By Sophia Shin
Anyone who’s read one knows that well-written books can invoke powerful emotions in their readers. Truly immersive writing will bring you to care so much about the world built inside that you’ll audibly gasp at the plot twists, feel your heart pounding in suspense, and visibly cringe with secondhand embarrassment – any predicament the characters go through will feel as though you’re experiencing it with them. It’s fascinating that the various arrangements of twenty-six letters on a page can do such things to our hormones – and I believe the epitome of a truly great book is the ability to make me shed real tears. I don’t believe that I cry super easily, so when words on a bundle of paper – usually about fictional characters, by the way – draw water, you know that story had me extremely emotionally invested. Here’s a couple of books that have made me cry – as a disclaimer, I read them years ago when I was in fourth or fifth grade, when I was probably more sensitive. Still, even back then, it was no easy feat for a book to produce tears.
Warning: contains spoilers!
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
This book started out by confusing me – I think it took me a few chapters to grasp that there were two timelines, two different stories playing out. It’s also helpful to note that it’s told by a narrator from the future. The narrator is Sal, and the story she tells is one of a road trip she took with her grandparents six days ago. But during that road trip, she told them a story about her friend Phoebe, so the book alternates between the road trip story and Phoebe’s story – a story is being told within a story. All of Phoebe’s story takes place after Sal moved to a new city, but Sal constantly recounts her past, so the reader gradually finds out more and more about her past as well. Everything builds up to the present day, which is after the road trip. It’s the first book I read that had this format, plus I was in fourth grade, so I was reading on vibes and not super confident that I was understanding everything. However, by the end, everything was made clear. It was actually an amazing book that I highly recommend. It’s beautiful in every way – the story, the language, the emotional depth, the way the two timelines mirror each other and give insight to each other– despite the sadness, please read it.
The line that made me cry in this book was “… and there, on a little hill overlooking the river and the valley, was my mother’s grave.”
This had been the destination of the road trip all along, yet I hadn’t realized it because Sal was an unreliable narrator. Throughout the road trip, she had been in denial that her mother was dead, so she kept talking about things like how her mother had “left,” and “bringing her back for her birthday.” I assumed her mother was in Idaho and alive, not buried underground. I assumed she was going to make the return road trip with Sal – after a happy reunion, not as a box of ashes. Throughout reading, Sal’s descriptions of her mother made her seem like such a wonderful human who clearly meant a lot to Sal, so the revelation that she was dead hit me like the bus that crashed her to her death. I grieved along with Sal.
Turtle Boy by M. Evan Wolkenstein
Turtle Boy is a middle grade fiction novel, and it’s about the unlikely bond between two teen boys. Will is shy, introverted, a victim of bullying at school. RJ is older, extroverted, a punk-rock drummer, and is terminally ill and hospitalized. Will has community service hours to fulfill, which leads to his visits to RJ – initially unwillingly. The two don’t get along at first, but throughout the story, two things happen – their friendship blooms, and Will helps RJ complete his bucket list. The bucket list includes things like riding a roller coaster and attending a school dance – Will resolves to complete these activities on behalf of RJ so he can share his experience with him. Through this, Will grows as a person, gaining courage as he overcomes his fears to fulfill his friend’s dying wishes.
Inevitably, RJ dies. I knew his death was coming– his disease is characterized from the start as incurable, and his health slowly declines throughout the book. It didn’t lessen the impact, though, for me as well as for Will. I could feel Will’s shock and grief through the pages, and I was saddened by the news almost as much as he was. RJ’s energetic, extroverted personality had made him seem bulletproof, yet the disease was always there. I was hit with the fact that Will would never, ever have a conversation with RJ again. What an abrupt, permanent end to their friendship.
Both these books are excellent reads– the fact that I shed tears over them attests to how well written they were. The authors truly brought the characters to life, which is why their passing impacted me so much– and it wasn’t just the sad parts that made them good, the stories were actually captivating and amazing. If you have some free time and a desire to “feel something,” please give these books a try.