22 April 2009 JUMPING OFF SWINGS by Jo Knowles, Candlewick, August 2009, 240p., ISBN: 978-0-7636-3949-5

"Wake up in the morning with the sunshine in your eyes

And the smell of flowers blooming fills the air.

Your mind is filled with the thoughts of a certain someone -- that you love;

Your life is filled with joy when she is there."

-- Mercy, "Love (Can Make You Happy)"

Ellie (in September) "I can still feel a trace of his warm lips against mine as he slips away from me and fumbles for the door to his father's van. I stay lying under the scratchy wool blanket on the backseat, wishing he'd stay. When he slides the door open, the ceiling light blinks on and exposes our faces to each other. His hair is rumpled. His brown eyes avoid mine.

"'Thanks, Ellie. See you inside?' "I nod. "He slides the door shut and leaves me in the dark."

Who can forget the exhilarating sensation of jumping off a swing and soaring through the air? Of course, the trick is to then land safely.

The four teens who narrate JUMPING OFF SWINGS -- Ellie, Josh, Caleb, and Corinne -- have grown up knowing each other and are now together in high school. The one constant and common denominator in their lives is the park that lies at the center of their neighborhood.

I did hear some stories but was never a witness to those adolescent male bonding "rituals" through which guys encourage each other to follow through on their hormonal urges at the cost of whichever vulnerable, gullible, exploitable female is at hand. To Caleb's horror, his best friend Josh has succumbed to that peer pressure and has not only taken advantage of Ellie, but has returned to the party to be enthusiastically congratulated on his conquest. He is unaware that Ellie sees some of the celebrating as she escapes the scene. And little does Josh know what the cost of losing his virginity in the van will be for the quartet.

Josh (in December)

"The swings and slide and other playground stuff are covered with snow. I stand there like an idiot, wondering how this all happened. Cars go by, splashing slush at the backs of my legs. My right hand is throbbing inside my pocket. I pull my other hand out and open my fist. The note is squeezed into a tiny ball now. I hurl it over the playground fence. It lands in the snow near the merry-go-round and disappears. I'm numb but stinging all over at the same time, and all I hear is my own voice in my head. What have I done? What have I done?"

As the days and weeks go by, we come to learn about the family dynamics of each of these four teens and begin to gain insight into why each behaves as he or she does. Where, in the past, young people could often rely on the extended family, the tribe, or the community for support when parents failed to provide love, advice, and modeling, the way we now live so often fails to provide young people with a comparable safety net of adult guidance and wisdom. And so you have many teens who have no one except for their emotionally absent parents; teens who hope that someone else can give them what they are lacking; teens who can so easily become exploited.

Ellie has permitted herself to be victimized in hopes that the boys will provide what her parents have not given her. She has made some bad decisions and now has to make the biggest decisions of her life. Meanwhile, Josh has parents who never speak to one another and so we keep reading and waiting...and waiting...for Josh to say something -- anything -- to Ellie.

And then there are Caleb and Corinne who have been talked to and held by their parents and who still have opportunities to be kids despite the peer pressure, hormones and having become entangled in Ellie's and Josh's situations.

Corinne (in March)

"Caleb unlocks the car door on my side to let me in. It's the first time anyone has done that for me.

"'So, where do you wanna go?' he asks when he climbs in.

"An image of the two of us fooling around in my room comes to mind.

"Hmmmm.

"No.

"Erase image.

"Ever since that day Ellie came out of the clinic, the whole idea of getting close to someone and then having sex scares the hell out of me. I guess Ellie finally did it. She cured me of my sex drive. "Maybe.

"'I don't know,' I say. 'It's kind of nice out. Somewhere outside?'

"'I know the perfect place,' he says."

I rarely comment on book covers. Usually I judge a cover to be either mildly eye-catching, passable, or seriously lacking. JUMPING OFF SWINGS has a cover that immediately persuaded me to grab it and read it.

Hopefully those teens who are similarly inspired will pick up some helpful hints on landing safely and in one piece.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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