roots, 10-year-old Gillian rarely thinks about her white father. He died when she was three, killed by the drugs that followed him back from Vietnam. Her only contact with his relatives has been a handful of long-distance phone calls on holidays. All that changes when Gillian's mother is diagnosed with AIDS and the girl is sent to Tennessee to live with her white uncle and his family. The next two years are a difficult path through loss and healing, self-discovery, and acceptance. Gillian has to find the family ties that connect her to these strangers while she is learning to live without the mother she deeply misses. Porte has a real storyteller's flair, capturing the important incidents in Gillian's life with an eye for just the right detail. She makes a bold choice of narrator here; a family friend who is both inside and outside the action at the same time tells the story. Though not entirely successful, it offers a wider perspective (but not a deeper one) than a simpler first-person narrative. Porte doesn't sidestep the issue of AIDS either, though it's not her focus. To Gillian, what matters is that her mother is dying, not what she is dying from, and the novel reflects that emphasis.-Randy Meyer, School Library Journal