I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an exciting, emotional adventure. The book was very interesting and easy to read. The story line was easy to follow, yet it was constantly changing in order to keep readers on the edge of their seats. Ivey's writing style drew me in and made me feel for the characters as if the experiences were my own. I would recommend this book to a girl over a boy because the main characters seem to struggle with relationships and family issues the most (I know that this is a major stereotype that boys do not want to read about family issues and things like that but I do not know many boys that voluntarily pick up this book). This thought provoking book opened my eyes to how quickly one's life can change and it definitely made me value my family more than I had before. The novel also made me think deeply about topics such as love, independence, and happiness, which was also an aspect of the book that I liked. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.
I think that it would be interesting if Ivey wrote a sequel to The Snow Child and continued the story of the baby boy's life. The ending of the book was not ambiguous but it did leave me with some questions about the boy. If Faina was some sort of magical, snow child then is the boy half snow, half human? Will he melt in the summer just as Faina did? Will all of the love he receives in his new life melt him away just as it did to his mom? Or is the boy completely human and the upcoming summer poses no threat? Without a sequel, I will never know.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Why not AP?
I believe that The Snow Child should not be considered a book of AP merit. However, it is very much on the cusp of AP merit so take what I say with a grain of salt. I do not believe that this novel was of AP merit not because it was a bad book, but because the writing was not challenging for me to understand. The novel had many complex characters, themes, and literary devices, yet I never found myself back tracking in the novel in order to understand what had happened. This is not to say the every book with AP merit needs to be difficult to read, but I feel that AP books should be challenging enough to help readers become better readers. With that being said, I do believe that this novel could be helpful on an AP exam, however. As a result of the large number of key ideas in the novel, I have found myself connecting many of the prompts in class to this novel. It is a very diverse book in that way. I am not sure if I would or would not add this book to the AP curriculum next year because of the fact that there are already so many other books that are both diverse in themes and challenging reads already on the list. Overall, The Snow Child was a good book that really made me think about the importance of my family, youth, independence, and happiness.
How It All Ended
Well, I finally finished the book and the ending left me slightly
confused. I was not confused because of the plot but rather I was
confused by the message that Ivey was trying to send through the novel.
But before I go into that, I will sum up the ending.
After Faina ran away, some time passed but
eventually she came back. Then, Garret and Faina became good friends and
fell in love. Mabel and Jack were alerted by this and Jack decided to
follow Faina and Garret into the woods in order to spy on them. Jack was
horrified of what he saw: Faina and Garret were having sex. Jack became
angry and punched Garret in the face, later that day. However this did
not end Garret and Jack's friendship like one may have imagined. Instead,
they put the incident behind them and continued on with their lives. Yet
the incident was reintroduced when Faina unexpectedly discovered that she was
pregnant. Jack insisted that Faina and Garret get married and he built
them a cabin near his and Mabel's cabin so they would always be close by.
After the wedding, Faina gave birth to a baby boy who was healthy and
thriving. But Faina always longed to return to the snowy forest.
Shortly after the birth Faina became very sick and on one night in
particular she was especially ill. Mabel and Jack rushed over to Faina
and Jack's cabin in the middle of the night to find Faina with a high fever.
Jack and Garret built Faina a makeshift bed in the snow and Mabel sat
outside with her until she fell asleep. This is when things got strange.
Hours passed and eventually Mabel fell asleep as well but when she awoke
to Jack's frantic shaking she discovered that Faina was gone. Jack and
Mabel instantly knew what had happened. They looked under the pile of
blankets and the bedding but the only found Faina's clothing. She had
vanished into thin air. She had melted under the love in her new life.
After this revelation in the novel, the story jumped a head quite a few
years until Garret's boy was a young child, anywhere between 5-10 years old,
and Jack and Mabel were old enough to need canes to walk. The story ends
with all of their lives were going well but they still morn the loss of Faina
every day. So it leaves me wondering, what should I take away from this?
Throughout the novel, Ivey had made it
clear that one of the main themes was the importance of human connections.
Yet she also posed the question can does one have any control over his or
her future? Or are destinies truly unchangeable? Ivey first posed this question
when Mabel's sister suggested that The Snow Maiden's ending was ambiguous and
Mabel could "chose joy over sorrow." (Ivey, 129) Mabel believed that
if she took good care of Faina that she could save her from her almost certain
demise. That led me to believe that Mabel was capable of changing her
future. In addition, Ivey had me believing that Mabel, Jack, Faina,
Garret, and the rest of the characters would all live happily ever after Faina
had survived the summer, the new found love, the wedding, and the birth. At
that point, I thought that Ivey's message was that one could in fact change his
or her future and sorrow did not always have to be the outcome. Yet, Ivey
threw readers a curve ball when she chose to have Faina die, or vanish, after
all. This is when I became confused. Why did Ivey fill me with
false hope if she knew all along she was going to have the story end as
previously predicted? Why did she choose to bring her characters more
pain of another lost child? What was the point of trying to save something one
knew he or she could never save? What should I take away from this? Well,
Ivey eventually gave me the answers to these questions. "[Mabel] had
thought of Ada Ada
The point of the story is that you must
love the people you have while you are still able. Pain and loss will
never go away so it is pointless to try to stop them completely.
