Summary fro Goodreads:
The quest to save the words of a dying language - and to find the words to save what may be a dying friendship - lies at the heart of this exquisite verse novel.
Sixth grader Betsy is the one who informs her best friend, Lizard, that thousands of the world's languages are currently threatened by extinction; Betsy's mother is a linguistics professor working frantically to study dying languages before they are lost forever. But it is Lizard who, gripped by the magnitude of this loss, challenges Betsy, What if, instead of WRITING about dying languages, like your mom, you and I SAVED one instead?
As the girls embark on their quest to learn as much as possible of the near-extinct language of Guernsiais (spoken on the Isle of Guernsey, off the coast of France), their friendship faces unexpected strains. With Lizard increasingly obsessed with the language project, Betsy begins to seek greater independence from her controlling and charismatic friend, as well as from her controlling and charismatic mother. Then tragedy threatens Betsy's life beyond what any words can express, and Lizard does something unthinkable.
Maybe lost friendships, like lost languages, can never be completely saved.
Review:
I had a bit of a back and forth relationship with this book. At first I loved it. 2 friends want to save a dying language? What precious children are these? And then it gets a bit intense with mean girl/middle school drama. And it’s not that the drama is bad….it’s actually really good and believable. I think part of my problem is it made me think of my own middle school mean girl drama that was weirdly similar. This is no fault of the book. Actually, if anything, it speaks wonders for how accurate this book writes about young girl friendships.
It actually reminds me a little of the young girl friendship from My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. It’s crazy accurate how this author gets it. I guess it just was unexpected for me. The book started so light. And then when I finally feel like I understand the direction things are going, and I’m accepting this book for what it is, I kind of get sucker-punched again…
This is not an easy novel to read. Betsy’s mother does something that again threw me for a loop. What she does is first kept from Betsy, and oh my God, I was so upset how everything was revealed and handled. And again, I related to this book too much (not because of my mother, but because of another family member)….And, I had to stop reading for a while. This was again a subject that hit close to home for me, and I’m an adult. I can imagine how it might affect young readers.
I did pick the book back up. Everything is written beautifully. It’s written in verse, which I tend to be a big fan of. I feel like authors who can write this way tend to be able to express things in a strong way. Mills certainly could express grief, sadness, anxiety, and the feeling of a being a young girl really well. I guess my major issue is just how unexpected everything was for me. I wish I had more of a hint that such intense subjects were coming. I really thought this was going to be much lighter. Though, the blurb does mention a coming tragedy. The kids just seem so innocent in the beginning that the juxtaposition of it seemed so intense.
Overall, I did think this was a good book. Kid books are allowed to be dark. It was more intense than I knew it would be. The subject was certainly darker than I knew. Girl friendships were the core of the book, but family matters were certainly important as well mental illness. I’m not sure I’d recommend this to just anyone, but I guess I’d recommend it to the right reader. I give it an 8/10.
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