Deb­bie Ja­cob

I have made the great­est dis­cov­ery ever, and I feel like I found the Hope Di­a­mond. Out of the blue, I stum­bled on some very dif­fer­ent low-lev­el/high-in­ter­est books that are writ­ten in verse. This is a boon for strug­gling read­ers who are in­tim­i­dat­ed by a sea of grey words on a page. These books look like po­ems but they are nov­els, not po­ems. The au­thors sim­ply frame the nov­els to look like po­et­ry.

Stu­dents who find read­ing a chal­lenge are no dif­fer­ent from avid read­ers in their read­ing tastes. They want ex­cit­ing sto­ries with mem­o­rable char­ac­ters. They don't want bor­ing books with con­de­scend­ing sto­ries. They want "re­al" lit­er­a­ture with themes and con­flicts that cap­ture the prob­lems and sit­u­a­tions in their own lives, and these books de­liv­er.

Al­though the read­ing lev­els are ap­pro­pri­ate for eight- to 10-year-olds, the con­tent can be read and en­joyed by pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary stu­dents-even adults.

Here are six great nov­els nar­rat­ed in verse that are now on my list of favourite books:

1 The Po­et Slave of Cu­ba: A Bi­og­ra­phy of Juan Fran­cis­co Man­zano by Mar­gari­ta En­gle

This his­tor­i­cal bi­og­ra­phy tells the sto­ry of a Cuban slave's strug­gle to write in a so­ci­ety that pun­ished slaves for read­ing and writ­ing. His strug­gle for self-ex­pres­sion and free­dom will res­onate with any young read­er. Us­ing po­et­ic form as a nar­ra­tive struc­ture en­hances this sto­ry and makes it feel like the sto­ry of a po­et.

Read­ers in­ter­est­ed in slav­ery will al­so ap­pre­ci­ate Man­zano's strug­gle to feel like a hu­man be­ing. His own­er treats him like a pet and this brings up in­ter­est­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the theme of abuse, which can­not al­ways be re­duced to vi­o­lence.

2 Trop­i­cal Se­crets: Holo­caust Refugees in Cu­ba by Mar­gari­ta En­gle

Daniel es­capes the Holo­caust with a dream of find­ing his fam­i­ly in New York. Every­thing changes when the ship he is on is turned away and Daniel ends up in Cu­ba. There, he be­friends a Cuban girl with her own se­crets.

Trop­i­cal Se­crets is a nov­el about two chil­dren try­ing to con­verse in lan­guages they don't know. Al­though these chil­dren strug­gle with for­eign lan­guages, their chal­lenges will be fa­mil­iar to any child who has prob­lems with ex­pres­sion. The sto­ry is nar­rat­ed in verse form and each child tells his or her sto­ry. The sto­ry takes place from 1939 to 1943.

3 All the Bro­ken Pieces by Ann E Burg

This nov­el in verse tells the sto­ry of Matt Pin, an adopt­ed Viet­namese boy who is haunt­ed by his past. As this nov­el shows, even chil­dren have a his­to­ry and some­times the past is hard to shake. Fine­ly-nu­anced con­flicts give this book its en­er­gy. As Pin strug­gles to ex­press him­self and ac­cept him­self and his new fam­i­ly in the US, he must al­so de­cide what he wants to keep of his past.

Fam­i­ly is an un­shake­able theme in this nov­el, which ex­plores what a fam­i­ly re­al­ly is: the bro­ken peo­ple left be­hind, the new peo­ple of­fer­ing hope or a mix­ture of both. Most chil­dren silent­ly strug­gle with their fears and chal­lenges, as read­ers will see in All the Bro­ken Pieces.

4 In­side Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

Through a se­ries of free verse, a young girl chron­i­cles the life-chang­ing year of 1975, when she, her moth­er, and her broth­ers leave Viet­nam and re­set­tle in Al­aba­ma, a state in the south­ern US. Vivid de­scrip­tions of a home­land lost make this New­bery Hon­or Book and Na­tion­al Book Award Win­ner a stun­ning read.

This is a nov­el about let­ting go and mov­ing on in life. Ten-year-old Ha loved her home in Saigon in spite of the war, and she loved her fa­ther who was away in the war when her fam­i­ly mi­grat­ed. Ha waits for news of her fa­ther and hopes to be re­unit­ed with him. In the mean­time, she must forge ahead and adapt to life in a new land.

5 May B a nov­el by Car­o­line Starr Rose

Imag­ine a 10-year-old girl strug­gling to make it through a harsh win­ter on her own in the mid­dle of nowhere. That's the sto­ry of May B. This is a clas­sic man (or girl, in this case)-against-na­ture sto­ry. The snow be­comes a metaphor for that cold, dark place that many chil­dren find them­selves in to sur­vive yet this is an up­lift­ing tale. In many ways, May B shapes the aus­tere land­scape in­to the po­et­ry of her life.

All chil­dren need to know that no mat­ter how dif­fi­cult life seems, there is a way to sur­vive and this nov­el de­liv­ers that mes­sage.

6 Grow: A Nov­el in Verse by Juani­ta Hav­ill

Berneetha is a big woman with big dreams. In­stead of mop­ing when she los­es her teach­ing job, Berneetha starts a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in a va­cant lot. Her first con­vert is 12-year-old Kate. This is a beau­ti­ful sto­ry about love, com­mit­ment, cre­ativ­i­ty and sur­vival. The gar­den be­comes a metaphor for life mak­ing this book a teach­ing tool for how po­et­ic de­vices are used in prose.

Ask your favourite book­store to or­der these nov­els or check out on­line book­stores to buy these nov­els writ­ten in verse.