Buy The Mockingbirds
Special: $13.94(Regular price: $16.99)
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
Format: Hardcover
Reviewer: Melissa on June 23, 2011
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
While other high schools know that disciplinary proceedings are necessary, the administration of Themis Academy possibly trusts their boarding school students a little too much. They assume that the students will behave in a way that behooves their stature – the Themis way. Therefore, when Alex Patrick is date-raped, she has only two options: stay silent or enlist the Mockingbirds, a secret society of students, to work for justice in her case. In 2010 debut YA author Daisy Whitney‘s The Mockingbirds, she reminds readers that standing up for someone you care about, especially when it’s yourself, is worth everything.
In The Mockingbirds, readers are presented with a setting in which parents will, inevitably, be on the sidelines and most of the adults in the student body’s immediate life are clueless about about the injustices that their own students face. One could look at this setup as a little contrived, but in a YA novel, teens need to be the driving force behind change and this setting and atmosphere allows this to happen. Moreover, when teens like Alex and both the founding and current members of the Mockingbirds are able to speak up for themselves in believable ways as they do in this novel, am empowering and positive message can be picked up by the readers whether they’re teens or adults. If anything, this helps illuminate the errors of Meghan Cox Gurdon’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal and others like it, which think the subject of date-rape is too ‘dark’ for young adults. Rather, it is with novels like this one that teens who have suffered from similar experiences will learn that speaking out is not only courageous, but also within their reach.
Alex is a strong and believable female character. In the first chapter of the novel, Alex wakes up naked in a guy whose name she can barely remember’s bed, and she doesn’t remember how she ended up there, or at least she doesn’t right away. She sees a couple of condoms in the garbage and thinks something along the lines of, “Oh great, I lost my virginity, and I don’t even remember it.” As the novel progresses, she remembers bits and pieces of that night usually when playing “Ode to Joy,” her favorite song, which he – Carter – played that night in his room. She expresses her thoughts of shame and guilt about what happened to her as one might expect. No matter what she thinks or how a memory of that drunken night comes back to her, one thing is for sure, the reader will believe her story.
Not only will readers accept her story as something authentic, but also at times when she feels less brave and strong, she shows that reaching out to friends, the Mockingbirds, and other people she trusts helps her learn how to stand on her own two feet again, how to feel safe again, how to have a voice that stands up for herself again. Alex is lucky to have friends like the one’s she has because not every young adult who is date-raped has these types of supports in place. They let her know what her options are, but they don’t make decisions for her. Rather, they give her the opportunity to decide for herself what she wants to do – something Carter never did.
One of the things I loved most about this read-in-one-sitting type of book is that the Mockingbirds is a genuinely just and fair organization. Many other cultural artifacts – TV shows, movies, and of course, other books – present the law as slippery and open to error and prejudice. Punishments aren’t jail time or hefty fines, but rather the need for the offending party to give up the one activity that they love most. An eye for an eye doesn’t work and prison sentences often criminalize first time offenders, but giving up something they love seems fitting when one’s actions cause another person to lose their sense of personal safety and security.
Whether you feel like you’ve lost your voice and want to read something empowering or you just like good contemporary YA fiction, The Mockingbirds is a great choice. Personally, I can’t wait to read the next book in this series by Daisy Whitney.
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Melissa has always been a voracious reader of fiction and has an M.A. in English Literature to prove it. Like many other adults, she got caught up in the young adult crossover fiction phenomenon. Now, one of her great joys comes from sharing her love of YA lit on this popular review site. Come with expectations of intellect, magic, and honest reviews, and you won’t be disappointed.