Sometimes things do not go as planned and terrible things happen to the
people you love. But all you can do is value those people and cherish the
good times that you have with them right now. It is hard to grasp how
lucky you are until you lose the people you love most. Ivey sent this message
by showing readers that friends and family are priceless, and you should never
take them for granted because one day they might be gone. Ivey sent the
message that life goes on after pain and suffering, as well. Mabel, Jack,
Garret, the Bensons, and the baby boy all survived the loss of Faina
despite the feeling that their world was ending. It is never impossible
to find happiness again, and with love, family, and time every broken heart can
heal. So in the end, I think the Faina's passing was necessary in order
to send this message. It made me sad but I understand it.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Snegurochka
Fun fact for anyone who might actually care about my book: The Snow Maiden is a real book! Out of pure curiosity, I decided to google the title of the story that Mabel reads in The Snow Child and, to my delight, I discovered that the Russian story was not made up. A Soviet poet named Alexander Afanasyev was the first to write the folktale down, turning it into Russian literature. He named the story Snegurochka and published it in 1869. As far as I can tell, this is the only original illustration floating around on the internet from the book but it does an excelent job, in my opinion, of capturing the wintery, magical essence of the snow maiden in the forest. The painting was done by Viktor Vasnetsov.
Works Cited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snegurochka
And yes, Mrs. LaClair, I did just cite Wikipedia but I hope you'll let this one fly!
Faina (Part II) As Promised
Quick update:
- Spring arrived at the homestead
- Faina disappeared
- Jack broke his back when a horse trampled him while working the
fields
- Jack could not grow any crops so they would no longer survive the
upcoming winter
- Mabel decided they would leave the homestead once Jack was better
- Esther and her son Garrett move in with Mabel and Jack to help
nurse Jack back to health, plant crops, and tend the farm
- Ester and Garret save the day so Mabel and Jack decide to
stay
- Garrett became like a son and they were happy again
- Esther and Garret left and they were depressed again
- Jack gave up hope that Faina will ever return
- The first snow fall of winter happened and Faina appeared
- Mabel discovered Faina's childhood (apparently she actually did
grow up with the man Jack buried and is not truly made from snow... or is
she... Ivey is not letting readers know for sure) and ran out into a snow
storm at night in hopes of finding her
- Mabel got lost and almost died of hypothermia but Jack saved her
- Mabel began to smother Faina with good intentions, such as
demanding she lives with them, goes to school, and takes daily baths
- Faina ran away
Now that you know what is going on, it is
clear to see that the book's rising action has taken off at a full sprint!
All of those events occurred within the 100 pages I just read, yet the
beginning of the book seemed to move at the pace of a labored walk. In
this passage, I saw many themes of the novel developing and coming to life.
Human connections, children, youth/age (it sounds the same as children but it's
different I swear), control of your own fate, independence, love, and survival
are all central topics to the novel and are woven together throughout the
story. In this post, however, I will be discussing the importance of
human connections in the novel because it is the most prominent one so far.
In the novel The Snow Child,
Ivey makes it nearly impossible to not pick up on the fact that human
connections are immensely important to one's happiness. Mabel and Jack
lack genuine, steady human connections so they often find themselves deeply
depressed and, in Mabel's case, suicidal. They search to find these
connections in everything they do but never seem to accomplish their goal.
They originally moved to the Alaskan homestead in hopes of reconnecting
with each other, as they had grown apart after their miscarriage. They believed
that the solitude of the land would enable them to form a bond yet it only
seemed to drive them further and further apart. Mabel and Jack also
searched for these connections of love through their "three
children".
At first, all of their love went into
their unborn, biological baby and they were happier than they had even been.
However when the child was delivered as a still born, Jack and Mabel were
completely torn apart when they should have found support in each other.
Mabel recalled the day when she boxed up all of her dead baby's clothes and was
overcome with grief, yet Jack just stood in the doorway watching her.
"He didn't put his hand on her shoulder. Didn't hold her.
Didn't say a word. Even these many years later, she was unable to
forgive him for that." (Ivey, 189) Mabel felt abandoned by the two
people she loved in the world: Jack and her baby.
