Poetry-Hidden

A. Bibliography:
Frost, Helen. (2011). Hidden. New York, NY: Frances Foster Books. ISBN: 9780374382216

B. Plot Summary:
Hidden is a verse novel written in two character perspectives which keeps the reader interested.  The book immediately starts off with a suspenseful tone that hooks the reader.  A young girl named Wren is at the gas station with her mom, and stays in the car while her mom pays.  She hears a gunshot and ducks down to the floor.  Just then, the car door opens, and a man starts driving her mom´s car.  From there, we learn that Wren hides in the man´s garage.  While there, his own daughter sneaks food to Wren and wants to help her escape. Wren escapes on her own and the man is soon arrested. 

Later on in their life, the two girls, Darra and Wren end up meeting at a summer camp.  They avoid each other at the beginning in hopes of not speaking of what happened years ago.  The two girls finally gather courage to speak of the accidental kidnapping, and then develop a friendship.  This novel, written for older students, brings up the ideas of friendship, forgiveness and understanding which are topics that many teenagers can relate to.

C. Critical Analysis:
This being the first verse novel that I´ve read, I found it to be a very easy read.  I was expecting a verse novel to include rhyming words at the end of the lines, but this book didn´t.  The line breaks made the reading a lot easier than most chapter books.  The use of line breaks created power and voice to the story, which then brought about a suspenseful tone.  I did not want to put this book down!  It hooked me from the first stanza, 
¨I´ll be right back, Mom promised.  
Leave the music on, I begged, 
so she left her keys 
dangling.¨ 
I was able to really create images and hear the narrator telling the story in my head due to Frost´s arrangement of lines and verses.  Frost created her own rhythm in this novel due to her verse style of writing.  There were times in the book where she simply wrote in traditional long line paragraphs, and I could hear the voice in my head change due to the lack of line breaks.  Who knew that this technique could change how I read and understood my own reading?  I really appreciated the verse style novels and look forward to reading more books like this!

This verse novel is written for older students as it includes physical abuse, some mature language (pervert) and other scary situtations. 

D. Review Excerpts:
**Booklist states "Like Frost's Printz Honor Book, Keesha's House, this novel in verse stands out through its deliberate use of form to illuminate emotions and cleverly hide secrets in the text.¨
**Kirkus Reviews states, "With care and precision, Frost deftly turns plainspoken conversations and the internal monologues of her characters into stunning poems that combine to present three unique perspectives on war, family, love, and loss.¨

E. Connections:

Students who enjoyed Hidden might enjoy other verse books such as Under the Mesquite by Gualalupe Garcia McCall or The Surrender Tree by Margarita Engle.  Students can also experiment writing their own verse short story where they use line breaks to create feeling, tone and voice.