Audacious

by Gabrielle Prendergast

Overview

Sixteen-year-old Raphaelle says the wrong thing, antagonizes the wrong people and has the wrong attitude.

She can't do anything right except draw, but she draws the wrong pictures. When her father moves the family to a small prairie city, Raphaelle wants to make a new start. Reborn as "Ella," she tries to fit in at her new school. She's drawn to Samir, a Muslim boy in her art class, and expresses her confused feelings in explicit art. When a classmate texts a photo of Ella's art to a younger friend, the fallout spreads throughout Ella's life, threatening to destroy her already-fragile family. Told entirely in verse, Audacious is a brave, funny and hard-hitting portrait of a girl who embodies the word audacity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459802667
Publisher:	Orca Book Publishers
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Series:	Young Adult Novels
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Lexile:	1120L (what's this?)
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Gabrielle Prendergast is an award-winning writer, teacher and designer. She has written many books for young people including the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize winner, Zero Repeat Forever and the Westchester Award winner, Audacious. She lives in Vancouver with her family.

Editorial Reviews

09/16/2013
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. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Smart, funny, clever and bold. Ella is a quirky, appealing character with a complicated back story and realistic, identifiable problems...Explores important, highly topical themes in an intelligent way."

Resource Links

★ "Prendergast's sophomore YA novel is aptly named, both for the fierce spirit of its narrator, Ella, and the choice to tell her story entirely in verse...The verse bolsters character...[and] also allows Prendergast to take a jagged, piecemeal approach to telling Ella's story, a sort of diary structure that feels intimate and believable...The refusal to stick to one particular style, form, or rhyme scheme is an apt reflection of Ella's tumultuous teenage state...Prendergast asks concrete questions about faith, art, and politics that are sometimes avoided in YA...In Ella, Prendergast has created a voice that is definitely audacious—but also utterly real and memorable."

starred review Quill & Quire

"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."

Booklist

"The verses flow well and readers will connect with Raphaelle and her desire to reinvent herself. Fans of Ellen Hopkins are sure to like this book."

Library Media Connection

"This stunning, potent novel-in-verse delivers a riveting story and a character who is independent yet unsure, brave yet vulnerable, and so utterly true to herself. Readers will revel in every carefully chosen
word and image. Prendergast has created a magnificent portrait of high school life, of first love, of a family in crisis. She raises challenging, intriguing questions about religion, women in society, art and self-expression. She takes on so many things in this book and yet the reader never feels overwhelmed, it never once feels like too much. The poetry format is used to brilliant effect, compelling readers to slow down and savour each exquisitely crafted poem, and to enter more deeply into Ella’s mind and heart."

Canadian Children's Book News

"Prendergast has written a stunning young adult novel which shows the coming-of-age process of a strong and independent young woman who wants to express herself through her art... Audacious is written entirely in verse, but readers will hardly notice this fact after the first few pages. Somehow, the author manages to create fully formed characters, interesting dialogue and a series of events which tell a complete story while using a minimum of words. Prendergast says enough that readers have a clear sense of plot, setting and characters, and yet readers are able to fill in any blanks with their own imagination—a perfect combination!"

CM Magazine

"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."

Booklist

[Starred review] "Prendergast's sophomore YA novel is aptly named, both for the fierce spirit of its narrator, Ella, and the choice to tell her story entirely in verse...The verse bolsters character...[and] also allows Prendergast to take a jagged, piecemeal approach to telling Ella's story, a sort of diary structure that feels intimate and believable...The refusal to stick to one particular style, form, or rhyme scheme is an apt reflection of Ella's tumultuous teenage state...Prendergast asks concrete questions about faith, art, and politics that are sometimes avoided in YA...In Ella, Prendergast has created a voice that is definitely audacious—but also utterly real and memorable."

Quill & Quire

"The plot maintains interest and the characters are complex...Recommended for grades nine through twelve."

Southwestern Ohio Young Adult Materials Review Group

"In many ways, Raphaelle’s audacity is not just an act of self-insistence but an open declaration of war on convention...[Prendergast's] language is unsentimental, and the everyday details in the verses balance the heavily emotional content."

Buried in Print blog

"I love this character. She's bold, strong, and refuses to conform...This is definitely a novel that offers a lot of food for thought on what makes art, censorship, self-expression and confidence, but most of all, it's about having the courage to be audacious."

Rachel's Reading Timbits blog

"A smart, powerful story about a teenage girl trying to navigate right and wrong...Raphaelle, or Ella, has a very compelling voice. She's smart, sharp, witty, and bold...Verse novels have a certain something to them not often found in prose...The reader comes face to face with the speaker's life, with their reactions and emotions, with their struggles and hopes."

Me on Books blog

"Told in verse, Audacious is a very quick read, but its few words don’t hinder the messages ...It covers a lot of sensitive issues, but I do think the author handled them all respectfully and in an approachable way. Ella is definitely a character that I admired and I enjoyed watching her grow as a person and learn about herself and the world."

Pinkindle blog

02/01/2014
Gr 10 Up—Continuing in the tradition of Ellen Hopkins and Sonya Sones, Prendergast's novel in verse centers on a young woman coming to terms with her troubled past. Ella, an aspiring artist, has moved with her family to a new city and school. The reasons for the move unfold slowly, and her backstory is one of the many mysteries layered within the plot. Ella uses art to express herself and creates nine canvases for the school art show based on the word "Audacious," where each letter represents another word, acrostic-style. The art pieces feature women who fight back despite their circumstances, including images devoted to labels such as "Disabled," "Indigenous," and "Asthmatic." Controversy ensues when Ella incorporates a canvas for the letter "C" for the word "Cunt," along with a photo of her genitalia. Child pornography charges are filed, and her family is forced to finally speak openly about the secrets that threaten to tear each of them apart. A traumatic event that occurred previously finally comes to light and gives teens insight to the motivation for many of Ella's actions. The novel contains multiple, adeptly intertwined plotlines that touch upon an extensive range of issues, including Islamic religious views, the existence of God, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, eating disorders, mother-daughter relationships, learning disabilities, and censorship. A wonderfully fast-paced novel that mature teens are sure to embrace.—Lindsay Cesari, Baldwinsville School District, NY

School Library Journal

2013-09-15
Prendergast, who hails from Vancouver, B.C., pulls out all the stops in this action-packed coming-of-age tale fraught with familial and societal dysfunction. When her family moves east from a tiny bungalow near the beach to a large house on the plains, 16-year-old misfit Raphaelle decides this new beginning calls for a little self-reinvention. Changing her name to Ella, Raphaelle narrates the various stages of her transformation, saying, "I have screwed around long enough. / I come to you a reformed girl," and vowing not to make waves in her new environment. But when kids at her new high school start to isolate her-- "What's Ella short for? Elephant?"--and domestic pressures close in, Ella finds herself returning to her more radical, artistic side for release. She also finds herself seeking the comfort and affection of fellow art-class student Sam (short for Samir), who happens to be a Palestinian Muslim. When invited to contribute to the school art show, Ella and Sam create striking works that land both, in different ways, at the center of heated controversy. Though the narrative's graphic plotting at times proves heavy-handed, Prendergast offers great insight into teen psychology--especially that of the outcast--and boldly probes sensitive topics like religious prejudice, sex, censorship and eating disorders. A provocatively modern test of understanding difference. (Verse fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews