What Hearts

The book follows Asa through his childhood, through multiple moves as his mother leaves his father and remarries to a man who neither understands nor seems to like Asa much at all, through his mother's battles with depression, and through his own struggles with being much more intelligent than his peers, not fitting in, and trying to be as compassionate as he can with everyone around him. It's a lovely story and for the most part it's well told, but for me it doesn't quite work as well as it could, because Asa himself isn't very believable a character. He's very smart for his age, which is fine, but he's also incredibly (in the literal sense of that word) emotionally mature and self-aware. He has a grasp on the motives and emotions of show more others that no child could possibly have. It's so far from believable that it kept jarring me out of the story, and his insights are so keen that I also don't think this book is Newbery material (it won the Newbery Honor in 1993). If the Printz award had been around then, I could see it in that category, which tends toward more mature content for YA, but it just seems too sophisticated for the Newbery. show less

Continuing the July YA challenge, and making a dent in the Newbery award-winning books, the latest read is an insightful 1993 honor winner titled What Hearts by Bruce Brooks.

At the risk of redundancy, I've mentioned often that young adult books, including some of the later Newbery winners, are not fluff, and in fact deal with some particularly difficult life situations. This book is no exception!

Young Asa's life is suddenly uprooted when he returns home on the last day of first grade to learn that the house is empty and he and his mother are moving. Leaving behind his father, whom his mother states she no longer loves, Asa's mother selfishly immediately thrusts Asa into a life with a new boyfriend and living arrangement.

Lacking a show more transition time, precocious, sensitive Asa adjusts as best as possible. Astutely he grasps the knowledge that his new "father" is not a kind man and doesn't want the baggage of a little child.

The first night, Asa is taken to an amusement park, placed on an adult ride wherein he is suspended high up in the air for a long period of time while the ride violently shakes the small child. This is the beginning of cruel taunts and actions at the hands of a man who borders on malevolence.

While the subject matter is deep, there is also hope and a strong theme of spunkyness and resiliency.
Segmented into four separate sections, each dealing with the meaning of love, the definition of forgiveness, the power of friendship and the ability of the human spirit to somehow transcend difficulty, this is an incredibly powerful book.

Highly recommended. show less

I had a different cover that I like significantly less than this one. I only read it because I am host of the Newbery club in the GR group Children's Books.

Turns out the stepfather isn't as awful as some blurb descriptions imply, baseball is a metaphor, Asa is wiser* than any child could be, and the mother should be on the cover somewhere prominent.

It is beautifully written, in a voice & style more often found in books for adults.

*I don't underestimate children. They are bright, clever, often surprisingly insightful. But there's no way Asa could be so in touch with the inner lives of adults when he's in kindergarten, for example.

"What Hearts," is a coming of age novel about an exceptionally intelligent, and somewhat aloof boy, named Asa. The tale is told in four short stories, unrelated in most ways, except that each is an episode in Asa'a life, with a few years separating each. Brooks reaches deep into his character's soul, but it is the author who tells the story, not the characters. There is very little dialogue, and a great deal of description about what Asa is thinking.
I found it interesting that the book title is "What Hearts" without a question mark, but the fourth and final story is titled "What Hearts?" with a question mark. That choice was deliberate, and the book title means something different than the final story's title.

The raw honesty of in the inside of Asa's head was almost too hard to read. Teenagers love that, the more masochistic the better. I imagine them eating this book up.

Asa comes home to an empty house. His mother is leaving his father and has plans to marry another man. Asa is an unusually perceptive boy who must tolerate a verbally abusive step-father, constant moving and a mother's sever decline in mental health. Asa is a bit too precocious in thought to be believable for a young child ( he goes from 6 to 13 in the book) A bit slow moving but with an important point of view for understanding a child's conception of divorce.

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