A novel for 8th graders and up (2012)<\/p>\n
Jenny Fox goes to South America to build a school in her grandfather\u2019s country\u2014but her summer adventure turns into much more than community service when she meets Nelson, the charismatic leader of the project.<\/p>\n
Jenny isn\u2019t the only one with her eyes on Nelson. As she and her flirtatious rival get closer to Nelson, though, she discovers his dark side: an ugly prejudice against his country\u2019s enemies across the border. She doesn\u2019t want to lose him, but how can she accept his bigotry?<\/p>\n
While love and conscience clash inside her, a real war threatens to break out around her. This is a summer she\u2019ll remember for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n
\u2022<\/p>\n
\u2026The teens\u2019 fiery arguments humanize the big questions, as Jenny witnesses the prejudice against the poorer and darker people who have lost their land, including the housekeeper who works for the volunteers but eats alone… Are the hostile guerrillas on the border terrorists or freedom fighters? Readers will join the discussion.
\n– Booklist<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
Excerpt:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
She couldn\u2019t stop taking pictures.<\/p>\n
They\u2019d only left the airport a half-hour before, and Jenny had already gone through most of a roll of film. Soldiers with rifles, drinking sodas from bulging plastic baggies\u2026 a woman in a bright yellow blouse selling giant fruits from a roadside cart\u2026 and now, this man in a straw cowboy hat, driving an empty wagon down the road. The wheels were heavy wooden disks, and the animal pulling the wagon was huge. Except for the driver\u2019s red T-shirt, it looked like something out of the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
She stood with her long lens out the window, trying to focus. As the bus passed the wagon, she found herself alongside the animal for just a moment. Its eyes were big as golf balls, and seemed to express complete hopelessness.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was that<\/em>?\u201d someone said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn ox, probably.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a cow with a pituitary problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYak yak yak.\u201d<\/p>\n
The image in Jenny\u2019s viewfinder shook too much to focus. She put the camera down, and saw the driver whip the animal. The head lowered, but the wagon didn\u2019t move any faster.<\/p>\n
Though the crack of the whip made her wince, Jenny held onto her optimism. Before yesterday, she had never flown on a plane, never been further from home than Disneyland. She could hardly believe she was really here, in her grandfather\u2019s country, the place she\u2019d heard about ever since she could remember\u2026<\/p>\n
The heat and the bumpy ride made Jenny queasy, and the wind through the open windows was too hot to help. She worried that she would throw up, and then for the rest of the month, instead of being The Short, Flat-Chested Girl With Freckles, she would be The Girl Who Threw Up On the Bus.<\/p>\n
Faint in the distance, a cone-shaped mountain rose from the plain. \u201cAhuacocha,\u201d the driver called back. \u201cEl volc\u00e1n.\u201d<\/p>\n
Awe distracted her from the turmoil in her stomach. The volcano was beautiful, and exciting. What she wanted most from this trip was to see things she could never have seen at home, to have experiences that deserved to be called amazing<\/em>. A volcano was an excellent start.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Comments:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
This book originated with an anecdote my wife told me, about the summer when she was sixteen and worked on a kibbutz in Israel. I can\u2019t say much more about her story because I\u2019d be giving away some surprises, but I knew as soon as I heard it that I wanted to turn the story into a book someday.<\/p>\n
In order to do that, though, I needed to move the story to a setting I could write about from firsthand knowledge. I chose to set the book in a fictional Latin American country, and drew on my experiences in Nicaragua, where I\u2019d spent a month helping to build a school in 1984. The underlying purpose of the project was to show our support for the Sandinista government, at a time when the Reagan Administration wanted to topple it. Our visit coincided with the height of tensions between the U.S. and Nicaragua, and for a while\u2014with American spy planes breaking the sound barrier overhead each day, a noise that rattled windows and that many mistook for bombs\u2014no one could say for sure that the U.S. wouldn\u2019t invade at any moment. It seemed, in other words, that by volunteering, we might have put our lives in danger.<\/p>\n
In portraying the fictional landscape of Monteverde, I drew on my notes from Nicaragua (combined with research on coastal South America). The fears of the American volunteers come straight from my notes and memories as well.<\/p>\n
Near the end of The Watermelon, <\/em>a new theme emerges: the impact of personal relationships on history. This, coincidentally, is also connected with Israel.<\/p>\n
The story of Harry Truman\u2019s decision to recognize the new State of Israel in 1948 has stayed with me ever since I heard it. Before going into politics, Truman owned a men\u2019s clothing store with an army buddy, Eddie Jacobson. Jacobson was Jewish, and the two men remained close friends. Years later, after the Holocaust, when Israel declared its independence, most of Truman\u2019s advisors urged him not to recognize the new state. But Truman felt that the Jewish people had suffered throughout history\u2014and especially under Hitler\u2014because they lacked a homeland and had no place to find refuge. I believe that his long friendship with Jacobson made these sufferings real and personal to him. Against the advice of his Secretary of State, General George C. Marshall (and a roomful of luminaries that included Dean Acheson and George F. Kennan), Truman decided to lend U.S. support to the new state by recognizing it. Personal relationships shape the way we understand the world, and that can have powerful, history-changing effects. I wanted The Watermelon <\/em>to dramatize this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jenny Fox goes to South America to build a school in her grandfather\u2019s country\u2014but her summer adventure turns into much more than community service when she falls in love with the charismatic leader of the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cMichael Laser tackles some big issues\u2014war, peace, love, infatuation, and cultural awareness, among others. An extremely compelling read; highly recommended.\u201d\u2014Janice Eidus, author of The War of the Rosens and The Last Jewish Virgin
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