42 Miles [Hardcover]

Tracie Vaughn Zimmer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2008 | Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

JoEllen’s parents divorced when she was very young, so she was used to splitting her time between them, shuttling four blocks from one Cincinnati apartment to another. But when her dad moved to the old family farm last year, her life was suddenly divided. Now on weekdays she’s a city girl, called Ellen, who hangs out with her friends, plays the sax, and loves old movies. And on weekends she’s a country girl, nicknamed Joey, who rides horseback with her cousin, Hayden, goes fishing, and listens to bluegrass. So where do her loyalties lie? Who is the real JoEllen? Linked free-verse poems, illustrated with a quirky array of found objects and mementos, create the vivid, realistic portrait of a young girl at a defining moment in her life.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Since her parents divorced, when she was an infant, life has been split between them: “School days in the city with Mom / weekends on the farm with Dad.” Even her names are different—Ellen with Mom; Jo with Dad. But as she turns 13, she’s determined to be JoEllen, to show her city friends that the country is not “hick,” and her farm cousin that the city holds more than “concrete and crime.” Using free verse, Zimmer shows the richness in both places, while black-and-white composite illustrations bring the bits and pieces together—from the baseball trophies in Dad’s old room to the overview of city traffic. Casual and open, both the poetry and pictures show the fun: “With Dad, one thing’s for certain; / nothing ever is.” Grades 4-6. --Hazel Rochman

Review

"Caught between her divorced parents' rural and city worlds, JoEllen approaches her 13th birthday with a growing definition and assurance of her personal identity. Half of her name is from her father, Joseph, who calls her Joey; the other half is from her mother, Eleanor, who calls her Ellen. "Now my days-/divided between them-/are as different as my names." The girl's life, however, at each end of the 42 miles that separate her parents, is rich and complicated, and the author subtly develops JoEllen's awareness: "The apple trees/share secrets./The ducks endlessly discuss/the quality of rain" ("Farm Nights"). "An ambulance wailing/cars cussing/cats calling/dogs delivering the news" ("Cincinnati Nights"). The poems meld together into a smooth story that ends with this invitation: "My favorite poems/hold a wooden spoon of words/and whisper:/Taste" ("The Poems I Like Best"). Mixed-media collage illustrations complement the subject of each poem and reinforce the complicated and changing moods of the story. Young people will appreciate this easy-to-read, empowering story."--School Library Journal
 
"Living separate lives to please her divorced parents, a young girl struggles to define herself. JoEllen's mother lives in a city apartment while her father lives 42 miles away in a farmhouse. JoEllen (named for both parents) admits "my days . . . are as different as my names." She spends schooldays with Mom, who calls her "Ellen," and weekends with Dad, who calls her "Joey." JoEllen and Mom love takeout. JoEllen and Dad invent their own recipes. In the city, JoEllen plays the sax, watches old movies, wears vintage clothing and works at a secondhand shop with her best friends. At the farm, she trail rides with her cousin, listens to bluegrass, wears work boots and slops out the stable. Split "like an apple's pale heart / on either side of the blade," JoEllen decides her two lives need to meet-just in time for her 13th birthday. Embellished with Clayton's scrapbook-like black-and-white illustrations, the free-verse text traces the hopes and fears of a thoughtful teen who optimistically merges the best of her two lives into an even better "new me."--Kirkus Reviews
 
"The forty-two miles that separate JoEllen's mother's house from her father's house also divide JoEllen into a city girl named Ellen, with friends Annie and Tamika, and a country girl named Joey, who hangs out in the orchard with her cousin Hayden.  In each place, she has bits of herself that she loves and bits that she could do without, but what she is mostly tired of is trying to maintain the split to make each parent happy and comfortable.  An assignment to write an autobiography, the finding of a memory box that proved her parents really were together and happy once, an encounter with a bully, and her thirteenth birthday converge to force a new JoEllen to surface out of her two halves.  JoEllen's empowerment seems so sudden an all-inclusive as to require a full orchestral soundtrack, but it's definitely the kind of change puberty inspires in some girls, and many readers will thus empathize with her assertion of a unified but still multifaceted self.  The real star here, however, is the form: JoEllen's split identity and her transformation emerge in image-rich, thoughtful, and often arresting poems that convey the separate lives she leads and the pain that causes, and in collage art that aptly portrays her patched-together sense of who she is.  JoEllen's poetry paints a moving, triumphant portrait of the vicissitudes of contemporary coming of age."--Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Clarion Books; First Printing edition (March 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618618678
• ISBN-13: 978-0618618675
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #293,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tracie Vaughn Zimmer is an award-winning children's author who graduated from The Ohio State University and attained her master's degree at Miami. Currently, she teaches at her alma mater in the Lakota Local School District near Cincinnati, Ohio. Writing in a variety of genres from historical fiction and poetry to novels-in-verse, Tracie's six books have received critical acclaim including starred reviews as well as the Schneider Family Book Award. In addition, Tracie has created hundreds of guides for children's and young adult literature that are available for free on her blog. She has presented at NCTE, IRA and ALA as well as schools and conferences across the country inspiring teachers, librarians and students with her infectious passion for literacy.


