Bone Gap

Bone Gap  

Title: Bone Gap  

Author: Laura Ruby    

ISBN: 9780062317605  

Publisher: Balzer+Bray  

Copyright Date: 2015  

Genre: Teen, fiction, mystery, fantasy  

Awards or Honors: Michael Printz Award Winner  

Reading Level/Interest Level: Teenager and young adults  

Plot Summary: The book follows a young man named Finn as he investigates the disappearance of a young 19-year-old woman named Roza in the town of Bone Gap. As Finn lives life in farm town Bone Gap, Roza is being held by an unidentified man who wants to marry her. Roza is moved from place to place as the story progresses and flashbacks to her time when she lived in Poland with her grandmother and arriving in Bone Gap. Meanwhile Finn’s life in Bone Gap reaches the summer after he graduates. His life and interactions with his brother Sean and his friends like Priscilla. Priscilla and Finn grow closer and fall in love, and they discover that Finn is “face blind”, a condition of being unable to recognize faces. Roza tries to survive living with the man who kidnapped her. Finn eventually finds Roza and escapes with her after Roza slices her face so that the kidnapper no longer considers her beautiful and of interest to him. They find their way back to Finn’s farm, where Roza reunites with Sean and Finn reunites with Priscilla.  

Author Background: Laura Ruby is a prolific award-winning author and educator. She has written 12 books, including Printz Award Winner Bone Gap. She writes books for both teens, adults and kids, and her books include I’m Not Julia Roberts, Play Me, Good, Thirteen Doorways, Lily’s Ghost, and The Chaos King, among others.  

She also is on the faculty at Hamline University’s Masters in Writing for Children Program. She lives in the Chicago area, and is a featured speaker at various festivals, libraries and teacher’s conventions. In the past, she has spoken at Illinois Reads Book Festival, Women and Children’s First, and Authors After Hours. (About Laura, 2020).  

Critical Evaluation for Book: The chapters in the book alternate between the narratives of Finn and Roza. The writing is clear and concise and contains lots of details that help the reader get a better understanding of the characters. A potential style issue is that there is a lot of dialog and long conversations that sometimes make it hard to understand who is talking. Themes of the book include the drawbacks of rural life, loneliness, regret, and people’s attempts to find meaning in their lives. The book has dark twists that keep the reader interested. A reader can sometimes lose track of who is saying what. Teen readers might enjoy reading it if they like reading fiction about issues like belonging, identity, and figuring out where you want to live in life. The work is overall a unique work that will make the reader want to know more about face blindness.  

Creative Use for a Library Program: I would come up with library program games of drawing people’s faces without seeing them. I would not let them know what the object of the game is beforehand and would instead have them all face the wall seated. I would then give them all a name of a person in the group and ask them to draw them. The person who draws the most accurate face wins. The goal is to show how hard it is to remember a face, and that even if you don’t have face blindness, it can still be hard to remember face details. The game can also be altered to use with graphic design programs on computers or other people.  

Speed-Round Book Talk: Finn is a small-town teenager in Bone Gap, a place where nothing of note happens, except the mysterious disappearance of Roza, a woman from Poland who he and his brother both cares about. When he runs into Roza and her kidnapper, he is frustrated by his inability to recognize him or remember what he looks like. Finn knows he can find Roza, if only his friends and family would believe and help him. Can Finn find her before something happens to her?  

Potential Challenge Issues and Defense Preparation: There are no challenges currently. Potential challenge issues might include book scenes of kidnapping and violence against women. However, these book scenes are not graphic and are not used to sensationalize the story.   

Reason for Inclusion: I included this book for its book awards and because it addressed issues of rural life, which are important to consider for librarians. There are many issues unique to rural life for teenagers, and it is important for librarians to have books that represent all teenagers. The book is also well-written and has an interesting plot.  

About Laura. (2020). Laura Ruby. Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://lauraruby.com/about-laura/ 

Ruby, L. (2015). Bone Gap. [eBook edition]. https://dalycity.bibliocommons.com/item/show/2304142076?active_tab=bib_info