Beth Goobie

Dime is a problem teen living who provokes her conservative parents at every turn. She's a self-described "headbanger" with an older boyfriend who rides a motorcycle and has a jealous girlfriend who wants to fight Dime. When her parents can't take it anymore, she is sent to live with her quadaplegic brother in hopes that a different environment will help her get back on track.

Kicked Out is an Orca Soundings publication and written at a low reading level but on a subject that will appeal to show more teens. It is unfortunate that most of the choices for teens with low reading levels are like this book: poorly written, overly simplified, out of touch with real teen experiences. Dime is a stock character who chooses to be troubled and then rather inexplicably and rapidly (due to the scant 92 pages of large text) solves her problems and makes everyone happy. There is little in the way of character development leading to an altogether forgettable book.

This is a poor quality book with little to offer reluctant or struggling readers. Additionally, the proportion of these "hi-lo" books that deal with troublemaker teens is an implicit, and deplorable, judgment on low-reading-level teens. Nevertheless, there are few books on the market that attempt to provide teens with interesting stories at lower reading levels, so Kicked Out and other books from Orca may fill a needed gap in some high school, middle school, and public libraries. Librarians and educators serving teens are highly encouraged to inform publishers of the need for more and better hi-lo books. show less

Beth Goobie has written novels for teens before and now turns her hand to a coming-of-age novel which exposes the complexity of a young woman’s shifting identity.

Mary-Eve Hamilton has already experienced some radical alterations in her understanding of her place in the world before readers meet her on the page.

“From that moment on, I knew my mother could not see me. The landscapes we inhabited were too different – what she saw was not what I saw; what surrounded her disdained and shut show more me out. By haunting her footsteps, I was able to catch occasional glimpses into her realm, but she wandered a part of the mind I could not enter; I stood on the edge of a world she had passed through to, a world I had been refused.”

Had Mary-Eve’s mother simply withdrawn, that would have been difficult enough, but her main source of communion is a religious fervour which distances her even further from her family and the wider community. The effect on Mary-Eve is dramatic and lasting.

Naming in this novel is crucial and Mary-Eve’s transformation into Jez (Jezebel) presents a swatch of conflict for readers, who understand her inner struggle to test and pass the limits she has felt upon her identity. Readers’ understanding grows as more information about the family’s experiences is revealed and challenges force Jez to grapple with questions about friendship, sexuality and faith, while testing the boundaries of her own self.

The style is intense and highly emotive, which reflects the heightened drama of Jez’s age and stage in life. This is emphasized by a series of dream-like passages which are almost overwhelming and work to depict the intensity of the transformation that she is experiencing.

The novel moves at a steady pace and culminates in a fervour of activity which is unexpected but, in hindsight, seems inevitable. Much of The First Principles of Dreaming is like a bad dream readers might want to shake, but it is a testament to the author’s skill that scenes perhaps-better-forgotten persist and linger in readers’ minds.

These thoughts first appeared here, on BuriedInPrint. show less

Maddie Malone has been a train wreck since that terrible day last March. She tries to control her nightmare pain so it does not consume her, but the only method she has found to make it bearable may consume her first. No one knows why she changed, or just how deeply-- not even herself-- but as her English class progresses on an assignment to write a collective novel, she begins to discover the missing pieces of her own story.

This was a difficult story to read, not because it was bad, but show more because it forces the reader not only to witness a young girl’s agony in as raw and terrible a state as it can get, but also face down aspects of victimization that are unusual to have in the forefront such as self-blame, self-destruction, and remorse. This is not just the story of Maddy’s pain, but the lingering effects and the coalescence and evolution of the many unintended individual pains surrounding her and the awful event.

Beth Goobie did a great job on this book. It is complex and tightly woven. The characters are deep and I felt I could understand them, even when they were not being nice people. The story was fresh and revealed itself over time to be full of surprising layers of meaning. The ending was perfect for the story. Overall, I really felt this was a stellar offering from Second Story Press and Beth Goobie.

A hard 4.3 stars.

Thank you to the publisher for a copy through Netgalley in return for this honest review. This review and more at annevolmering.com. show less

Reviewed by Long Nguyen for TeensReadToo.com

The title will make you laugh, the story will provoke you to think.

Dylan lives the good life: great family, amazing boyfriend, and a best friend she can rely on. That is until she confronts her real identity, when she admits to herself that she prefers girls rather than boys. Beth Goobie, in a stellar effort, portrays the life of a lesbian teenager too afraid of the repercussions upon her life if and when she comes out to her friends and show more family.

Dylan doesn't want to make her life any more difficult but her best friend, Jocelyn, has become presently absent in her life; she isn't able to give her boyfriend what he wants, no matter how hard she tells herself she can do it; and things only get more complicated when Dylan volunteers to design the new book display for the school library.

HELLO, GROIN, along with a voicing out of the wrongness of such a social taboo as being homosexual, is a fight for freedom from censorship. The display Dylan creates says something important, both to her and to certain others, whether they were contributors of ideas or the understanding kind. But when the school principal decides to censor parts of the display, rumors begin to spread about Dylan, and she begins to let her secret take control of her life, in a negative way.

Goobie does a fantastic job in portraying a character that is very much believable in her thoughts and actions. She speaks out against censorship and how hard it is on a person who, along with the regular angst and struggles of being a teenager, must also now ask herself who she is and whether or not self-sacrifice for the people around her is more important than making herself feel human and allowing herself to be, simply, herself.

HELLO, GROIN is a thought-provoking novel that asks questions that are important to face in this day and age of social faux pas and suggests a few select answers which readers should certainly take upon themselves to consider wholeheartedly. HELLO, GROIN is well told story by a great novelist. show less