ROCKING CHAIR MOON

This novel in verse follows the lives of a brother and sister as they grow, face loss, and find themselves.

Ben Duran is 8 years old, and his sister, Carly, is 11 months his junior as their dual story begins in 1996. The siblings narrate their lives in free verse, trading viewpoints through 2007 and beyond. From the first, their voices establish differing personalities and concerns. Ben’s two years in kindergarten—“Dad smiled his rocking-chair-moon smile / and said it was my redshirt year”—make him “bigger and stronger and wiser and / ready for any challenge” compared to other students. Yet Ben keeps encountering challenges throughout his life, embodiments of his nightmare bogeyman, that can’t be conquered through physical achievements. Carly introduces herself as a “smarty-pants” with “an IQ that can’t be measured.” She deliberately uses advanced vocabulary (signaled with caps and italics) but, like Ben, discovers that strengths don’t mean invulnerability, as in this grief haiku: “To hell with big words. / Not one of them can describe / the pain in my heart.” In the end, both siblings find hope after loss, as seen in Ben’s baby girl’s smile, “the sweetly haunting shape of / a rocking-chair moon.” Patneaude, a prolific writer of children’s books and YA novels, skillfully uses verse to pare the extraneous. After Ben’s college girlfriend dumps him, for example, he suddenly joins the Army; just two lines capture the moment his decision sinks in, his “anger dissolving, / heart drumming.” Images can be quite striking, such as the ominous feel of “a cold slice of yellow light / under your parents’ bedroom door.” But at times, the verse becomes mawkish, as when the siblings’ mother imagines swallows shedding “small but bitter tears” when their “babies aren’t babies anymore.”

Poetic compression makes a vivid impact in this generally strong family story.