[GeoStL] Young Adult Novel Featuring Geocaching
- From: "ehamemail" <sydstyr@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <geocaching@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:04:14 -0500
"North of Beautiful" by Justina Chen Headley
My daughter stumbled across this book at their Scholastic BooK Fair last week.
I'm pretty sure she was drawn to the book because of it's cover.
I started reading it (it was handy) and about 1/3 of the way in geocaching
popped up. I was surprised. I wasn't expecting it. From there on out
geocaching was not only an important physical activity, but symbolic for life
and personal discovery.
The main character, Terra is the "oppressed" daughter of a mapmaker who,
because of personal humiliation has exiled himself and family to a small town
in the North West. The father has become overbearing, dominating and ridiculing
toward his family to the point they have all found ways to escape: leaving,
overeating and art.
Terra is a fast-tracked junior/senior in high school who is coming to terms
with her facial port wine stain birthmark and how people accept her when she
conceals it vs. when it's exposed. A new friend, a young man adopted from
China who carries his own physical scar due to palate deformities, introduces
her to geocaching, which eventually becomes a metaphor for personal discovery.
I think this book would most likely appeal to teen girls since, obviously,
it's told from a girl's point of view. If anyone has a teen who needs a book
that is loaded with symbolism and metaphor in a new way, this is it. Lots of
obvious and not so obvious symbolism.
Also, there's nothing I found to be objectional. The father at times is
mentally and emotionally cruel and domineering. Art and self expression
figures prominently as well as geocaching. There's no physical violence,
obscene language or weird vampire sex.
The author is a geocacher and I've spent a few minutes trying to figure out who
she it.. I'm getting there but have hit a red herring. There's reference to a
couple of caches, including one on the Great Wall, and the caching name of the
boy -- which appears to be a gc.com member but with no info attached to it.
I'm not sure how the author actually geocaches or if she took liberties for the
sake of the story, but their GPSrs apparently do not have "GIANT ARROW POINTING
THIS WAY" screens as they talk about lining up and walking until the latitude
and longitude coordinates match to the ones needed. (I'll take the arrow
please.)
Annnnnyway .. thought I'd pass this along. And, if it's "old news" I haven't
seen it her before. If anyone has more info I'd be interested in hearing it.
Even if you're not a teen, it's a nice little story and reads fairly quickly.
Good for the geojunkie.
Nancy
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=5fa6ae61-b648-4c00-b4ea-990cb3798a82
North of Beautiful GC1EYFQ
http://justinachenheadley.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html
http://motherdaughterbookclub.com/2009/02/interview-with-justina-chen-headley-author-of-north-of-beautiful/
Other related posts:
