Rubber Houses

by Ellen Yeomans

Book Overview

Typical teenager Kit lives a happy, normal life of friends,boys, and loving family. She and her younger brother, Buddy, are incrediblyclose despite their eight-year age difference, bonded by a shared love ofbaseball and math. But when Buddy is taken suddenly by cancer, Kit and herparents struggle to survive. Told in spare, lyrical verse, Rubber Houses isa powerful novel that perfectly captures the intense and excruciating painof the loss of a loved...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031610647X
• ISBN13: 9780316106474
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.7" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 12 to 22 years
• Grade Range: Grade 7 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

A Home Run

Ellen Yeomans captures a family's grief with heartbreaking perfection in this unique work. I was sobbing by page 29 and the tears didn't let up much after that. Buddy is just so damn loveable, and the family is so blindsided by his tragic death. I think Yeomans does a great job of drawing each character: the control-freak Mom, the unavailable Dad, the adoring older sister and adorable, captivating little brother Buddy. It's impressive that even in spare free verse, the author nails every emotion, every nuance, every tragic blow to the heart with perfectly-chosen words. The baseball metaphors are spot-on. This is a beautiful story of sibling love, tragedy, and recovery. I will recommend it highly to everyone I know.

Emotional Reading

Reviewed by Nicole LeBoeuf (age 16) for Reader Views (6/07) "Rubber Houses," by Ellen Yeomans, is a heart-melting story told in a unique and captivating way. The novel is about a teenage girl dealing with the loss of her younger brother, and her personal battle with grief. From her home in New York, Yeomans wrote two picture books titled "Jubilee" and "Lost and Found: Remembering the Sister." As this is her first novel, she has pulled out all the tricks to make it a spectacular beginning. The novel is a tale that any teenager, or anyone that has suffered a loss, can relate to. Through the use of free-verse, her story is given to us in short individual doses which sing with meaning, both to the tale as a whole, and as a separate entity. You could open to any page of the novel, pick a poem, and delight in it without reading anything else. Reading the novel as a whole, you discover the life of Kit, a teenage girl who is very close to her younger brother, Buddy. It is not long before Buddy is stricken with cancer and passes from her life. Kit is left to deal with her grief, and the chaos her emotions wreak inside her, seemingly on her own. The novel has a baseball theme, as it was his favorite sport. Each section is given a baseball term, like "Spring Training," creatively symbolizing Kit's love for Buddy, as well as showing Kit's step of recovery. Her psychological movements are tracked and explored, and her final courageous movement toward recovering is inspiring. It is possible to recover from losing someone you love so dearly. When I picked up the book, I was not expecting what I discovered hidden underneath its seemingly innocent cover. It is not often that I am emotionally affected by the printed word, but Yeoman's words were able to reach a part of me that understood every word she wrote so clearly it was as though they were chosen from my own mind. I found myself near tears one moment and underneath a veil of goose bumps the next. "Rubber Houses" is a novel anyone can enjoy as well as learn from. If you have recently lost someone beloved, this inspiring tale can help you through the worst of times.

A good pick for any teen leisure reading library.

Ellen Yeomans' RUBBER HOUSES is presented in lyrical verse: the format may put off readers who want a straight fiction read, but the story will prove moving to any who don't mind the verse structure, telling of teen Kit and her younger brother and a family changed by tragedy. A good pick for any teen leisure reading library.

An amazing book!

The verse is easy to follow and yet so full of meaning and emotion, it will take your breath away, and yes, make you cry a time or two. But don't the most memorable books do that? Ellen Yeomans is a masterful storyteller as well as a poet. There's not much else to say except, I loved this book!

A wonderful poignant book

This is a book that will stick with you long after you've read it. I recommend it both for the emotional journey and for the sparse beauty of the poetry. To say it's a tear jerker is true, but somehow that fails to capture the way the story brings events to life and makes you feel as if you're a part of them. It's a powerful read. People of almost any age will find plenty of heart in these pages.