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    Diamond Willow
    Diamond Willow
    Diamond Willow
    Ebook160 pages1 hour

    Diamond Willow

    By Helen Frost

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    There's
    more to me than
    most people
    see.

    Twelve-year-old Willow would rather blend in than stick out. But she still wants to be seen for who she is. She wants her parents to notice that she is growing up. She wants her best friend to like her better than she likes a certain boy. She wants, more than anything, to mush the dogs out to her grandparents' house, by herself, with Roxy in the lead. But sometimes when it's just you, one mistake can have frightening consequences . . . And when Willow stumbles, it takes a surprising group of friends to help her make things right again.

    Using diamond-shaped poems inspired by forms found in polished diamond willow sticks, Helen Frost tells the moving story of Willow and her family. Hidden messages within each diamond carry the reader further, into feelings Willow doesn't reveal even to herself.
    Diamond Willow is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 6, 2016
    ISBN9781466896345
    Author

    Helen Frost

    Helen Frost is the author of several books for young people, including Hidden, Diamond Willow, Crossing Stones, The Braid, and Keesha’s House, selected an Honor Book for the Michael L. Printz Award. Helen Frost was born in 1949 in South Dakota, the fifth of ten children. She recalls the summer her family moved from South Dakota to Oregon, traveling in a big trailer and camping in places like the Badlands and Yellowstone. Her father told the family stories before they went to sleep, and Helen would dream about their travels, her family, and their old house. “That’s how I became a writer,” she says. “I didn’t know it at the time, but all those things were accumulating somewhere inside me.” As a child, she loved to travel, think, swim, sing, learn, canoe, write, argue, sew, play the piano, play softball, play with dolls, daydream, read, go fishing, and climb trees. Now, when she sits down to write, her own experiences become the details of her stories. Helen has lived in South Dakota, Oregon, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Scotland, Colorado, Alaska, California, and Indiana. She currently lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with her family.

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    Reviews for Diamond Willow

    4/5

    106 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Like Helen's book "Hidden", this book has hidden gems inside each of the diamond shaped poems. It gives us a more indepth look at the story. This is a story of a young girl named Willow who feels like she doesn't fit in anywhere except with their dogs. She loves them. When she is finally given the opportunity to take them out on her own, something terrible happens. Willow finds out she is never alone. Part of the story is told through the voice of ancenstors. There is so much to love about this book that as I have said with the last few books, this is a must read and a must have four school book shelves.There are always interesting things within Helen's books. I had never heard of the diamond willow. I had to look it up and realized I knew an old man years ago when I was a child who had a diamond willow cane. I thought that he had burned the diamond shape into it. It is always wonderful to learn something new as an adult.
    • 5/5
      After reading this author’s book Keisha’s House, I immediately picked this up when I saw it on sale. I was not disappointed. Alternating between diamond-shaped poems, from the viewpoint of Willow, and from the viewpoint of her ancestors, the story takes the reader through the wild and frozen world of Alaska. Willow has spent her short 12 years under the knowledge that something isn’t right about her and her life. But it takes a journey, a horrible accident, and a special dog for her to set things right.The unique story-telling technique brings so much to this narrative. With just a few words, the authors draws in the reader, and creates an authentic world, full of magic, sorrow, and redemption. I particularly enjoyed the First Nations mythology that is woven into the story. It gives this book a spirit and soul.I highly recommend this book, particularly for late elementary and middle grade readers. It is an excellent introduction to story-thru-poetry. Also, SPOILER: No animals die.
    • 4/5
      Diamond Willow is novel in verse and prose. The story takes of twelve-year-old Willow takes place in a remote village in Alaska. Willow would rather blend into the background yet she wants to be seen for who she is, not what people want her to be. Willow wants her BFF to like her more than the boy she has a crush on. Like all twelve-year-olds, Willow wants her parents to acknowledge that she's not a little girl anymore and giver her more freedom and responsibility. But more than anything, she wants to mush the dogs to her grandparents' house by herself. One day when Willow has the dogs out by herself an unfortunate accident happens and one of the dogs is injured. Now Diamond Willow must learn to handle the consequences of her actions. Helen Frost writes each poem in the shape of the patterns found in polished diamond willow branches. Within each poem is a hidden message to add deeper meaning and understanding to Willow's story. A good read for students 9 and up.
    • 3/5
      12-year-old Willow yearns to be accepted and seen for who she is. One way she wants to prove herself is to run the family's beloved sled dogs 12 miles out to her grandparents...alone. But an accident on the way back blinds Roxy, their best dog, and Willow feels responsible. When Willow realizes her parents plan to put Roxy down, she takes action to save the dog, unaware that Roxy is the reincarnation of her dead twin sister. Other late relatives are reincarnated as animals in the Alaska wild who watch over Willow and her family. Told in prose and concrete poetry.
    • 4/5
      BIS Book Award 2009-2010

