Keesha's House
Keesha's House
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Paperback ©2013--
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Square Fish
Annotation: Seven teens facing such problems as pregnancy, closeted homosexuality, and abuse each describe in poetic forms what caused them to leave home and where they found home again.
Genre: [Novels in verse]
 
Reviews: 10
Catalog Number: #6152218
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Square Fish
Copyright Date: 2013
Edition Date: 2013 Release Date: 01/08/13
Pages: ix, 120 pages
ISBN: 0-312-64127-3
ISBN 13: 978-0-312-64127-6
Dewey: Fic
Dimensions: 21 cm.
Language: English
Reviews:
School Library Journal Starred Review

Gr 9 Up-Frost has taken the poem-story to a new level with well-crafted sestinas and sonnets, leading readers into the souls and psyches of her teen protagonists. The house in the title isn't really Keesha's; it belongs to Joe. His aunt took him in when he was 12, and now that he's an adult and the owner of the place, he is helping out kids in the same situation. Keesha needs a safe place to stay-her mother is dead; her father gets mean when he drinks, and he drinks a lot. She wants to stay in school, all these teens do, and Keesha lets them know they can stay at Joe's. There's Stephie, pregnant at 16, and terrified to tell anyone except her boyfriend. Harris's father threw him out when his son confided that he is gay. Katie's stepfather has taken to coming into her room late at night, and her mother refuses to believe her when she tells. Carmen's parents have run off, and she's been put into juvie for a DUI. Dontay is a foster kid with two parents in jail. Readers also hear from the adults in these young people's lives: teachers, parents, grandparents, and Joe. It sounds like a soap opera, but the poems that recount these stories unfold realistically. Revealing heartbreak and hope, these poems could stand alone, but work best as a story collection. Teens may read this engaging novel without even realizing they are reading poetry.-Angela J. Reynolds, Washington County Cooperative Library Services, Hillsboro, OR Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

ALA Booklist

Like Virginia Euwer Wolff's True Believer (2001) and much contemporary YA fiction, this moving first novel tells the story in a series of dramatic monologues that are personal, poetic, and immediate, with lots of line breaks that make for easy reading, alone or in readers' theater. Keesha finds shelter in a house in her inner-city neighborhood and helps other troubled teens find home and family there (like finding a sister when I'm old / enough to pick a good one). Stephie is pregnant, and she's heartbroken that her boyfriend doesn't want the baby. Harris is gay; his dad has thrown him out. Carmen is fighting addiction. Dontay's parents are in jail, and he doesn't feel comfortable in his latest foster home. Interwoven with the angry, desperate teen voices are those of the adults in their lives: caring, helpless, abusive, indifferent. In a long note, Frost talks about the poetic forms she has used, the sestina and the sonnet. But most readers will be less interested in that framework than in the characters, drawn with aching realism, who speak poetry in ordinary words and make connections.

Horn Book

Pregnancy, a DUI charge, a homophobic or abusive parent--these are just some of the trials of seven teens whose lives are directly or indirectly enriched by an adolescent safe house in an unnamed community. The idea is promising, but the book's ambitious structure--the subjects tell their stories in alternating and not especially lyrical sestinas and sonnets--results in thin characterizations and too-similar voices.

Kirkus Reviews

<p>Sestinas and sonnets carry the storyline in Frost's multi-voiced story of teens struggling to find their way in the world. While playing somewhat with the structure required, Frost underplays her virtuosity to let readers focus on the characters and their plight. Seven teen voices are heard in describing their individual need to find a secure home and in two sections the voices of various adults round out the narrative. Stephie and her boyfriend Jason struggle with a pregnancy that seems sure to blight their futures. Keesha has found Joe's house and made it her refuge, offering hope to Katie and, in turn, the others. Katie's stepfather is trying to abuse her and her mother is unwilling or unable to protect her. Carmen is trying to help Dontay, who hates his new foster home, when her drinking lands her in jail. Staying at the home of their out-of-control father, Keesha's brother Tobias sounds the wake-up call without speaking a word in the poems. His fate is a catalyst that draws the others gradually together for support. In a surprisingly rigid format, the poems manage to seem spontaneous and still carry the plot easily. With a number of threads to follow, no one character is at the center, but there is great satisfaction in seeing the narratives gradually mesh as the isolation recedes and support is given. Impressive. (Fiction. YA)</p>

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

In her first YA novel, Frost profiles seven teens in trauma, artfully revealed through sestinas and sonnets. With pregnant Stephie's opening lines, she conveys a bittersweet contrast typical of the collection: """"My parents still think I'm their little girl./ I don't want them to see me getting bigger,/ bigger every week, almost too big to hide it now."""" Katie's stepfather tries to molest her, and Harris is thrown out of the house when he reveals that he's gay. Each character ends up at Keesha's house (the house really belongs to an adult named Joe, but teen Keesha, who has her own problems, looks after the arrangements and the kids who wind up there). Some characters simply pass through, while others form a family. The adults in their lives, such as parents, a judge and even Joe, offer other perspectives on the teens' lives. The struggles may be familiar, but Frost makes her characters and their daily lives seem relevant and authentic (in one poem, Katie describes how the smallest wrinkle-a new bus schedule-brings her to tears because she now won't have time to change for work; in another, Dontay dreads being tracked down by his case worker), often using striking imagery (""""All my questions are like wind-tossed/ papers in the street,"""" Stephie writes). Making the most of the poetic forms, the author breathes life into these teens and their stories, resulting in a thoughtfully composed and ultimately touching book. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)

Word Count: 15,469
Reading Level: 4.4
Interest Level: 7-12
Accelerated Reader: reading level: 4.4 / points: 2.0 / quiz: 69793 / grade: Upper Grades
Reading Counts!: reading level:5.6 / points:7.0 / quiz:Q34849
Lexile: NP

An unforgettable narrative collage told in poems Keesha has found a safe place to live, and other kids gravitate to her house when they just can't make it on their own. They are Stephie - pregnant, trying to make the right decisions for herself and those she cares about; Jason - Stephie's boyfriend, torn between his responsibility to Stephie and the baby and the promise of a college basketball career; Dontay - in foster care while his parents are in prison, feeling unwanted both inside and outside the system; Carmen - arrested on a DUI charge, waiting in a juvenile detention center for a judge to hear her case; Harris - disowned by his father after disclosing that he's gay, living in his car, and taking care of himself; Katie - angry at her mother's loyalty to an abusive stepfather, losing herself in long hours of work and school. Stretching the boundaries of traditional poetic forms - sestinas and sonnets - Helen Frost's extraordinary debut novel for young adults weaves together the stories of these seven teenagers as they courageously struggle to hold their lives together and overcome their difficulties. Keesha's House is a 2004 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Part 1: How I see it
Part 2: White walls
Part 3: On their own
Part 4: The deep end
Part 5: We pass each other
Part 6: Keesha's house
Part 7: Finding heartbeats
Part 8: Paint and paintbrush.

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