Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
AMANDA WEST LEWIS is the author of nine books for young readers, including two about Miranda Billie Taylor, These Are Not the Words and Focus. Click. Wind. Her books have been nominated for the Silver Birch Award, the Red Cedar Award, the Violet Downey IODE Award, the Snow Willow Award and others. She is a writer, theater creator, calligrapher, teaching artist and founder of the Ottawa Children’s Theatre. Amanda has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Born in New York City, Amanda now lives in Brooke Valley, Ontario, with her husband, writer Tim Wynne-Jones.<p>Readers may benefit from Lewis' … explorations of the importance of protest and considerations of violence perpetrated in the name of a greater good.</p>
Kirkus Reviews
<p><em>Focus. Click. Wind. </em>by Amanda West Lewis leans into the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the late 1960s, but these details are merely a portal into something more significant: a depiction of the social consciousness of youth who were simultaneously navigating personal tragedy and government-sponsored violence.</p>
Historical Novel Society
<p><em>Focus. Click. Wind.</em> has more grit than many coming-of-age novels. </p>
Quill & Quire
<p>Readers find they must respect [Billie's] diligence, her heartfelt devotion to an important cause and her desire to question the roles set out for her by her mom, her friends and, indeed, her government.</p>
CM: Canadian Review of Materials
<p>This book will engage readers while leaving them with lots to think about including how can one person make a difference during times of social unrest.</p>
Canadian Children's Book News
<p>A fascinating young adult book that raises important questions about how young people should react when they disagree with their country's actions. Is rebellion a legitimate option?</p>
Winnipeg Free Press
What if your country is involved in an unjust war, and you’ve lost trust in your own government?
It's 1968, and the Vietnam War has brought new urgency to the life of Billie Taylor, a seventeen-year-old aspiring photojournalist. Billie is no stranger to risky situations, but when she attends a student protest at Columbia University with her college boyfriend, and the US is caught up in violent political upheaval, her mother decides to move the two of them to Canada. Furious at being dragged away from her beloved New York City to live in a backwater called Toronto, Billie doesn’t take her exile lightly. As her mother opens their home to draft evaders and deserters, Billie’s activism grows in new ways. She discovers an underground network of political protesters and like minds in a radical group based in Rochdale College, the world’s first “free” university. And the stakes rise when she is exposed to horrific images from Vietnam of the victims of Agent Orange – a chemical being secretly manufactured in a small town just north of Toronto.
Suddenly she has to ask herself some hard questions. How far will she go to be part of a revolution? Is violence ever justified? Or does standing back just make you part of the problem?
Key Text Features
author’s note
chapters
dialogue
epigraph
facts
historical context
literary references
song lyrics
With dramatic scenes, fully-realized characters, and plenty of tension, Amanda West Lewis brings readers a story from that most consequential year, 1968. This novel recaptures the turbulence, confusion, horror, and tragedies so many of us experienced. Memorable and absorbing!
- This is a historical novel, but today’s young readers will be inspired to ask hard questions about the cost of political engagement, trust in governments and police, immigration and emigration, and the human cost of war.
- Amanda West Lewis is a dual US/Canadian citizen. Her recent middle-grade novel, These Are Not the Words, was a work of autobiographical fiction based on her early childhood growing up in New York City. Focus, Click, Wind is a work of fiction inspired by Amanda’s high school years in Toronto.
- Between 1968 and 1970 more than 50,000 American political refugees fled to Canada – an emigration that changed both Canada and the US.
- The novel includes swearing, graphic sex, and descriptions of child victims of Agent Orange.
- Amanda holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Slow motion becomes freeze frame. A man in a plaid shirt, blood streaming down his face, is on his knees holding a sobbing woman. Another man frowns as he tucks what’s left of a torn shirt into his pants....
A filing cabinet spills a river of paper. Cigarette butts and paper plates are mashed into the carpet.
Photos from a war zone. Quietly she focuses, clicks and winds.
Exhaustion seeps through her pores. Three days in the trenches of democracy has used up her store of bravery. She wants to go home. She wants to put the skin of her old life back on and get into bed.
But first she needs to get down the heavy marble stairs. She needs to stand under the bright lights and colorful murals in the subway at 116th. She needs to sit quietly, invisibly, in the urine-drenched subway car until she can slide into the elevator at 181st and let it deliver her to the murky surface of Washington Heights.
And then she needs to sneak back into the apartment without getting caught.