(84) Crossing Stones by Helen Frost
Set during nine months from the spring of 1917 to early 1918, Crossing Stones presents the story of two families, neighbors and close friends, who are coping with the first World War as best they know how. Crabapple Creek separates the two properties and the family members use crossing stones as a bridge. The poems focus on three of the five children, telling the story from the points-of-view of Muriel, Emma and Ollie.
Muriel Jorgensen is bright and outspoken. She loses the Valedictorian spot at her high school graduation to a boy because her constant questions, viewed as challenges, has alienated the head teacher. She knows too well that, had she been a boy, her intellectual curiosity would have been rewarded. Emma Norman is Muriel's best friend. She and her older brother, Frank, have always been close to Muriel and her younger brother, Ollie. Ollie, friend to Emma, adores Frank and wants to enlist although he is only sixteen. Finally, there's Frank, the Norman's eldest and only son and Grace, the youngest Jorgensen. We learn about them through the eyes of Muriel, Ollie and Emma.
Frank has enlisted and having completed Basic Training, visits the families before shipping out. He would like to take his friendship with Muriel to a different level but Muriel, though she adores him, demurs. Emma can't see why Muriel is resistant to this. She assumes, like everyone else that Muriel and Frank will marry. Ollie's desire to run away, lie about his age and enlist grows stronger every day. He wants to catch up with Frank, fight the war with him and return home.
Muriel's poems are free verse and zig-zag all over the page. Ollie and Emma's poems are rounded. I hadn't thought too much about the poetic forms as I zeroed right in on the stories each poem told. Later, I learned, courtesy of the author's note on the poem's forms, that Ollie and Emma's poems are known as cupped sonnets and were purposely shaped round as the crossing stones in the creek. Muriel's poems reflect her free-thinking, free-wheeling spirit as she pushes up against some, pulls away from others. So fitting for mercurial Muriel. The metaphor of the stones is just beautiful and works in so many ways.
While students may not learn specifics about the war, battles and strategy, they will understand how it shaped life on the U. S. home-front. Readers will learn (or want to) more about the Suffragist march on Washington and the deadly flu epidemic that swept the nation. Though the families are fictional, the love and loss, anger and confusion that both confront in Crossing Stones give readers an accurate glimpse into the time. Midway through the book, I was reading through tears. So, make sure to keep the tissues handy.
There is much that I would like to share with my students when I booktalk this book, such as the wonder of the cupped sonnet and the rhyme pattern that Ms. Frost chose to distinguish Ollie and Emma's stone poems. I would also share the article that Ms. Frost wrote for the April issue of VOYA called Crazy Jim and the Librarian: Hearing Voices and Finding the Story in Crossing Stones.
For some reason, I have a special place in my heart for novels set during WWI. There isn't all that much out there, especially compared to novels set during World War II. I would've picked Crossing Stones up merely because it was written by Helen Frost. I'm a great fan of her work. Frost + WWI = Double delight.