Oddball facts/favorite things:

Someday I'll move to Brooklyn, NY or a remote Caribbean island.
Individually wrapped Ghiradelli milk chocolate caramels.
Revision over the blank page.
My first journal entry: December 24, 1978.
Buckeye football Saturdays
Movies with puffy dresses and men on moors
Louie, the world's largest collie and Mickey, the six-fingered cat
Poet: Mary Oliver
I wish I could sing, draw, or play the cello
Snow days

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Narrative Poetry, April 17, 2009

By 

Madigan McGillicuddy "Librarian" (Atlanta) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 42 Miles (Hardcover)

I love how each poem can stand on it's own, or strung together tell a larger story. Told in free-verse poems, this short novel explores the feelings of a girl whose parents have been long divorced, hence the "42 miles" that JoEllen must commute between them both.

JoEllen finds her father's move to the countryside tough to navigate, as she is forced to re-arrange her schedule around her divorced parents needs. "Joey" spends countryside weekends with her father cooking, exploring the outdoors and visiting her cousin. During the week, "Ellen" hangs with her friends, orders take-out and lives a totally hip, urban lifestyle. She feels split and conflicted over this. She misses seeing her pals on the weekends, she's tired of having to put on a brave face, and mostly, she's exhausted by the constant effort of censoring herself in front of her parents who each wish to see her as their own little girl, without the influence of the other parent.

Lacking a King Solomon figure to protect her, JoEllen decides to take a stand for herself. She insists that her parents call her by her own full name. She demands that her father respect her own social calendar by not claiming every weekend with her and that he create a more welcoming space for her in his farmhouse. She lets her mother know that she isn't willing to continue pretending to be someone else, or pretend that her father never existed. JoEllen explains her feelings this way, "Mom doesn't see Joey./Dad rarely meets Ellen./And no one ever asked/if that's fine, just fine/with me."

The book is illustrated with various "found" objects and realia. Ephemera such as movie tickets, photographs, advertisements, recipes and ribbons make up a collage that symbolize JoEllen's pieced together life. I cheered for JoEllen when she finally felt empowered enough to stand up to her parents and the school bully, give herself a make-over, and invite both her city and countryside friends to her 13th birthday party. Fans of realistic fiction will enjoy this short, easy read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bravo for Independent Young Lady, June 30, 2008

By 

avid reader "dee" (Saginaw, MI) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 42 Miles (Hardcover)

Have you been through a divorce and travel back and forth from one parent's house to the other? Have you missed out on fun stuff at one location, only to be in another with the other parent? Do you know a friend who is going through this? JoEllen parents were divorced when she was little so all she has ever known is traveling the 42 miles from one parent's home to another. Now that she is turning 13, she wants more of a "whole" life. Her 13th birthday is a good choice for her independent stand. She wants the fragments of her life to come together. She wants her friends in the city and cousins in the country to meet. She wants her parents to call her the same name. She wants one birthday party with everyone in one place. Sometimes adults get so caught up in why they don't get along that they believe all the arrangements are satisfactory. However, JoEllen points out that this might work for the adults but it doesn't work for her. Two parents and one child. She wants to be heard. She wants to be consulted. The free verse text works really well in the presentation of her independence stand. Reluctant readers will get a lot out of this book. It's short. It has illustrations. It has a new teenager who wants her world to go her way. Good book for a lot of reasons!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, May 9, 2008

By 

TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 42 Miles (Hardcover)

JoEllen leads a double life. It's a bit like the old fable about the country mouse and the city mouse. Since her parents divorced long ago, JoEllen has divided her time between her father, who lives in the country, and 42 miles away in the city, where her mother lives.

It isn't just the living arrangements that divide JoEllen's life. She explains that even back when her parents named her they couldn't agree. Her name became part Joseph and part Eleanor - a piece of her father and a part of her mother. The city half of her life consists of girl friends, shopping, and movies while the country half involves horseback riding, fishing, and listening to bluegrass music. Even her friends get confused and can't understand how JoEllen copes.

It's the only life JoEllen has ever really known, but now that she's almost thirteen, she is wondering which life is truly hers. Maybe she isn't either one but perhaps someone completely different.

This short novel written in verse tells of a young girl's struggle to find herself. Surrounded by two loving parents, albeit 42 miles apart, she realizes that neither life truly reflects the person she is inside. Any reader searching for their personal identity will be able to relate to this touching tale.

Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"