RUBBER HOUSES -- Ellen Yeomans

Little, Brown and Company -- hc
New York -- 2007 -- 152pp
ISBN: 0-316-10647-X

Told entirely in verse, a high-school aged girl tells the story of her little brother's bout with cancer and his death.

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Yeoman's tackles the delicate subject again, of the death of a youngster. I know Ellen, and I know that it is a demon she is battling constantly.

I'm not sold on the idea of telling this story through a series of poems -- in large part, of course, because I so dislike reading poetry myself. That said, hoever, I thought this story was told a little easier, and more convincingly because of its unique format. It seems totally plausible that a teenage girl would write a great deal of poetry and tell this story in that way.

However, I did feel that some opportunities were missed. A girl writing poetry might not write so directly, all the time, about what has happened, but a sense of when she's feeling ought to come about in some more mundane writings. None of the poems were simple, everyday, kinds of writing that I thought should occur. For instance, suppose she wrote a couple of poems early in the book about liking cats, but at some point after her brother's death she writes a poem about a cat that got in her way and how she hates cats. That's the sort of opportunity missed here.

Even so, I enjoyed the writing more than I expected, and thought this did a good job of getting to the heart of a teenager.