I have always enjoyed novels in verse and I think, if I ever write a work of fiction, that might be the form it takes. I have fantasies about books I’d like to write, and I am a better nonfiction writer so I think this might be a good form for me to attempt fiction. I don’t say that because I think it is easy. In fact, I think it is quite hard to capture the details of the story you want to tell and capture the voice of the person telling that story.
School Library Journal has a great article about novels in verse from November 2013 that you can read Here.
I read two really great novels in verse this week. The first was A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman.
Veda, a classical dance prodigy in India, lives and breathes the ancient bharatanatyam dance form. When an accident leaves her a below-knee amputee, her dreams are shattered. Adjusting to a prosthetic leg is painful and humbling, but Veda refuses to let her disability rob her of her dreams, and she starts all over again, taking beginner classes with the youngest dancers from a young man named Govinda. He approaches dance as a spiritual pursuit, and as their relationship deepens, Veda reconnects with the world around her, and begins to discover who she is and what dance truly means to her.
This book reminded me a lot of The Running Dream by Wendelin van Drannen, in which a runner becomes a below the knee amputee and who, with the help of a special prosthetic, returns to running. I liked the Indian setting and I think verse worked really well for A Time to Dance because of the music and rhythm of dance. This was a really interesting and enjoyable read.
Like Water on Stone, by Dana Walrath, tells the story of a family’s experience during the Armenian genocide.
As the Ottoman empire crumbles, Shahen Donabedian dreams of going to New York. Sosi, his twin sister,hopes to stay and marry a boy she has fallen in love with. Their father counts Turks and Kurds among his closest friends, but this is not enough to save the family when the Ottoman empire set in motion their plans to eliminate all Armenians. After a horrifying attack leaves them orphaned, they flee into the mountains, carrying their little sister, Mariam. But the children are watched over by an eagle as they run at night and hide each day, making their way across mountain ridges and rivers in their search for safety.
A verse novel really let each of the characters’ voices come through clearly. It also let the author convey the horror of the massacre without begin graphic.
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