Round One: Land of the Cranes vs. Indivisible

Land of the Cranes

Indivisible

I am always happy to have preconceived ideas upset. I came into this matchup expecting to choose Indivisible largely because I am not generally a particular fan of books written in verse like Land of the Cranes, however, I was happy to join the consensus of our team and vote for it as it overrode those biases and at times overwhelmed me emotionally. This is not to say that Indivisible is not worthy of reading or passing along, I just found it didn’t click for me, or leave the same impact that Land of the Cranes did. 

Both books tell the stories of young people with undocumented parents, and the challenges that they face when their parent(s) are detained. The protagonist in Indivisible has to grow up too fast, and support his sister when both his parents are taken in, while the protagonist in Land of the Cranes is left alone with her mother at first when her father is detained. Because of the similar content and themes as both stories deal with the challenges of being undocumented in (not explicitly, but clearly) Trump-era America, they make a good pair, but to me, it also made the disparity more clear. 

The plot of Indivisible to me felt quite clear and predictable, and followed the narrative arc I expected early on, while Land of the Cranes may not be wholly unique, it went into directions I didn’t expect that furthered the story and my emotional connection. In particular, I wanted to highlight a few aspects of the writing that stood out to me. Within the book, our protagonist creates picture poems that we see, which do not tell the bulk of the story, but make the choice to write in verse seem like a narrative choice, and not just a stylistic one. The style of writing works throughout the book, but this aspect justified it further to me, and was certainly part of what made me engage with it more deeply. It has a great focus throughout on the ability of writing (in particular her picture poems) to convey feelings that are difficult to communicate. Secondly, the book, as is alluded to in the title, makes great use of an extended metaphor our protagonist inherits from her father about their migratory journey being likened to Cranes. This metaphor is carried throughout the story and her picture poems, and is both impactful, but also would make for a good teaching tool for extended metaphor. Finally, maybe the most powerful aspect of the book, for me at least, was the sensory details in the writing, in particular her description of the emotion attached to scent. 

I have no idea why, as a person who in their real life, has a fairly limited sense of smell, that rarely greatly impacts my life, I often feel the most emotionally connected to writing when sensory details of smell are described. In the case of The Land of the Cranes it is a pillowcase that smells like her father that she carries in various forms throughout the story, but the lengths she goes to save it, and the feeling and memory attached to her smelling it, until it no longer smells like him were very moving for me. 

Overall, team fourteen required fairly minimal deliberation to declare The Land of the Cranes our winner in the first round, and we eagerly await round two!

Ben Severson, Shelley Gosse, April Aitken, Noelle Goudreau, Lisa Landry-Jones