HEARTBEAT
by Sharon Creech
Joanna Cotler Books/HarperCollins
ISBN: 0060540222
Ages 8-12
180 pages

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Annie loves to run. She runs barefoot everyday in the park. Sometimes her friend Max joins her. Max runs to escape from small town life, but Annie runs for its own sake. Running is the place where she can set her own pace and think about all the changes that are occurring in her life. Her mother is pregnant, her grandfather is forgetful and twelve-year-old Annie herself is changing, wondering:

"And what did I think/ when I was small/ and why did I forget?/ And what else will I forget/ when I grow older?/ And if you forget. Is it as if/ it never happened?/ Will none of the things/ you saw or thought or dreamed/ matter?"

HEARTBEAT is the latest book by Newbery Award-winning author Sharon Creech. Written in the same prosy free verse as her popular book LOVE THAT DOG, HEARTBEAT focuses less on poetic form and more on exploring Annie's different emotional states. Creech's poems are snapshots of Annie's feelings and experiences, an effective way of telling a story in short hand. But the impressions of the poems are fleeting, as Creech uses repetitive superlatives and abstract language rather than building images of Annie's world.

The most vivid images in the book are descriptions of color: the changing colors of the seasons around Annie as she runs, the changing color of an apple Annie is assigned to draw 100 times for art class, and the colors in the room where her mother gives birth to her new baby brother. These colors create a kaleidoscopic effect. Like Annie's moods, the colors in her world are always changing, making them both difficult to pinpoint.

Poetry is becoming a popular form for children's literature. HEARTBEAT does not have the same intensity as Karen Hesse's Newbery Award-winning book OUT OF THE DUST, but it does mark a new direction for Creech. It is a more mature book than LOVE THAT DOG, and Creech's descriptions of ordinary feelings in an ordinary life are a worthy subject for poetry. Readers accustomed to the transcontinental adventures of her previous books, which include WALK TWO MOONS, BLOOMABILITY and THE WANDERER, will have a chance to encounter another unexplored region: the inner workings of a twelve-year-old girl's mind.

   --- Reviewed by Sarah A. Wood

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