The Brothers Torres

The Picnic Basket: The Brothers Torres • YA fiction
Voorhees, Coert. The Brothers Torres. Hyperion Books for Children, 2008, 316 pages.

Coert Voorhees’s first novel set in small-town New Mexico is an enthralling delight to read. Fast-paced, real and immediate, its characters face present day high school concerns—family, friendships, race, class, ownership, romance, and violence—with honesty and wry humor. Although I found it irritating in the first couple of chapters, the manner in which the first-person narrator, Frankie Towers, habitually separates from himself to observe himself is astonishingly well-done, imitating the self-consciousness of adolescent experience; within a few chapters I was hooked, with no desire to set down the book. His longings and desires contrast against the reality of his situation—where he’s the “good son” working at the family restaurant while his athletically-gifted older brother with college scholarship in hand is given the latitude to run wild (while his parents believe he’s studying or practicing football). Towers’ torn loyalties, desire to gain social status, longing to date the beautiful Rebecca, and sense of personal inadequacy in the company of football heroes and the bad cholos. Heritage—Spanish, white or Native American—is vitally important to the characters and yet easily joked about among friends. The Spanish language terms peppering the text add credibility and the many English translations easily woven into the story allow readers unfamiliar with Spanish to understand, and to learn bits of a rising language in the English-speaking USA.

This tale, authentically told, yet able to cross into the consciousness of diverse readers, earns a Picnic Basket rating of 5 from me. It will easily breach the cultural divides of the United States to bring YA readers of all cultures to a better understanding of the pressures of being a young, Latino-American male in the Southwest. The Brothers Torres is the dessert of a well-rounded picnic. Provide it as a free-choice title for grades 8 and nine; consider studying it as part of a literature course for grades 10 and above.

Watch for Voorhees’ name, as he is destined to be a rising star in the world of YA Latino-American literature.

Picnic Basket: 5

I look forward to reading this novel again.

Cynthia Winfield

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing

Anderson, M.T. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Traitor to the Nation Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves. Candlewick Press: October 2008, 592pp. Review originally written for The Picnic Basket

Volume I, a New York Times Bestseller and National Book Award winner, obviously appealed to an adult readership, and this volume will also.

Anderson’s second volume of Private Octavian Nothing’s life gives voice to a heretofore silent segment of society in US history—the slaves of African descent living along the eastern seaboard around the time of the Revolutionary War. With a keen eye for detail and an ear for language too-frequently missing in current YA fiction, even quality literature, Octavian’s life is narrated through his journals and through letters by and about him. His story is an historian’s delight: detail of civilian life in a besieged Boston; the story of Lord Dunsmore’s Royal Ethiopian Army—told by an enlisted private; the story of a cautious, somewhat reticent, well-educated black man living among the ordinary, illiterate ranks; details of life aboard ship and in battle in the late eighteenth century U.S.; and the multitude of men’s stories given voice through Octavian’s pen.

Scholars of US and African American history will find a multitude of enjoyment within these pages; however, the text is not for the faint of heart. The vocabulary and shear length are challenging, and I imagine a large portion of the students I have taught would abandon the text before finishing. Even so, the two volumes of Octavian’s life belong in public and school libraries nationwide, and on gift lists of readers with any interest in the topic. In my experience, young readers will persevere longer with a book given as a gift, even though it may challenge their abilities, and that tendency could be a viable avenue for bringing these important historical voices to life.

Teachers, this book offers a breadth and depth of knowledge unsurpassed in historical YA literature. With the guidance and assistance of a whole-class or literature circle read, Private Octavian Nothing’s story would be ideal for interdisciplinary study. Addressing the entire text might require the better part of a semester; however, the return on this investment may be astounding. Try it!

Even though the text will be too challenging for many an independent reader, this book earns a Picnic Basket rating of 5 from me for its historical accuracy and realism, and its literary merit.