Fiction or Poetry?

Have you noticed anything different about young adult fiction recently? More and more novels are being written in verse. Why this sudden trend? This style of writing has been around for some time. Virginia Euwer Wolff wrote Make Lemonade (Holt, 1993) and True Believer (Atheneum, 2001) in free verse. Mel Glenn has successfully used free verse to write several outstanding novels. Sharon Creech, Nikki Grimes, Angela Johnson, Ron Koertge, and Jacqueline Woodson have all recently published novels in verse, and it seems likely more will follow.

Whatever the cause may be of this trend, I welcome it. Novels in verse can be an appealing, accessible introduction for students turned off by poetry or reluctant to read it. The verse authors write for these books is not like what most students are forced to study in class—it does not require analysis and explication. It is straightforward, but it retains the rhythm and succinctness of traditional poetry. By writing their stories in verse, authors offer readers a voyeuristic perspective not possible with prose. Poetry lends itself well to introspection and intense emotion. There is also a more practical attraction for students—novels in verse are a shorter and faster read. The substantial white space on the pages of these books certainly appeals to reluctant readers.

Clearly, novels in verse are popular with young adult authors. In 2002, six new authors made their debut with novels in verse. Marlene Carvell's Who Will Tell My Brother? (Hyperion, 2002) tells the story of a half-American Indian high school student who tries to convince school officials to get rid of offensive Indian mascots used by the sports teams. After the Death of Anna Gonzales (Holt, 2002), Terri Fields's story of high school students coping with the suicide of a classmate, is reminiscent of Mel Glenn's Split Image (HarperCollins, 2000). In Lorie Ann Grover's Loose Threads (McElderry, 2002), seventh-grader Kay Garber tries to deal with her beloved grandmother's battle with breast cancer. Lindsay Lee Johnson's Soul Moon Soup (Front St., 2002) is the story of a girl who goes to live with her grandmother in the country when her father leaves and she and her mother are unable to survive in the city. April Halprin Wayland's Girl Coming in for a Landing (Knopf, 2002) recounts the ups and downs of one teenage girl's school year. Most novels in verse are realistic fiction with a contemporary setting, but among the few exceptions is Hugh Montgomery's The Voyage of the Arctic Tern (Candlewick, 2002), a high-seas adventure that spans several centuries. Another stunning debut novel in verse is Helen Frost's Keesha's House (Farrar, 2003), a beautifully written story of a girl who finds a refuge for troubled teens who cannot face their problems alone.

Sonya Sones made an impressive debut with Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy (HarperCollins, 1999), a haunting novel of a girl trying to cope with her sibling's mental breakdown, which is based upon the author's own experiences. Sones followed up with the equally dynamic What My Mother Doesn't Know (S & S, 2001), the story of a boy-crazy 15-year-old girl who is trying to figure out the difference between love and lust. Juan Felipe Herrera's excellent CrashBoomLove (Univ. of New Mexico, 1999) tells the story of Mexican-American 16-year-old high school student César García, who deals with the pain of his father leaving home and watching his mother struggle to support them alone.

Virginia Euwer Wolff is a pioneer of the novel in verse. The touching story of the friendship that develops between Jolly and LaVaughn in Make Lemonade, and the continuing story of LaVaughn in True Believer are compelling examples of the form. It is hard to imagine the powerful, real voices of these characters coming through as well in prose.

Mel Glenn is another pioneer of this style of storytelling. He started his career writing poetry collections like Class Dismissed! (1982; o.p.), Back to Class (1988; o.p.), and My Friend's Got This Problem, Mr. Candler (1991, all Clarion), in which poems are connected by common settings or themes, but not closely enough to categorize them as novels. Who Killed Mr. Chippendale? A Mystery in Poems (1996) was the first of five novels in verse Glenn wrote that are set in or related to the fictitious Tower High School. Writing in free verse, Glenn uses an array of voices to tell the story of Robert Chippendale, a teacher shot to death at the beginning of the school day. Glenn followed that title with The Taking of Room 114: A Hostage Drama in Poems (1997), the suspenseful story of a teacher who holds his senior history class hostage at gunpoint. Jump Ball: A Basketball Season in Poems (1997, all Lodestar) tells the story of how the Tower High Tigers are having the best season ever when tragedy strikes. An interracial romance and murder are the subjects of Foreign Exchange: A Mystery in Poems (Morrow, 1999), an outstanding story about prejudice. In Glenn's most recent novel in verse, Split Image: A Story in Poems (HarperCollins, 2000), Tower High School student Laura Li commits suicide in the library, and the people who knew her try to understand why. The author's use of multiple perspectives to tell his stories would not work with prose. Verse gives authenticity and distinction to the individual voices.

