Everywhere Blue by Joanne Rossmassler Fritz

Yesterday I listed all the books (well nearly all) the books on my January to read pile. I know yesterday and today are officially really December but I have already begun and have finished two of the books! Yes I did say two.

Everywhere Blue is a new discovery and it is a verse novel and yes you do already know this but, I need to say it again - I love verse novels. They are fast, the are emotional, they are often very insightful and they are always so satisfying. If you are ever in a reading slump I highly recommend finding a verse novel (it's okay there are some written for adults too). 

Madrigal, you could be a metronome. You're so precise. ...

Mr Rimondi is the only one who uses

my real name.

Everyone else calls me Maddie,

except Aria calls me Mad

and Strum calls me M.

They both hate the musical

names our parents gave us.

But I like them.

They define us as a family

even if sometimes

there is dissonance.

There are some things we can take away from this text quote. Maddie lives with her musical parents and older brother and older sister. Maddie takes music lessons - she plays the oboe. This book is filled with musical references and references to classical music (I loved that part).

The dissonance is between Strum, aged 18, and his father. Strum is deeply concerned about our planet and about our human impact and of course about global warming and climate change. His dad thinks all of this is nonsense and to make things worse he seems to impose unfair rules on the family.

Maddie has a brilliant mind. She is in Grade Seven but attends a Grade Eight geometry class each week on a nearby campus. Maddie also has ambition. She wants to play the oboe solo at the upcoming concert but she is only second oboe and it seems Oliver, first oboe, will be the one to play the beautiful music from Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev. With all the turmoil around her Maddie is anxious and her anxiety can be seen from her obsession with numbers. There are safe and lucky numbers and numbers which mean everything is sure to go wrong. Maddie is a counter (I am a counter too). She counts steps, and floorboards and really anything as a way to calm down. 

Maddie compulsively counts objects and believes that even numbers are the best. She is a gifted math student who appreciates order and regularity, eating the same precisely prepared sandwich for lunch every day. Kirkus

After her oboe lesson her mum usually picks her up but today it is her sister Aria and she has some bad news. Strum is missing. He has walked away from his university and no one knows where he has gone. Over the coming weeks Maddie watches her family disintegrate. 

Music mentioned in this book. I suggest listening to these while you read this book:

• Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev
• Morning Mood from the Peer Gynt Suites by Edvard Greig
• String quartet No.2 in D Major by Alexander Borodin
• Adagio for strings by Samuel Barber
• Largo from Symphony No.9 by Antonin Dvorak
• Nutcracker suite by Tchaikovsky
• Rhapsody in Blue by George Geershwin
• Bolero by Maurice Ravel
• Ode to Joy from Symphony No.9 by Beethoven

I highly recommend Everywhere Blue especially for sensitive readers 10+ who enjoy verse novels and stories filled with genuine emotions. I really like the cover by Elena Megalos but it does slightly puzzle me. Strum loves butterflies and you can see they are part of the illustration. Maddie plays the oboe - yes it is there too. Strum is missing and that feels like a chasm in Maddie's life I guess and we can see a boy with a backpack striding away to a remote place. But why is there a guitar? I guess because you strum a guitar and it matches his name? Blue is Strum's favourite colour. The sadness of his loss is making the world feel blue.

This book has several awards:

• An NCTE Notable Verse Novel
• A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year
• A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year
• Cybils Award Poetry Winner

I am very keen to share some companion books to go with Everywhere Blue. You could click Verse Novel in my sidebar but I really want to tell you about another book where the main character counts things as a way to cope (this is probably Counting by 7s but I am not entirely certain - my memory is of a middle grade book where the girl counts things including the bristles on her toothbrush) and also I need to mention a book I read quite recently about an absent brother - The collected works of Gretchen Oyster.

I also recommend these books which are filled with music:

Just Dance

Fly Away

The Flying Orchestra

The View from the 32nd Floor 

(this is long out of print and the cover is not especially appealing 

but I highly highly recommend this terrific book for so many reasons! 

My post has a comment by the author)

A most mysterious Mouse by Giovanna Zoboli illustrated by Lisa D'Andrea translated by Antony Shugaar

"Once upon a time there was a cat. 

He was a handsome tabby cat, with a head full of mice.

Indeed he thought about mice all day long."

Cat is so obsessed with mice that he spends his day imagining and counting them right up to one million by his eighteenth birthday. Cat imagines individual mice doing everyday things such as cooking, learning languages, one is studying to be a lawyer and one who likes to garden. He imagines a mouse that lives in a cookie jar, one who wears a red sack and even one who knows the names of all the airports in the world. BUT there is one mouse that Cat cannot bring to his mind - the mysterious mouse. When this pair of unlikely friends finally meet they form a true friendship. The ending of this warm-hearted tale is sure to give you and your young reading companion lots to talk about. 

Image Source: Enchanted Lion

About the cat: A nice light and dark grey striped tiger. As if it were slipped into a soft cashmere suit, adherent, perfect, from which only the white paws, the mask of the muzzle and two cat-like eyes appear when they look fixedly at you, round ... but you can see, however, that he has that cloud in his head, that expression of someone who is there but is not here, because his head in the clouds has something else in mind.

This large format book was first published in Italy with the title Il Topo Che Non C'era. Kirkus call this book metaphysical. 

I love the look of the sequel The Holidays of the Mouse that wasn't There but it is not yet available in English.

And there is a Christmas one too:

Giovanna Zoboli is the author of Professional Crocodile which is a wordless or silent book that should be added to every school library.