Bone Gap

Citation:

Ruby, L. (2015). Bone gap. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Summary:

Finn knows he is different and that there is something wrong with him, especially in the wake of Roza’s disappearance. Finn, the only witness of her kidnapping, tries to tell the town what happened but the townsfolk don’t find his story believable. They think that Roza is just another person who left the O’Sullivan boys, just like their very own father and mother did many years ago. After a shocking discovery from Petey, the strange teenage girl beekeeper, Finn realizes that he is the only one who can save Roza and though he isn’t sure where to start, he knows that he must do this for his brother, Sean. Finn must slip through the bone gap of his small town in order to find the magical world where his friend is being held hostage.

Response:

Like a typical young adult novel, the protagonist Finn spends the novel making discoveries about the world and people around him, which lead him to grow as an individual and eventually muster the bravery to find his friend Roza. He has a rare condition called face-blindness, where he cannot recognize faces. This factors into why he could not identify Roza’s kidnapper, why he has fallen for the “ugly” girl Priscilla “Petey” Willis, and why it will be so difficult to save Roza. This book’s overarching topic is beauty, as Priscilla struggles to accept that Finn finds her beautiful when the rest of the world doesn’t, along with the story line of Roza being kidnapped because of her beauty. The theme is that love means truly knowing someone on a deeper level and that a person’s beauty is determined by more than just their outward appearance. This book is appealing for a high school audience that is interested in this topic, low fantasy, or even books with a small-town setting.

Textbook Connections:

Genre: fiction

Subgenre: fantasy, specifically magical realism

This book would be considered low fantasy because most of the elements of the book seem realistic, with a fantastical alternate world that can be entered through the corn. This world is not really the focus, as the story is focused on the character of Roza who is trapped in this world and must escape. The reader does not realize that she is in an alternate world until the book is almost over, as it seems almost the same as reality.

This book is the 2016Printz award winner 

Other Resources:

Goodreads book review 

Publisher’s website 

NYT article on the novel 

Bone Gap trailer 

Wikipedia on the real city of Bone Gap