Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 04/01/2014 Gr 6–10—Two eighth grade girls—so different and yet so alike. Jasmine has moved from New Hampshire to Clover, Connecticut, looking for a fresh start. Her father's death from cancer filled her with a rage that culminated in a physical assault on a girl where she used to live. Now her mother is working two jobs and they live in a trailer park, which Jasmine finds humiliating. Her anger smolders. In contrast, Maddie appears to have it all—caring parents, three siblings, a beautiful home. Yet Maddie has her own issues—she harbors a one-sided sibling rivalry exacerbated by an identity crisis, and she is further humiliated when she doesn't make the soccer team and her best friend does. Maddie and Jasmine's Emily Dickinson project brings the two girls together. Over the course of the story, both girls act out, seek forgiveness, and then turn around to repeat the same mistakes. Poetry winds throughout—some classics and some original in the voices of Clover's eighth grade students. When Maddie and Jasmine reach an impasse with nowhere to hide, they are forced to take a unflinching look at themselves. This is a sometimes painful story tempered with honesty, growth, and a true effort to move on in an imperfect world.—Kathy Cherniavsky, Ridgefield Library, CT - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Bulletin for the Center... - 07/01/2014 Jasmine’s life has fallen apart since the death of her father, and her mother has decided they need a fresh start in a new town. Since even with her mother working two jobs they can only afford to live a trailer park, Jasmine feels even more helpless, hating the way the other girls in her new school, particularly Maddie, seem to have everything Jasmine covets. Maddie, however, is in the midst of her own crisis. She lives in the shadow of her perfect sister, and when she fails to make the eighth-grade soccer team, she knows it’s only a matter of time until her soccer- obsessed best friend, who was selected for the team, drifts away. The alternating first-person narration highlights the misunderstandings between the girls as they base their judgments on appearances and interpret behaviors through the lenses of their own inner conflicts. Though their circumstances are vastly different, their worries and insecurities prompt them to similar behaviors, namely theft, and their struggles with dishonesty and its aftermath are sensitively portrayed as they learn to approach each other with empathy rather than jealousy. Both girls are budding wordsmiths, so their observations are peppered with witty similes and vivid images, and the poems they share at their teacher’s prompting are heartfelt and lyrical. In the tradition of Frances O’Roark Dowell, Pakkala manages to capture a poignant moment in tween life, when friendships strain and girls are struggling to find their voices and assert their identities. Mistakes and tensions are interlaced with tender moments and liberating laughter, self-protective lies with explosive honesty; this is not girl, interrupted but girl, launched. KC - Copyright 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.