Several high-profile children's and young adult authors have successfully tried their hand at novels in verse. Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust (Scholastic, 1997), a heartbreaking story about a teenage girl living in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, was awarded the 1998 Newbery Medal. Telling her story in verse, Hesse gives Billie Jo's affecting experiences all the more emotional impact. In Witness (Scholastic, 2001), Hesse tells a powerful story based on real events about the attempts of the Ku Klux Klan to infiltrate a small Vermont town in the early 1920s, and the impact it has upon its citizens. As in Glenn's novels, verse lends itself well in this story to capturing the individual voices of its many characters. Robert Cormier's Frenchtown Summer (Delacorte, 1999) is a poignant coming-of-age story based upon the author's childhood experiences. Writing the story in blank verse, Cormier brings a deeper sense of intimacy to this impressionistic portrait of a young boy. Angela Johnson's Running Back to Luddie (Scholastic/Orchard, 2001) tells the story of a young teen living with her father and aunt who reflects on her family while she waits to meet her mother, whom she has never known. In Ron Koertge's disturbing and powerful The Brimstone Journals (Candlewick, 2001), 15 high school students reveal the growing violence in their lives. In 17 (Cricket/Marcato, 2002), anthologist and poet Liz Rosenberg uses prose poems to tell the story of 17-year-old Stephanie's journey from childhood to womanhood as she experiences first love and faces her fear that she may have inherited her mother's mental illness. Margaret Wild, well known for her picture books, wrote her first novel for teens in verse. Jinx (Walker, 2002) is a powerful story about a girl named Jen who starts calling herself Jinx when her two boyfriends both die. In Jacqueline Woodson's Locomotion (Putnam, 2003), 11-year-old Lonnie, separated from his sister and living in a foster home, writes a series of poems about his life after the death of his parents.

Free verse is also the chosen style for authors of books in which poetry plays a major role in the story or in the lives of the characters. Sharon Creech's Love That Dog (HarperCollins, 2001) tells the story of Jack, a middle school student who overcomes his animosity toward poetry when he reads and enjoys poems written by Walter Dean Myers, and surprises himself by writing some of his own. In Nikki Grimes'sBronx Masquerade (Dial, 2002), students at a Bronx high school studying the Harlem Renaissance begin writing poetry themselves and through it reveal their innermost thoughts and fears to their classmates. In Ron Koertge's Shakespeare Bats Cleanup (Candlewick, 2003), a teenaged baseball player forced to stay home from school for months while he recuperates from mononucleosis starts writing poetry out of boredom and discovers many things about himself in the process.

A question that seems to perplex some librarians is how to categorize these books. Are they fiction? Are they poetry? Or are they a new genre altogether? There have been recent discussions on the CHILD-LIT and YALSA-BK listservs about what is the best place to shelve these books—in the nonfiction section with other poetry or in the fiction section with the other novels. Do not look at the CIP page in these books for guidance, especially if hoping for consistency. Glenn's Who Killed Mr. Chippendale? is classified as fiction, but his subsequent four novels in verse are assigned the 811 Dewey number. What makes the first book more of a novel than the others? All are written in the same style. Sonya Sones's two novels in verse are classified as fiction but After the Death of Maria Gonzales and Girl Coming in for a Landing are both designated as poetry. The Library of Congress obviously cannot make up its mind whether these books are fiction or poetry, both, or neither.

My solution is to put them all in the fiction section. After all, these books are telling an invented story just like any novel. The poems are much like very short chapters, and the verse in many of these books often blurs the line between poetry and prose.

What should librarians be doing to promote these wonderful books to readers? Introduce them as you would any other novel. Put them on display. Booktalk them to your classes. Novels in verse are not a hard sell in my library. The provocative themes in most of these books are enough to grab readers. Many students will at first shrink away at the mention of poetry because they have had bad experiences with it. It is not poetry that is the problem; it is the way it is still widely taught. Instead of encouraging students to appreciate and enjoy poetry, they are taught to "understand" it—that is, understand it the way the textbook and/or teacher tells them. If students will read no other poetry, give them novels in verse. When they balk at the mention of poetry, I tell them to try just a few pages. If they do not like it, they can return it. Very few students have brought their books back. That alone is reason enough to celebrate these novels in verse and to look forward to the continuance of the trend.