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OLDER FICTION
Dubois, Caroline Brooks

Ode to a Nobody

304 pp. | Holiday | November, 2022 | Trade ISBN 978-0-8234-5156-2 $18.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-0-8234-5404-4 $11.99
(2) YA In this verse novel, eighth grader Quinn is dealing with a lot of tension and change: her parents are constantly fighting, her best friend is drifting away, and her own sense of self is shifting. Then a tornado hits her neighborhood; her day-to-day life is disrupted, and fissures in her closest relationships are cracked wide open. The story unfolds in three parts: "The Before," "During and Immediately After," and "The After." Throughout her honest first-person narration, Quinn takes refuge in writing and, with a sympathetic teacher's encouragement, slowly begins to see herself as a poet. School assignments introduce her to a variety of forms, such as acrostic, cinquain, diamante, and found poems. Eventually she shares her own evocative free verse: "I'm going to keep / write-thinking / on who / I mean / to be"; "Choose a path--and do what it takes / to walk it, even when it hurts." DuBois moves back and forth between adolescent angst in a conversational voice and insightful reflection full of metaphor and personification in this thought-provoking novel.
Reviewer: | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2023

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