Dreams–meaning hopes and goals and aspirations–can be a complicated business.  They usually aren’t, though, in Juvenile and YA books.  Usually the message there is that if you believe enough and work hard enough, you can achieve anything.  I believe that (to a point) and it’s a message with value.  But I was impressed that Aria of the Sea by Dia Calhoun, a definite YA book, tackles the question of dreams in a far more complicated way.

Cerinthe, the heroine, has always loved to dance.  She’s also a skilled folk healer, but when her skills fail to save her mother’s life, Cerinthe resolves to give up healing and sets off for the capital to join the Royal Dancing Academy.  After some slightly contrived difficulties getting in, Cerinthe quickly begins to shine at the Academy.  This puts her in fierce competition with Elliana, the reigning star pupil.

There’s a pretty good plotline and good characters, but it was really the setting and the themes that stood out to me.  Both the dancing school and other areas of the city are brought to vivid life through descriptions, and I enjoyed following Cerinthe through them.

It’s mostly the theme about dreams that has stayed with me after reading this book.  It’s a little more complex than this, but for discussion’s sake, let’s say that achieving one’s dream depends on three qualities–talent, passion and discipline.  Usually stories (and not only YA ones) assume that characters will have all three.  In Aria of the Sea, we see dancers who have the desire and the willingness to work hard, but simply don’t have the natural skill to succeed.  Elliana has the skill and the passion, but lacks discipline.  Another supporting character has the talent and the willpower but feels no joy in her dancing.  And Cerinthe–well, Cerinthe finds out another complicated thing about dreams.  Namely, it’s not always so easy to determine just what your dream really is.

In the old fairy tales, beauty and goodness (and conversely, ugliness and evil) are almost always equated.  A good character is always beautiful.  We’ve departed from that (somewhat), but I think there’s still a strong bias to make the good characters talented.  To some extent it just makes sense–a good heroine (or hero) is most of the time likable, and also possessed of qualities that will drive a plot, often some sort of talent.  As a rule I think it’s done because it works, but it’s also interesting to see a book that calls that correlation into question.  Elliana is deeply unpleasant but also extraordinarily talented–likability and talent don’t always equate.

I didn’t exactly love this book–the characters and plot were good but not landmark–but it was thought-provoking.  And another example of the depths that good YA can explore!

Other reviews:
Lectitans
The Reader’s Book Blog
I didn’t find many…anyone else?  Let me know and I’ll link yours!

I first read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton in 7^th grade.  It was one of the major book projects of the year, and I remember the teacher passing out a boxful of battered black paperbacks.  I don’t think my copy is one of those, but it is the same edition—I can’t remember anymore where I got it, and to this day I can’t figure out which character is meant to be which on the cover!

The Outsiders is about Ponyboy Curtis (that’s his real name), and his friends, the Greasers.  Not quite hoods, the Greasers are poor boys from the rough part of town, with a nasty reputation that’s partially deserved.  Their sworn enemies are the Socs (short for Socials), the rich kids in town.

The plot is about Pony, his sad-eyed friend Johnny and tough guy Dally, and what happens to them all when an altercation with the Socs gets horribly out of hand.  The book is really more about Pony’s growth than it is about the plot.  It’s about how he sees the people around him and takes what happens to them to gain new insights on the world.

The voice is so strong in this book.  It’s a shock to know that S. E. Hinton is female, and therefore was never a fourteen-year-old boy.  There’s something wonderfully artless in the writing, the kind of effortless feel that probably requires a lot of work.  There are moments that should be bad writing—when most of the characters are introduced, Pony spends a paragraph or two describing each one.  Usually narration info-dumping to describe characters annoys me and takes me right out of the story.  I quit reading a book once because it spent the first two chapters doing that.  But it works for Pony.  It doesn’t feel like a narrator telling us about characters—it’s Pony telling us about the people he knows.

All the characters are vividly drawn—hard-working Darry; lazy, good-natured Sodapop; hard-edged, angry Dally; and poor Johnny, beat up by life.  I feel like I know all of them, and I care about them—which is actually kind of remarkable.  Most of the people Pony knows, Dally especially, ought to be terrifying.  They shoplift, they carry switchblades, and they have all the external signs of juvenile delinquents.  But we get to see them from the inside, from Pony’s point of view, and it doesn’t really matter if they’re likable, or admirable—they’re Pony’s family.  I hesitate to use the word “gang,” even though it’s the obvious one, because I think it has violent connotations a little beyond what the Greasers deserve.  Let’s say they’re a pack, with all those connotations of loyalty.

The Socs aren’t portrayed as extensively, but we do meet a couple of them, especially dreamy, tough Cherry, who gives us insights into the desperate, bored recklessness of the Socs.

I suppose the ultimate messages of this book are not too radical—it’s tough all over, don’t judge by what a person seems to be, don’t become jaded by the world.  But they’re good messages, and they’re conveyed through some of the most alive fictional characters I’ve ever met.

And this book is responsible for one of the few pieces of poetry I’ve ever memorized: “Nature” by Robert Frost.  It’s a lovely poem, inside an excellent, gritty novel.

Author’s Site: http://www.sehinton.com/

Other reviews:
Misbehavin’ Librarian
The Oubliette
Susan the Librarian
I didn’t find as many as I would have expected…did I miss yours?