Where the Crawdads Sing 

D I S C U S S I O N 

What designates a book a Middle Grade, a Young Adult, or even Adult title?

When it comes to this book, which I read in 2017 when it was released (and again now), I close the cover wanting to see this shared with a broader audience.  Yes, it's that good. Perhaps a younger audience, too. For I left this book wanting more readers to experience the richness of this text and the deeply rooted study of marsh life and nature and the wild deeply embedded between, around, and beneath the words. 

The opening feels very kid lit. So many stories in children's literature begin with the orphan. Most of this book, with rare exceptions, actually feels YA. I also opened the first pages of this book and wondered why isn't this shared as a young adult title?  Like other authors, like Nicholas Sparks, it will more than likely cross over anyway. There are already girls in middle school wanting to read it after reading rave reviews.

However, this remains one of my favorite books, probably for its main character's most torturous journey in life and the ultimate awareness that, despite all of it, she ends up weaving her knowledge of land and fauna into this story like the true scientist the author, herself, is. Put simply: it's beautifully written. Except for the leap at the ending. The finding of the necklace. I think that detail could have been left to space and time, to, perhaps, only be found later in a dark, mossy bog.

I know if I were sitting in the editorial chair on this project, I would want to repackage it and rerelease it as a YA. It seems to me that it works, even for those in the middle grade categories if some of the more adult content would be allowed to slip off the page. I believe, like in many books, the sexual scenes could be pulled back or left off the page, left for the reader to consider for a nod before moving on. Simply said, not all events need to be vocalized. Some might simply be hinted to. ____

And still, for the second time reading this, I have to admit to wanting Tate to drive her home from the trial or for her to have actually reached his boat the moment the sheriff pulls up to alert him to his father's death. 

Maybe I am the hopeless romantic, but I wonder what this book would feel like had it simply ended with Tate driving Kya home to enjoy a dinner with his father and Jumpin' and Mable, and Jodie, and have the author make another connection to the illustration her mother drew of Kya and Tate young and in the wild. Perhaps a few more beats would lead them to the beach, feeding seagulls together, and enjoying the waves and moon and listening... when the crawdads sing. 

All authors have their signature style that identifies hime or her, and while we often identify this as Voice, it's the use and skill and presentation of literary devices that earmark a writer's voice. In this writer's case, her first book, is so well marked by her impeccable use of personification of her setting. It's visual imagery at its finest.

There's a lot to love here. Just explore the way this author writes! It's breathtaking. We know good writing uses Active Verbs, Metaphor, Simile, Visual Imagery, Literary Devices, Personification, Allusion, but there comes a long a book that does it just a little more uniquely or deeper or more intensely than other folks. For me, this is that book. 

D I S C U S S I O N

How does a prologue differ when it's used in fiction, rather than nonfiction, or does it?

Why would an author, writing a story about a girl, who enters the narrative in 1952 at the age of seven, benefit from using personification to boost the visual imagery?

PROLOGUE: This prologue is a foreshadowing of the ending, but the reader just coming to this story is unaware. 

• • This also compares to the approach used in The 57 Bus and All Thirteen. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF A FIRST LINE: "The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh's moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog" (Owens, 5). 

SPECIFICITY: Specificity is good writing here. (See example above.) The simple addition of one word does more: NOT just hot, but August-hot.

ACTIVE VERBS: Active verbs improve writing, but using this in unexpected ways adds freshness.

PERSONIFICATION: Personification plus action heightens a moment. "the marsh's moist breath hung..." (5).

EXTENDED METAPHOR:  Extended Metaphor plus personification does even more. "As she rounded a stand of tall grass, suddenly the ocean's face--gray, stern, and pulsing--frowned at her. Waves slammed one another, awash in their own saliva, breaking apart on the shore with loud booms--energy searching for a beachhead. Then they flatten into quiet tongues of foam, waiting for the next surge" (43).

ACTION  + VISUAL IMAGERY: "But when Kya ran to the porch, she saw her mother in long brown skirt, kick pleats nipping at her ankles, as she walked down the sandy lane in high heels" (Owen, 5).

• It's powerful when the flow of a sentence mocks the visuals in a scene. 

• Here the way the author pauses for a clause to give a sense of movement.

This list could go on and on. This is an exquisite example of excellence in prose.