Poetry for World Suicide Prevention Day

Tomorrow is World Suicide Prevention Day. This year's theme is "Preventing Suicide in Multicultural Societies."

When we consider suicide among teens, most people think of high school age children. However, middle schoolers are also at risk. As teachers, I'm sure many of you have the way suicide devastates families, classmates -- the entire community of the child.

Orchards by Holly Thompson, is a YA novel in verse that looks at suicide's effects on younger teens.

A few years ago, I met poet Holly Thompson at a  Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference. Holly teaches at Yokohama City University in Japan, where she is also the regional adviser for SCBWI.

The bonds of poetry have kept us in touch. I was thrilled when Holly shared her novel-in-verse with me before it went to final edits.

Orchards is spoken in the voice of Kana Goldberg, a bicultural middle schooler growing up near New York City with her sister, Jewish father and Japanese mother. The book opens just after the suicide of one of Kana's classmates, Ruth. Concerned that Kana's circle of friends had been bullying Ruth, Kana's parents send her to spend the summer with her Japanese family.

Kana is not the only one of her friends sent away. She imagines telling Ruth:

all twenty-nine

eighth-grade girls

scattered, as Gina said,

like beads

from a necklace

snapped

but we weren't a necklace

strung in a circle

we were more

an atom:

electrons

arranged in shells

around Lisa...

the rest of us

in orbitals farther out

less bound

less stable

and you --

in the least stable

most vulnerable

outermost shell

I've read several critiques of novels-in-verse lately, complaining that they are nothing more than fiction cut into skinny lines. Not only is there poetry in Orchards, but poetic form communicates Kana's fitfulness. She is between two cultural worlds, between youth and adulthood, between grief and anger.

Because I come from a bicultural family, I connected deeply with the pulls Kana feels between her two "sides." As the mother of two kids around middle school age, I also valued the way that Holly drew Kana's wildly mixed reactions to the suicide: anger that she and her friends had been blamed, growing compassion for Ruth.

Although she balks at first, having to work on her family's mikan (a citrus native to Japan) farm, Kana uses the time in the orchards for reflection:

my arms no longer ache

my back and shoulders

feel strong

but the day is long

and when conversation stops

among the leaves

and it's just the breathing

of wind in trees

and the mee-mee-mee-meeen

of cicadas

there is much

too much

time

for my thoughts

The author visiting a mikan farm with trees in bloom.

Eventually, after another tragedy, Kana discovers a way to help her classmates honor Ruth's memory.


Holly is running a giveaway at her blog -- sending out five copies of Orchards (anywhere in the world) to middle or high school students, parents, librarians and teachers. Please stop by before September 10 to put your name in the drawing.

I've also been following Holly's blog since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami this spring. Holly been working as a volunteer, helping to clean up shops and neighborhoods. She has posted some amazing and harrowing photos, along with narrative. I'm very proud to know this amazing poet!

Holly in her clean-up gear.

Holly is busy volunteering again this week, but sent a "thank you" to all of you who visit her at Hatbooks or share Orchards with a 'tween or teen in your life.

Today's Poetry Friday host is Katie at Secrets and Sharing Soda. Does the soda come in mikan flavor?