I, Emma Freke by Elizabeth Atkinson

Emma Freke doesn’t have it easy.Why couldn’t her mother have at least said her name aloud before naming her: “am a freak”?That is exactly how Emma feels.She doesn’t fit in with her expressive Italian mom, Donatella, who likes to leave out the fact that she has a daughter while she is meeting potential suitors.Her Nonno, who lives with them above their bead shop, is either asleep in his chair or out walking the dog. And you can imagine what school can be like for a 5’ 10’’ tall 11-year-old with her name.

Donatella, in a rare instance of maternal action, gives Emma a thoughtful birthday gift this year. Home-schooling! Donatella says that Emma’s Nonno will help out with the teaching by bringing Emma to the library daily, as home-schooled kids generally do.Emma realizes that the materials her mom gave her to use are a bit dated, so she enlists the librarian Stevie, to suggest some more recent workbooks at a higher grade-level. Stevie makes a few phonecalls, and Emma isn’t really surprised to hear that Donatella didn’t exactly go through the proper channels to get Emma into home-schooling in the first place. This makes Emma think on something that her neighbor and best friend Penelope planted in her brain…maybe Emma, like Penelope, is actually adopted. It would explain a few things. She doesn’t look like her mom or her other relatives, and she certainly doesn’t act like them.

No such luck. In an unexpected turn of events, Emma is soon whisked off to the Freke family reunion. She knows that her own father who she has never met will not be there due to a rift in his own family relations, but maybe Emma will find some sense of place in her namesake family.

Elizabeth Atkinson has written a story about family and finding your place in it. What is a family, after all? Can you ever fight how you fit in yours? What traits do you pull from the folks who raise you, and what do you get from genetics? It’s also a story about finding your voice, your courage and your confidence. Diversity of all sorts is woven into the story, from Phoebe’s lesbian moms, and Phoebe’s own Liberian decent, to Emma’s own inter-generational family and her cousin Fred’s non-conformity. Feeling like the square peg is very understandable for tweens, and readers will be charmed by Emma’s journey.

Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth

Mary Mae likes it at Remnant Church of God. She likes all of the Praise the Lords and the Amens, and the fact that folks can just get on up and tell everybody what it is they’re thankful for. Her pastor, Sister Coates, is preaching about how important it is to believe every word in the Bible, and how it’s the duty of all to spread the Word. She gives everyone a stack of John 3:16 stickers, and soon Mary Mae is in the car with her Mama and her Granny heading to the mall, hoping to save souls.

On the way back home, her Mama gets pulled over by the police. While they are stopped, Mary Mae notices the stripes in the rocks are just like the ones that they’ve been talking about at school. She tells her Granny about the different eras that they represent (just like she tells her Granny about everything that she learns in school), and Mama is none too pleased. She lets Mary Mae know that they don’t believe in different eras…they believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. Now, Mary Mae is a girl who likes her facts, so when she gets home she combs her Bible for where it says that the Earth is 6000 years old. When she doesn’t find the information she wants, she asks her Pastor about it. Sister Coates doesn’t seem too happy with the questions that Mary Mae is asking, and soon the Sunday school class is assigned to put on a puppet show all about Creation.

Meanwhile, at school Mrs. Sizemore is teaching Mary Mae’s class all about the Ordovician Age and trilobites. She lets them know that there are lots of fossils to be found in their own area, due to a warm shallow sea that used to cover their part of Ohio…and they are going to dig for some as a class! Mary Mae is super excited, and is very proud of her finds. She knows she should be sitting out with Shirley Whirly (who goes to Remnant Church of God), but she just can’t. Science seems to pull at her heart. She just can’t understand why her Mama and her Pastor seem so upset when she asks questions. Mama is so upset that she’s getting ready to yank her out of school and teach her at home.

Sandra Dutton has written a gem of a book that explores the faith/science divide. Mary Mae loves her church life, but loves her school life as well. Her Mama’s mind is completely closed, and new information seems to genuinely scare her. Granny is such a breath of fresh air and an amazing character that she quickly became a favourite of mine. She has a thirst for knowledge just like Mary Mae, and she makes Mary Mae feel safe in her explorations. Because of the questioning of faith this book not might find as wide of an audience as it should, but readers will truly enjoy Mary Mae’s journey and her bravery. Dutton has the voice of the family down pat, and I think this could be an important book for those on both sides of the evolution/intelligent design debate.