Out of the Fire

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Summary: Out of the Fire
Review: Dayle's life is starting to get complicated. Her Gram, who she had been very close to dies, her best friend is angry at her, her boyfriend is moving away to university in a distant city, and her father has remarried and had a new child. But nothing could prepare her for a life changing event that happens at a bush party with her boyfriend. Dayle wasn't crazy about being around all the kids who were drinking, and how they made fun of the people she thought were her friends. But nothing could prepare her for the accident with the bonfire.

Dayle is badly burned and is in the hospital fighting to recover and trying to deal with the anger, sadness and everything happening to her. The beginning of this book seems a bit cliched, but it picks me up once you get going and becomes terrific and gripping. Follow Dayle's journey of healing, forgiveness, discovery and heartbreak.

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Summary: Richie's Picks: OUT OF THE FIRE
Review: It was the week after the end of fourth grade. Mom had gotten everything together so that when Dad got home from work we immediately piled into our black Rambler station wagon and headed off for Crab Meadow Beach on Long Island Sound. Mom watched over us as we charged into the water--particularly seven-year-old novice swimmer Jimmy--while Dad filled the hibachi with charcoal briquettes and lit it. After dinner we took one last swim as the sun dipped below the horizon. Dad buried the remains of the glowing charcoal in the sand. After drying off, I started down to the water's edge to rinse the sand off of my feet before putting on my sneakers.

I didn't make it there. Pain ripped through me like a lightning bolt. A two inch square blister--colored white and brown--rose on the sole of my foot. I had stepped upon an errant briquette that hadn't been buried deep enough. That pain was something I'd never known the equal of. I ended up barefoot for a week, reading, my foot up on a hassock.

You know those firewalks--where people step barefoot on hot coals? They were really big out here in the '80s. In a million years you couldn't convince me that I could do that! And based on my memory of that relatively minor burn sustained as a kid, my mind cannot begin to comprehend the pain that serious burn victims endure. People die from that kind of trauma.

Dayle, the main character of OUT OF THE FIRE by Debroah Froese, is a burn victim who lives but has to fight to survive the trauma that nearly killed her:

"Time for her basin bath. That's what Cora had told Mom. It made it sound so simple. Close to pleasant, even. But the basin bath brought sharp, steely tools that scraped dead flesh from my body. Morphine distorted the torture but I still knew it for what it was. Debriding. Humiliating and painful, all in the name of therapy.
"And while my flesh was being raked, other gowned people bent and twisted my limbs. They told me the treatment was supposed to keep me limber and prevent the scars of healing from binding me into a tight cocoon. But at that moment I wanted to curl up into a tight cocoon and die, or at least sink so low beneath the surface of the earth that no one would find me."

Surviving a life-threatening burn, especially if your face is involved, means having to eventually deal with the way people look at you. So many times in young adult books--as with real life--young people deal with issues of body image and appearance. My eleven-year-old, Rosemary, tells me quite earnestly that virtually all children her age are extremely concerned with the way they look and the way they dress. (She backed down from her original position that 100 percent of the children her age care, allowing for a few "far-fetched" examples I concocted). But with whom you hang, what you wear, and what you look like are the basis for so many adolescents deciding who you are. And what Dayle faces in terms of appearance is in another league compared to most kids.

In fact, Dayle is a girl who has stepped forth from a cocoon not so long before the horriffic accident. A quiet student, she had gotten up the guts to participate in the school play, and had thereby caught the eye of an extremely popular boy. Dayle even has images of someday modeling. Or had. Unfortunately, as was the case in Cynthia Voight's classic IZZY WILLY NILLY, Dayle's boyfriend Kevin is part of a drinking crowd. Alcohol plays a central role in Dayle's accident, as it did in Izzy's.

OUT OF THE FIRE is a story that might make kids who are fussing about being a little too heavy or pimply or not having exactly the "right" wardrobe think twice about the "problems" they're facing. Even the character in IZZY WILLY-NILLY--a girl who has lost a leg in an accident--would have to pause to consider how bad things are for Dayle.

Hopefully, as with IZZY, teen readers will also consider the alcohol issue. (I'm always telling my children and students how I was one of the lucky fifty percent--that there was a fifty-fifty chance that I could have killed myself or someone else as a result of those many "celebrations" of my younger years).

In OUT OF THE FIRE, Dayle gets a real perspective on the value of family and true friends...and that there's more to life than just the way you look.

"And as Stu pointed out, scars were a mark of experience."...

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Summary: This book was downright stupid
Review: This book was boring and it had no point. Who wants to read about some girl sitting in a hospital and crying over stupid problems. If you want to waste time, read this please, but then again, you might jut like it.

Rating:
Summary: Out of the Fire
Review: Title of the book: Out of the Fire
By: Deborah Froese
Reviewed by: M. Poppins
Period: 5

Dayle Meryk is an ordinary sixteen-year-old who wants to stay friends with Amy, who has been her best friend for a very long time. Amy thinks that Dayle has changed ever since she started having a relationship with Keith. Amy then says that they are not best friends any more, which makes Dayle devastated. To make matters worse, Dayle's friend Stu has a crush on her, and it's very embarrassing. Despite these problems, Dayle has a very decent life. Everything changes after that, though. Dayle goes to the Meadow (a place where kids can get drunk and no one knows) and one of her friends tries to light a bonfire. He ends up causing an explosion. Everyone is safe except for Dayle, who suffers from bad burns, and Pete, who has the same problem, except his case is much worse. Dayle regains her strength day by day, only by having her friends and family help her out. Also, she thinks of her grandmother, who died a couple of months before, and everything she used to tell her. She always complains about how ugly she looks with the burns on her face. Keith reassures her that he doesn't care about how she looks but how she acts. She would always blame Pete for being careless, until one day he gets pneumonia and dies. She feels horrible, and her boyfriend Keith can't get over the fact that Pete is gone. He says that every time he sees her, her burns remind him about Pete's death. Dayle cares a lot about Keith and she didn't want him to be miserable, so she tells him to go to a university that is really far away. That is the end of their relationship, but Dayle is happy that Keith probably wouldn't be miserable anymore. Now, all Dayle has to do is stay strong and she'll be all right.

I really liked the book because it showed that nothing matters about how you look, but how you act. "What you look like... that's not what's important. Not to me. I just want you to get better." This was something that Keith said to Dayle over the phone. He was a very honest person. At least one person thought Dayle was normal.

Another reason why I liked the book is because every time something happens, Dayle's grandmother would be there for her. Not in real life, but in her dreams. "Friendship outlasts romance." Dayle always thought of that quote because that was what her Gram would always say. When Dayle had no one to talk to, she would think about her conversations with her Gram. Her Gram always comforted her, always. Those parts remind me of my own grandmother.

My favorite part of the book was during Dayle's stay in the hospital because there would be a lot of description. The descriptions would let me visualize everything that is happening. Being able to see pictures in my head help me understand more about the book.