Young Adult Fiction — Review

A Walk in the Park

by Grace Casselman, Napoleon Publishing, 2005
ISBN 1-894917-19-7, $8.95, 160 pp, ages 11 – 15
www.napoleonpublishing.com

Terra, the main character in A Walk in the Park, is challenged by almost every situation a modern fourteen-year-old can face. Her family has just moved from Ottawa to Calgary and Terra is trying to make new friends. She’s bullied by an intimidating group of girls at her new school, is tempted by cigarettes and drugs as she is invited into another group, and has to decide what kind of person she wants to be as she chooses between them and yet another group with a more wholesome agenda. One of her new friends wants to be her boyfriend, and she gets kissed for the first time. In the midst of all the stresses of moving to a new community, leaving her friends behind and forming new relationships, her birth mother asks to meet her for the first time since she was given up for adoption. Although she’s known that she is adopted, and she is very happy with her life and her parents, she is still angry at her birth mother and has to work through conflicting feelings about meeting her. Terra rises to each challenge, despite her nervous stomach that makes her want to throw up at the first sign of any stress, and emerges at the end of the book, well on her way to figuring out what her values are. The author has a definite message to convey to her teen readership, and no doubt hopes that by reading about one person’s journey toward adulthood, her readers will avoid some of the pitfalls that may be encountered along the way.

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