Rubber Houses [Hardcover]

Ellen Yeomans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2007

In spare, lyrical verse, this powerful novel tells a beautiful and heartbreaking story of love and loss. It perfectly captures the intense and excruciating pain of the loss of a loved one, and the slow but gradual hope of living again and finding one's way back home.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 6 Up—Kit is a junior in high school when her younger brother is diagnosed with cancer. Despite the difference in their ages, they are kindred spirits who share a love of baseball. When Buddy loses his battle against the disease, Kit is devastated. Suddenly her family no longer functions as a whole. Instead they are like "…islands/too distant to matter." The teen must find a way to own her grief in order to mourn Buddy while at the same time joyfully celebrate the characteristics and quirks that constituted his presence in her life. Written in economical and accessible verse, this novel follows the pattern of the baseball season. Despite major holes in the characterization of Kit and Buddy, this slim work speaks volumes about the grieving process. Yeomans has very precisely selected her words to convey the fear and the grief that Kit feels. As with baseball, even though it seems that Buddy's death has brought everything to a halt, winter does end, and spring training will begin again. This novel will fit nicely alongside Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust (Scholastic, 1997) and Nikki Grimes's Dark Sons (Hyperion, 2005).—Heather M. Campbell, Philip S. Miller Library, Castle Rock, CO
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From Booklist

Sixteen-year-old Kit's normal, happy life is over when her younger brother is diagnosed with leukemia. A feisty eight-year-old kid who loves baseball, Buddy is Kit's good friend and soul mate, one she is robbed of when he dies. Yeomans weaves the baseball metaphor throughout free-verse poems to trace Buddy's decline to the poignant conclusion, "I'm calling the game." Yet the baseball year--and the book--is only half over. Kit and her parents struggle through postseason bereavement to spring training and develop a way of living without Buddy. The interesting plot structure works surprisingly well with both the topic and the narrative style. It also enhances the realistic portrayal of a family, grief stricken and out of balance, struggling to come back after a losing season. Frances Bradburn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 152 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (January 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031610647X
• ISBN-13: 978-0316106474
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,205,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ellen Yeomans hauls herself out of bed way too early every morning to feed sheep, goats, pigs, and calves. As a farmhand for nearby 150-year-old Abbott's farm, she shears sheep, mixes feed, mucks stalls and moves around far too many bales of hay and straw. She also tries out some of her best lines on these barnyard friends. While they seem to offer no editorial advice, the animals do provide a rapt audience. Or perhaps they are just hanging around hoping for another handful of molasses feed. When not working at the farm, Ellen teaches writing courses at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse and writes almost daily. She is the author of picture books: Jubilee (2004) and Lost and Found, Remembering a Sister (2000), and a young adult novel Rubber Houses (2007) from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Additionally, she is the SCBWI Regional Advisor Emeritus for Upstate New York. Ellen has her MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "...not just that Buddy died but that he lived", November 30, 2008

By 

Linda Bulger (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rubber Houses (Hardcover)

How does a family survive when a child dies? That painful question is the subject of this haunting novel for the teen reader. Teenager Kit and her parents find their world in tatters when nine-year-old Buddy is diagnosed with cancer and dies. Kit's grief isolates her from her best friend, her school work, and especially from her parents who are following their own painful, isolated courses through the devastating loss.

Rubber Houses is written in free verse, in Kit's first person voice. The format doesn't support detailed character or plot development, but it has other rewards: its spare outlines invite the reader to interpret the details. Why does Kit dress in clothing her mother used to hate? How does her preoccupation with road maps and trip routes make her feel closer to Buddy? Why does she slip away from home and return to the hospital room where Buddy died, months later? These events are largely left to the reader to decipher, and I would expect them to be well within the experience and grasp of a mid-teen reader.

Reflecting the fact that Buddy and Kit were baseball-mad, author Ellen Yeomans has based the book's structure on the baseball year. Buddy is diagnosed during the season warm-up, dies during the regular season. Kit is numb with grief during Postseason. Hot Stove is the off-season when trades are made and things are in turmoil. Spring Training brings the hard work, the starting over. Many of the poems have baseball-themed names: Opening Day, Roster Change, Triple A, Curve Ball. The recurring baseball metaphor adds much to the book for a baseball fan.

This is at least a two-hanky book but the story ends on a note of hope, strength and recovery. The reader of any age is invited to fill in the outlines of Kit's loss and re-entry. A very rewarding book, highly recommended.

Linda Bulger, 2008

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful poignant book, February 6, 2007

By 

K. L. Going "www.klgoing.com" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rubber Houses (Hardcover)

This is a book that will stick with you long after you've read it. I recommend it both for the emotional journey and for the sparse beauty of the poetry. To say it's a tear jerker is true, but somehow that fails to capture the way the story brings events to life and makes you feel as if you're a part of them. It's a powerful read. People of almost any age will find plenty of heart in these pages.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, February 3, 2007

By 

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

This review is from: Rubber Houses (Hardcover)

RUBBER HOUSES is a moving free-verse novel about Kit's experiences loving her younger brother, losing him to cancer, and moving on but never forgetting.

Kit and Buddy, despite their age gap, are very close, and Kit is devastated when he becomes sick and she finally, but not unexpectedly, loses her younger brother. She shuts down for awhile after Buddy's death, but slowly, she starts to pick up the pieces of her life and continue to live it, even without Buddy by her side, even with the pain of loss that, even when it's not fresh, is never gone.

This is an emotional, well-written novel about love, loss, and moving on despite it all. Kit is a realistic, well-developed character, but often she is the only one; the other characters seem less than real much of the time. Despite this, RUBBER HOUSES is worth reading. Whether readers can relate to Kit's situation or not, all will feel her pain at losing her brother in this painfully honest story.

Reviewed by: Jocelyn Pearce