Many children have difficulty with apology. I've met both adults and children who don't know "I'm sorry" is as important to the offending party as the injured. I was once a guilt-carrier and it took me thirty years to learn that you could make bad feelings go away by "cleaning up" the messes you made with people. Three recently released YA novels have much to say about sorries while two others offer adults help in training children to make better decisions.
New in tape is the young adult novel Swallowing Stones by Joyce MacDonald (Recorded Books, 5 tapes, purchase$44.00 ; rental $13.50 ; 1-800-638-1304; ages 11 and up). Michael MacKenzie will never forget his sixteenth birthday. He celebrates the event with a wild Fourth of July party and has gotten a Winchester from his grandfather. Feeling the festive mood, he takes the gun into the woods, shoots it, and the bullet flies into the body of man repairing his roof blocks away, killing him. A day later, Michael realizes his wrong, decides to hide his guilt and from then on the path he follows feels like "swallowing stones". Readers follow Michael's months of painful consequences and the intolerable changes that finally lead him to confession.
Paul Fleischman's Whirligig (Henry Holt, $16.95; ages 10 and up) begins as newly moved and angry Brent prepares for a party. It turns out he's dressed wrong, not clued into the planned activity, and his fury escalates when he drinks, is rejected by a girl, teased and comes to blows with the host. Enraged and humiliated, Brent leaves and becoming lost in a maze of expressways, decides suicide is the way out of all his problems. Only he doesn't kill himself but Lea, an eighteen year old caring, female, honor student. Her parents ask Brent to create four whirligigs resembling Lea and place them in four corners of the United States. Brent's parents object, but the sorrowful Brent , armed with a used instruction book, supplies, and a bus pass, establishes handmade whirligigs in Maine, Florida, Washington and San Diego. Each has a positive effect on another person, but no one's changed more than Brent who sees life like a whirligig, "its myriad parts invisibly linked, the hidden crankshafts and connecting rods carrying motion across the globe and over the centuries" He understands also how Lea's death has saved him from blackness and set his life in motion, a " motion that he was now transferring to others".
Stanley "Tookie" Williams was seventeen when he started the notorious Crips gang in Los Angeles. In 1981, he was sent to San Quentin's death row, has been there ever since and now writes Life In Prison (Morrow, $15.00; ages 11 and up), a book he hopes will guide young adults away from prison. His harsh truth combats , combat the image he was given at 11 of prison as a place where a young man could prove his toughness. This eighty page, easy to read book tells the prison facts of life and how they've impacted Tookie. Living in a cell so small he has to turn his body sideways to enter, Williams describes the lack of privacy and privileges, constant noise, strip searches, the insanity of J-cat inmates, the violence, and living in extreme isolation in "the hole". His detailing works well to make the horrors real and he extends this periodically by translating an ugly situation into a teenager's life. For example, he suggests readers can capture the feeling of living in a cell by spending ten hours alone in a bathroom "with no more than a radio, a blanket, a book or magazine, and a couple of sandwiches." More information about Williams and other books he's produced to benefit the Institute for the Prevention of Youth Violence can be found on his web site: www.tookie.com
Sorry training can begin early with the playful book by Caralyn and Mark Buehner, I Did It, I'm Sorry (Dial, $15.99; ages 6-10). The book follows animals in their quest of doing the right thing with humor and wit by placing them in a variety of situation Two solutions are for giggles and with the consideration of the third have great possibility for launching discussions.
Barbara Lewis' What Do You Stand For? A Kid's Guide to Building Character (Free Spirit Press, $18.95; ages 8 and up) explains twenty-seven different character traits, like respect, responsibility, and honesty. Then she extends thinking by offering topics to debate and reflect, activities to undertake, book and web site recommendations, and the story of a child who exemplifies each value.