      I really liked the diamond poem structure in this book, as well as the way certain words were bolding to emphasize how Willow was feeling.
    • 5/5
      This is beautiful book that allows a glimpse into the folklore of Alaskan culture. The visual presentation of the story is unique and meaningful in it's diamond shaped layout. The story is intriguing and has a great moral.
    • 5/5
      This is a beautiful story which takes place in rural Alaska. Willow is in middle school; she has an Anglo father and an Athabascan mother. This makes it difficult for Willow to clearly identify herself. She loves spending time with her grandparents, but while traveling by dogsled her dog Roxy is blinded in an accident. Her parents see no choice but to put Roxy to sleep. Willow flees with Roxy and a friend from school; they are caught in a blizzard. They survive with the help of Willow's ancestor's who live on in the form of animals. Roxy is more deeply connected to Willow than originally evident. This is a story of survival and family roots. The words on each page form diamonds; letters throughout the text are bold to reveal Willow's feelings. Grades: 4-8.
    • 3/5
      Told in diamond shaped poems, this is the story of an Alaskan girl and the dangers she encounters dogsledding to her Grandparent's house.
    • 3/5
      In a remote area of Alaska, twelve-year-old Willow helps her father with their sled dogs when she is not at school, wishing she were more popular, all the while unaware that the animals surrounding her carry the spirits of dead ancestors and friends who care for her.
    • 4/5
      Willow is growing up and she wants to be independent. She wants to do things on her own, even if it’s not safe. After days of asking, her parents let her mush the dogs over a twelve mile trail through a remote area in Alaska. She gets to her Grandparents safely, but there’s an accident on the way home. The consequences of the accident lead to another serious incident. Through these experiences, Willow grows as an individual, becomes more confident, and learns a great deal about herself and her family.A unique aspect of this book is that Frost writes Willow’s perspective in diamond shaped verse. Willow’s deepest thoughts are woven into the verse; part of it, but distinctly separate at the same time. Frost also incorporates the spirits of the elders that watch over Willow. This is a most enjoyable read for middle school students on up. Given the length of this book (109 pages), I can also think of a variety of ways for teachers to use this book as the focal point of an effort to teach across the curriculum.
    • 4/5
      Like a diamond, the concept for Diamond Willow is brilliant. Twelve-year-old Willow is named after a stick, a diamond willow stick, to be precise. When branches are cut from the willow, a diamond shaped scar is left on the branch. Written mostly in first person verse, each page of Willow's thoughts is a diamond-shaped poem; but the brilliance is not in the shape of the poem, it lies in the gem within. Nestled within each poem is a small truth - a truth that resides within Willow but cannot be seen from without,(spacing incorrect due to formatting limitations)"WhatI loveabout dogs;They don't talk behind your back.If they're mad at you, they bark a couple timesand get it over with. It's truethey slobber on you sometimes.(I'm glad PEOPLE don't do that.) Theyjump out and SCARE you in the dark. (I know,I should say ME not "you" - some people aren't'afraid of anything.) But dogs don't make funof you. They don't hit you in the backof your neck with an ice-coveredsnowball, and if they did, andit made you cry, all theirfriends wouldn't standthere laughingat you.(Me.)"Diamond Willow takes place in a remote Alaskan town where dogs and snowmobiles are the most common form of transportation. Willow is most comfortable with her family and her dogs, especially now, since her closest friend has a boyfriend. When an accident occurs while Willow is mushing the dogs, Willow uncovers the truth within, as well as a closely-held family secret.More than just a coming-of-age story, Diamond Willow is a mystical tale of Native American and other ancestor spirits that reside within the creatures of the Alaskan wild. A thoughtful look at the meaning of family, loss, friendship and love.
    • 2/5
      Before I had read it, I heard the ALSC Notables Committee discuss this book at ALA in June. Mostly they liked it fine, although some committee members had some small reservations about the gimmick of using diamond-shaped sections of text on each page, with some words bolded to show the reader an additional small message. More serious were the reservations about the ancestor spirits of various characters, who show up as animals (a fox, a lynx, several dogs, etc) and watch over their descendants with kindly, concerned eyes.

      Because this novel takes place in Alaska and involves a girl who is part Athabascan Indian, I assumed that these would be all Athabascan spirits, and so I was all set in advance to be irritated - how come white people never get any spirit guides? The diamond-shaped poems would also set my teeth on edge, I though.

      That's what I get for assuming anything. The spirits are equal-opportunity - ancestors of both Indian and European descent get to come back as mice, chickadees, and whatnot - and those diamond-shaped poems make reading this moving and fast-paced novel a breeze (I must confess that I forgot to read those bolded "messages" about half-way through the book). The ancestors speak in regular prose, making them seem refreshingly practical and even a bit prosaic at times. I like my spirit guides to be wise but not too, well, spiritual, thank you very much.

      Willow's trips with her sled and dogs back and forth to her grandparents house are thrilling but not belabored, and her interactions with her parents and others are just right. And the amazing revelation that comes out as the family is deciding whether or not to euthanize Roxy the dog after a terrible sled accident - well, I won't give it away, but it was really intensely moving.