Next, their love went into Garret, the
Bensons' boy. During the time in which Garret was living with them, Jack
and Mabel grew to love Garret like a son. Jack bonded with him over
farming and Mabel bonded with him over literature. Both found comfort in
caring for the boy and once again they were happy. Mabel felt freed from
the monotony of her life when Garret was around. "It was as if Mabel
had been living in a hole...and he had merely reached down a hand to help her
step up into the sunlight." (Ivey, 208)
Yet above all else, Mabel and Jack long
the most for a meaningful connection with Faina, their snow child.
Throughout the novel, readers have seen the impacts that Faina has had on
their lives, some being positive and some being negative. Whenever she
was around, Mabel and Jack felt more alive than ever before. Faina also
strengthened the connection between Mabel and Jack. Dancing in the
kitchen, tickling each other while plucking chickens, sneaking innocent kisses,
and offering sweet compliments such as "you've never been more
beautiful" (Ivey, 271) were just a few of the was that readers saw Mabel
and Jack fall back in love. However, whenever Faina leaves (which I
discovered is every summer) it is as if she takes their love with her.
"The joy was gone with the child." (Ivey, 162) Mabel and Jack
become irritated and bitter towards one another, often arguing over trivial
issues. Their happiness relied on the connection they shared with the
girl and without her they had nothing. In addition, Ivey does a good job
at developing a connection between her characters and her reader, making me
truly feel the pain and lonesome that Mabel and Jack experience on the
homestead. At points in the novel, Mabel loves the child too much -
telling her that she must live with them, go to school, and become more
civilized - which only causes Faina to push away from them. "It's
all for you, don't you understand? But the child was gone." (Ivey, 236)
Mabel does not understand that, as cliché as it is, if you love something
you must let it go or else it will wilt and die. (This is a large
component to the theme of human connections, and also independence, in the
novel.) As a reader, I long to shake Mabel and tell her this but I
cannot, obviously. It saddens me that Mabel and Jack's desires to love
and connect with Faina may eventually drive her away for good, but I am hopeful
that they will figure that out in the next passage before its too late!
Friday, January 9, 2015
Faina (Part I)
Disclaimer: This is a summary the events that have transpired in the novel in my past reading, not an analysis of the chapters. I felt that the events were important enough to the novel that they deserved their own post. With that being said, a true analysis of the snow child's effects on Mabel and Jack will be coming soon! So without further ado....
Finally! Readers have been formally introduced to the character
known as 'the snow child'. Her name is Faina and she is proving to be a
very complex character thus far. To begin where I left off in my last
post, Faina had just sat down for dinner with Jack and Mabel. They had a
wonderful time, despite the fact that Faina did not speak a single word, and
when dinner was finished Faina disappeared into the dark forest once again.
After that experience, Faina began to warm up to Jack and Mabel.
She appears more often than she had before and starts to partake in the
couple's daily activities, such as making bread with Mabel and tracking animals
with Jack. Although Faina becomes Jack and Mabel's child to some extent,
she is never truly theirs - for she comes and goes like the wind and returns to
the forest every night, without fail. At this point, the story begins to
laps over periods of time fairly quickly - changing from early winter to March
in about 50 pages. In these 50 pages, readers discover a bit about what
Faina has been up to while she runs among the trees.
One snowy day, while Jack was working in
the field, Faina appears and asks Jack to follow her. They run through
the woods and up into the mountains for what seems like miles, stopping for
only a moment at a small door on the side of a mountain which Jack assumes to
be her home (this was very mysterious because Ivey chose to point out the door
at this time but not elaborate on its purpose at all). They ended their
long trek atop a cliff where Faina uncovers a dead body in the snow that she
claims is her 'papa'. Naturally, this confused me a great deal because I
was under the impression that Faina was created by Mabel and Jack out of snow -
thus causing them to be the closest things to parents that she had.
However, I suspect that Ivey wanted the readers to be confused at this
new revelation and her plan is working. Anyway, Faina asks Jack to bury
her papa and makes him promise not to tell anyone, even Mabel, about him.
Readers are not told why it must be kept a secret but we do know that it is
of the highest importance that it must. Jack agrees and later discovers
the story of a Russian man called Swede. He was a loner who traveled far
into the mountains to hunt and search for gold, but was rarely seen by locals.
No one had seen him in a few years and George Benson assumed him to be
dead. Jack never mentions Faina or her papa to the locals in fear of
being called crazy. Yet Jack continues to worry about the girl and the
burden of her dead papa on her young soul while he tries to figure out what he
should do about it next.
