Ripple Effect

by Sylvia Taekema

Best friends Dana and Janelle had big plans for grade six. Run on the cross-country team together. Try out for volleyball. They’d even planned to be partners for the class geography project. Neither girl could have known that a biking accident would land Janelle in the hospital all summer long. Dana is convinced that everything will go back to normal once school starts. But Queen Bee Julia has co-opted her friend, and Janelle’s crutches make running or playing volleyball impossible. Over time, the girls begin to act more and more like strangers. As Dana struggles to come to terms with her feelings of guilt, anger and loneliness, she wonders if there’s anything left of her old friendship that’s salvageable. Can she find her way back to her best friend?

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2015

About the author

Because she loves to read, loves to write, and thinks kids are the best, writing books for children and having them published is a dream come true for Sylvia Taekema. Besides spending time with her own children, she also enjoys working with kids in schools and in various programs in her community of Chatham, Ontario. "Seconds," her first novel for young readers, was voted a Silver Birch Express Honour Book in the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading Program, 2015. It was also a nominee for the 2015 Diamond Willow Award.

Reviews

[Claira Teichroeb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ripple Effect has some of the common themes of middle-grade fiction: friends, school, and crushes. I found it not the easiest book to get into at first due to the short sentences. I don't know if that trend continues throughout the book as I was able to get into the story later.

I found the book to be fairly shallow and not as deep as it could be. It had the potential to go into a deeper exploration of friendship and hurt, but it didn't. It wasn't a terrible book, and Mickey's rhymes for Dana was a nice touch, but not my favorite.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book from Canada explores a situation with which many students will be familiar. Dana and Janelle have big plans for sixth grade, but after Janelle is injured and hospitalized for a long period of time, their relationship fractures. Dana can't bring herself to visit her friend in the hospital since she hates the place, and by the time school starts again, Julia seems to have taken Dana's place. Suddenly, she finds herself all alone, doing things by herself that the two friends had planned to do together. As Dana presses on, she realizes that actions can have ripple effects for good or for bad. Things finally come to a head after the students try out for parts in their class's production of The Wizard of Oz. The story has a solid message with many issues other than friendship being explored as well.