The Weight of Water
By Sarah Crosson
Published on April 9, 2013
Published by Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books
Source: Publisher through NetGalley
Summary:
A poetic, gifty offering that combines first love, friendship, and persistent courage in this lyrical immigration story told in verse.
Carrying just a suitcase and an old laundry bag filled with clothes, Kasienka and her mother are immigrating to England from Poland. Kasienka isn’t the happiest girl in the world. At home, her mother is suffering from a broken heart as she searches for Kasienka’s father. And at school, Kasienka is having trouble being the new girl and making friends. The only time she feels comforted is when she’s swimming at the pool. But she can’t quite shake the feeling that she’s sinking. Until a new boy swims into her life, and she learns that there might be more than one way to stay afloat.
The Weight of Water is a coming-of-age story that deftly handles issues of immigration, alienation, and first love. Moving and poetically rendered, this novel-in-verse is the story of a young girl whose determination to find out who she is prevails.
I first started reading novels in verse when I was about to write my thesis for my MFA in Creative Writing. I had been in the poetry track before I discovered writing for children, and by time I graduated I had enough credits for a dual emphasis in both genres. So, when my advisor suggested that I combine my two passions by writing a novel in verse for my thesis, I jumped on the chance.
Novels in verse are usually written in simple free verse, but tell complex storylines. The Weight of Water is no exception. Although written for a middle grade-aged audience, the story of immigrant Kasienka is full of resentment, love, hatred, and a whole range of emotions associated with adults. The reader follows Kasienka and her mother to England, where search for Kasienka’s father, who abandoned them in Poland. She is made fun of by the other girls at school, misunderstood by her teacher, and ignored by boys, until she discovers swimming and her first love.
The power of this novel is that, although Kasienka is an immigrant and faces discrimination because she is Polish, teens need not be immigrants to understand her story. Her struggles at school are the same struggles that all pre-teens in America face. This novel could have been set in the United States. However, as an adult reader I couldn’t ignore the significance of her journey as an immigrant and compare it to that of the immigrant and refugee populations in the US.
I have seen other reviewers criticize this novel for skipping from subject to subject in its poems, but I feel that is common for novels of this nature. It helps to think of each poem as a puzzle piece that works to create a coherent storyline. Yes, that does means that the reader needs to fill in the gaps sometimes, but overall, the impact of the story is not lessened because of that.
This novel was a quick read and appropriate for pre-teens.
About the Author:
Sarah Crossan teaches English at a small private school near New York City and has her Masters in creative writing. In 2010, she received an Edward Albee fellowship for writing. She lives in New Jersey. This is her debut novel. Visit her online at http://www.sarahcrossan.com
Crystalee Calderwood, Children's Author 