The Frail Days

February 15, 2015
Stella, a Chinese-Canadian rock drummer, yearns for success for her band.Sixteen-year-old Stella needs a lead singer and finds a major talent in Tamara when rival band Fantalicious dumps her because she's not skinny enough. Tamara believes she can never project the right image for a popular singer, but when she sings, she loses herself completely in her music, making a solid impression on Stella. Tamara agrees to join Stella's hard-edged rock band but fears that their style will keep them out of the upcoming festival. She's sure that the cutesy, pop-oriented Fantalicious will wind up headlining, and Tamara wants to beat them. The two girls become fast friends, and the group starts to create some outstanding original songs, but divergent artistic goals threaten a schism. Meanwhile the band begins to attract attention around their small town, especially that of a key tastemaker. Prendergast displays excellent insight into what makes young artists tick in this short novella. Characterization is deftly done: Stella has an attractively rebellious edge to her personality, and Tamara's character grows naturally in confidence. Punchy, insightful and great for music lovers. (Fiction. 11-18)

September 16, 2013
Fans of Ellen Hopkins and Sonya Sones’s novels in verse will delight in Prendergast’s rich, riveting story, first in a planned duo. Just before Ella’s junior year, her family moves to escape their problems—her mother’s grief over the death of her baby, younger sister Kayli’s learning difficulties, Ella’s victimization by school bullies, and her father’s unwillingness to face any of it—only to continue to wrestle with the same things. Ella falls for a Palestinian classmate, Samir, bringing up questions of identity and faith for both. Samir and Ella create controversial works for the student art show, and Samir’s daring statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Ella’s explicit portrayal of womanhood land them in serious, but believable trouble. While the thread about Ella’s bullying and her desire to act out is weakly explained, Prendergast demonstrates a powerful understanding of the adolescent search for identity, and her writing uses the verse format to great effect, with an honest teenage voice, a willingness to play with poetic form, and an intensity that arises through the condensed language. Ages 12–up. Agent: Kris Rothstein, Carolyn Swayze Literary Agency.

November 1, 2013
Grades 8-11 When a family moves to a new town and a bigger house, it doesn't always mean a fresh start. In Prendergast's affecting novel in verse, school life doesn't change, just the names of the bullies do, and family life doesn't change, it just unhinges at another address. Determined to be different at her new schoolto fit in and belong for onceRaphaelle begins calling herself Ella. But Ella is the same person that she always was, and after she meets Samir in her art class, her life spirals out of control again. In deft, layered verse, Prendergast chronicles her heroine's desperate search for a positive identity. Young love, religion, politics, prejudice, and the meaning of art in society all factor into Raphaelle's acceptance of herself and her family in all its complexities. Many readers will recognize both her tendencies toward self-sabotage and her growing belief in herself, and they will likely want continue this journey in the planned sequel, Capricious.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)