30 June 2009 OPERATION YES by Sara Lewis Holmes, Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine, September 2009, 256p., ISBN: 978-0-545-10795-2

"Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering,

There is a crack in everything,

That's how the light gets in."

-- Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

"'What happens when we place an object in the Taped Space?' she said. 'Do we see it differently than if it were in the teachers' lounge or in a living room? What happens when someone talks to it? When I insulted it with my own weak language and then the bold words of Shakespeare? How did you feel when I hit the couch? Did you feel differently when I treated it kindly?

"Of course, thought Bo. How could you not? His hand twitched as if it wanted to rise into the air.

"Wait. Maybe no one else had felt sorry for the couch. He wanted Miss Loupe to keep doing her crazy games, instead of real school, but he didn't want everyone to look at him like he was moldy shredded cheese either. He sat on his hand and glanced over at the window. It was sealed shut under rippled coats of yellowed paint. He wished Miss Loupe could push it open a tiny crack."

The school year has commenced and Miss Loupe has begun her first-ever teaching job. She is the new sixth grade teacher at Young Oaks, a school in dire need of repair that adjoins the Air Force base in Reform, North Carolina. Growing up, herself, as part of a military family, Reunion was one of the bases where Miss Loupe lived as a child. In fact, the principal at Young Oaks who hired her was Miss Loupe's own sixth grade teacher. Miss Loupe is the only member of her family not directly serving in the military and it caused a deep crack in the family when she dropped out of the Air Force Academy after one year.

"Art needs a frame"

"Theater is the art of saying yes"

Miss Loupe's student Bo Whaley is the son of Reunion's base commander. Last year Bo was Young Oaks' resident trouble-maker-in-chief, but this year's teacher seems the opposite of his fifth-grade nemesis Mr. Nix. Bo and his classmates are fascinated by this unusual young woman who sports rows of earrings, a tattoo, and a belly ring. She tells them that they are going to learn regular sixth grade material -- and that they need to cover the Handbook -- but she has also created the Taped Space, a temporary stage area at the front of the classroom. When she suddenly slips into her stealthy black dance slippers, it is time for the students to "see what happens when we say yes."

For these students, who are so frequently moved away from friends and separated from family members, there are great psychological benefits in getting the chance to say yes.

Through Bo and his schoolmates, we get a real sense of what it is to have to change homes and schools every couple of years. Author Sara Lewis Holmes -- herself, the wife of an Air Force pilot -- does a great job of showing us what this sort of childhood might be like:

"He wondered how many houses from now he would be thinking back to this room, to this house, to this town, and know that everyone here had mostly forgotten who Bo Whaley was. It was eerie, like thinking about himself in a long hall of mirrors, each one smaller than the last."

What is even worse than the moving around, of course, is the need to confront the fears and loneliness that accompany having your parent or other loved one shipped off to war. Miss Loupe has a brother serving in Special Forces in Afghanistan. And Bo's cousin Gari will arrive in Reform from Seattle -- to live with Bo's family -- when her mother is suddenly required to leave everybody and everything to go serve as a nurse in Iraq.

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore."

The dramatic arts offer great opportunities for team building and taking chances. How might what Miss Loupe's students learn about their classroom community while in the safety of the Taped Space be of great value when terrible news about a loved one hits home?

How can cracks be both painful and good things, too?

Richie Partington, MLIS

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