      The last few chapters, after we find out which former human Roxy represents, are a little anti-climactic and even strange - it's hard to continue to buy into the ancestor-into-animal concept after a while, only because it's belabored a bit too long. Still - this is a compelling book that many kids will find hard to put down. In fact, my 13-year-old daughter and I kept arguing about who got to read it during Olympics commercials.

    Book preview

    Diamond Willow - Helen Frost

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    Table of Contents

    About the Author

    Copyright Page

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    For

    Glen,

    strong and

    brave, whose

    eyes shine like

    blueberries

    in warm

    sun.

    AUTHOR’S NOTE

    Diamond Willow takes place in Old Fork, a fictional town of about six hundred people, located on a river in interior Alaska.

    There are no paved roads in and out of town; people travel by airplane, boat, snowmachine, and dogsled. They drive around Old Fork in cars, pickups, and four-wheelers, which are brought into town on a barge during the summer months when the river is not frozen.

    Willow, the main character, is part Athabascan. Through her mother, she is descended from people who have lived in Alaska for many centuries. Her ancestors on her father’s side came from Europe and migrated across Canada and the United States for about 160 years before her father settled in Old Fork.

    Most of the story is told in diamond-shaped poems, with a hidden message printed in darker ink at the center of each one. I got this idea from a lamp and a walking stick, both made of diamond willow. The lamp was made by Dr. Irving Preine as a wedding gift for my parents; I remember it from my childhood. As an adult, I lived in Telida, a small Athabascan community in interior Alaska, on the Kuskokwim River, near Mount McKinley. I taught all the students in Telida School, five to ten students in kindergarten through sixth grade. When I left, Deaphon Eluska, the grandfather of two of my students, gave me a diamond willow walking stick that he found near Telida and peeled, sanded, and polished to a beautiful finish. That stick hung in my study as I thought about this story and composed the poems.

    Diamond willow grows in northern climates. It has rough gray bark, often crusted with gray-green lichen. Removing the bark and sanding and polishing the stick reveals reddish-brown diamonds, each with a small dark center.

    Some people think that diamond willow is a specific type of willow, like weeping willow or pussy willow, but it is not. The diamonds form on several different kinds of shrub willows when a branch is injured and falls away. The dark center of each diamond is the scar of the missing branch.

    The scars, and the diamonds that form around them, give diamond willow its beauty, and gave me the idea for my story.

    7

    a.m.

    Twenty

    below zero,

    ribbons of white

    and green and purple

    dancing in the blue-black sky.

    I’m up with Dad as usual, feeding

    our six dogs. I climb the ladder to the cache,

    toss four dried salmon out to Dad. He watches

    me as I back down: Be careful on that broken rung.

    I pack snow into the dog pot; Dad gets a good fire going

    in the oil-drum stove. He loves these dogs like I do. We’re

    both out here on weekends, as much as we can be, and every

    day before and after school. He loves Roxy most. Willow, go

    get the pliers, he says, showing me a quill in Roxy’s foot.

    (It’s surprising that a porcupine is out this time of year.)

    I bring the pliers; Dad pulls out the quill, rubs in salve;

    then we go from dog to dog, spreading fresh straw.

    Hey, Magoo. Hey, Samson. Roxy, you stay off

    that foot today. Dad pats Prince on the head.

    Lucky sniffs my hand—she smells salmon.

    I find a bur in Cora’s ear and get it out.

    The snow melts into water, simmers

    in the cooking pot. I drop in the

    salmon, add some cornmeal.

    The dogs love that smell.

    They start to howl

    and I howl

    back.

    I

    was

    named

    after a stick.

    The way Mom tells it,

    she couldn’t get Dad to agree

    on any names: Ellen, after Grandma?

    Sally, after Dad’s great-aunt in Michigan?

    No, he wanted something modern, something

    meaningful. It will come to us, Dad kept saying.

    Let’s hope it comes before the baby learns to walk,

    said Mom. Always does, said Dad. That’s how they

    argue, each knows what they want, but neither seems

    to think it matters much who wins. Since Mom gives

    in before Dad most of the time, Dad gets his way a lot.

    He told me that just before I was born, he found a small

    stand of diamond willow and brought home one stick.

    That’s it! Let’s name our baby Diamond Willow!

    Mom had to think about it for a few days.

    I can see it now: They’re on the airplane

    flying to Anchorage. Mom’s in labor,

    she’ll agree to almost anything.

    Okay, she says. So Dad puts

    Diamond Willow on my

    birth certificate, and

    then Mom says,

    We will call

    the baby

    Willow.

    If

    my

    parents

    had called

    me Diamond,

    would I have been

    one of those sparkly

    kinds of girls? I’m not

    sparkly. I’m definitely not

    a precious diamond—you know,

    the kind of person everyone looks at

    the minute she steps into a room. I’m the

    exact opposite: I’m skinny, average height,

    brown hair, and ordinary eyes. Good. I don’t

    want to sparkle like a jewel. I would much rather

    blend in than stick out. Also, I’m not one of

    those dog-obsessed kids who talk about

    nothing but racing in the Jr. Iditarod.

    I

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