While Jack struggles with the
responsibility of the dead man, Mabel discovers some unsettling news of her
own. She recalls a book from her childhood that told a hauntingly similar
tale to what her and Jack were experiencing currently. The book, entitled
The Snow Maiden, is about an old couple without any children that build a child
out of snow and it magically comes to life. (A coincidence? I think
not...) Mabel believes that it might hold the key to their future with Faina.
However, when she receives the book in the mail from her sister, she
discovers it was written in Russian and illegible to her. Thankfully, her
sister enclosed a letter in the package describing the tale. She said
that there were many versions of the tail. All began the same and ended
the same but the events within the versions were different. Every tale
began happily but ended in tragedy. One way or another the child disappeared
forever - once by melting, once by murder, once by choice, and so on and so
forth. Mabel's fragile heart broke at this news, for she could not bare
the thought of losing yet another child. So she made it her mission to
change the ending of her story and "choose joy over sorrow." (Ivey,
129)
Monday, January 5, 2015
The Plot Thickens!
I am now 100 pages into my novel and I can safely say that I am
enjoying the book. The story has begun to pick up and, for the sake of
making sense, I will give you a brief overview (which ended up being not so
brief, my apologies) thus far:
Mabel and Jack's life on the homestead has
gotten increasingly easier since my last post. Although winter is in full
swing on the Alaskan frontier, Mabel and Jack have become friends with a
neighboring family, the Bensons. The Bensons are a rowdy crowd that
significantly contrasts Mabel and Jack, but I will go into that a bit later.
Despite Mabel and Jack's original intentions of being completely isolated
at their new home, their new friends have given them many insights into
surviving the harsh climate. George, or Mr. Benson, taught Jack how to
hunt moose and Esther, or Mrs. Benson, gave Mabel many jams and sour dough
yeast starters in hopes of easing their transition to this life. Yet the
most exciting part of this reading was when snow fell for the first time that
year. Mabel and Jack rediscovered their youth (readers learned that they
are both around 50 years old) by throwing snow balls, chasing each other around
the cabin, and building a young girl out of snow. This is the first time
in the novel that they appear to be happy. "[Mabel] laughed and
laughed until she was doubled over, and then she grabbed another handful of
snow and threw it at Jack, and he threw one back, and the snowballs lobbed
through the air." (Ivey, 42) The following night something magical
occurred. The snow girl came to life and "scampered through the
woods like a fairy." (Ivey, 91) Yet as hard as Mabel and Jack try to
get the young girl to trust them, she never shows herself for more than a
minute before retreating back into the forest. The reading ended in a
surprising twist, however. Mabel and Jack invited the child into their
home for dinner and the girl accepted; promptly sitting down at the table.
At this point, I had no other choice than to read on and discover what happened
next! But you'll have to wait for my next post to hear how dinner turns out.
So back to the contrast of Bensons and
Jack and Mabel (unfortunately, readers have not yet learned their last name so
the wording is a bit choppy - once again, I apologize). As many authors
have done in the past, Ivey juxtaposed two groups of her characters to
highlight aspects of the individuals not previously seen in her writing.
In my previous post regarding The
Snow Child, I described how Mabel and Jack were living separate,
depressing, quite lives. Mabel had a great deal of time on her hands
everyday while Jack worked in the fields so she spent it cleaning and cooking
and perfecting every task she could come up with in the cabin. Ivey uses
these conditions of Mabel and Jack's lives to form the contrast to that of the
Bensons. Ivey even comes out right and states the contrast on page 31
when the Mabel and Jack first visited the Bensons house: "It was as if
Mabel had fallen through a hole into another world. It was nothing like
her quiet, well-ordered world of darkness and light and sadness. This was
an untidy place, but welcoming and full of laughter." In addition to
the physical differences of their homes and the atmospheres within them, the
Bensons have something that Mabel and Jack desperately want: children.
Three of them to be exact. Although the couples joke that Mabel and Jack
can "have [the Bensons'] boys anytime [they] want them" (Ivey, 38), the
statement is quite ironic because, as readers have discovered, they are unable
to have children. One of the last contrasts between the two couples is
the woman's role in the family. In the Bensons' house, Esther is not
afraid to speak her mind and she knows how to fend for herself. She
represents everything that a strong, independent frontier woman should be.
This is a sharp contrast to Mabel, however. Mabel is shy and
self-contained, rarely speaking on controversial issues within her home.
As a result of this, Mabel envies Esther. For she is the antithesis
of Mabel and everything that Mabel wishes she could be. Through this
juxtaposition, readers learn that Mabel desires to be stronger and feels
trapped in her quiet life. Although she is hesitant to accept the Bensons'
way of life, she ends up enjoying it. This shows readers that Mabel may
desire more personal connections now - not just isolation anymore.
Stay tuned for more updates!
Stay tuned for more updates!
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