Humming Whispers

This book didn't really have much of a plot; it was more like a 121-page description of a situation. The protagonist, fourteen-year-old Sophy, lives with her aunt and her older sister, Nikki. Sophy and Nikki are very close and both are dancers who attended the same performing arts high school. But Nikki has become incapacitated by schizophrenia and Sophy fears the same thing will happen to her, as she is now the same age Nikki was when she first started hearing the voices.

This was short and sweet, and I thought the author did a good job with the setting, inner-city Cleveland. Though of course the central topic is fairly heavy, what really came across was the wonderful support system Sophy and Nikki had: their loving aunt, Nikki's loyal and devoted boyfriend, Sophy's friends and her teachers at school, and a caring neighbor who was a dancer and a Holocaust survivor. The bleak reality of the illness is certainly there, but things are not entirely hopeless in this atmosphere of mutual love and sustenance. I think this would be a good book to educate tweens about schizophrenia. I think I should note here that there is no sex and no swear words in this story; about as risque is it gets is some shoplifting that goes unpunished. ( )