Travelling On into the Light and Other Stories

Lorraine Douglas is the youth services co-ordinator at the Winnipeg
Public Library.

In the first eight stories of this finely crafted collection, young
adults relate their self-discoveries and hopes for the future. Fans of
Two Moons in August will enjoy the final three linked short stories,
which feature Sidonie, Kieran, and Bobbi, as we find out what has
happened in their lives.

In the first story, “The Tiniest Guitar in the World,” Donald
Petrie has been summoned to the school office, where Mr. Eastwood
accuses him of “rolling marijuana cigarettes and selling them to the
seventh-grade boys!” But Donald has actually been fashioning a work of
art—a tiny guitar—to place on a flattened squirrel. This appealing
and humorous story is delightful, especially when Donald gives away his
art to a boy who loves it. The personal and unusual surprises in the
stories continue, although the issues are often serious. In “The
Kindness of Strangers,” a runaway, Laker Wyatt, discovers that he
can’t go home again. Sammy, in the title story, realizes her
misperceptions about her gay father’s friend Bernardo. The cover
illustration depicts the painting that Sammy and Bernardo are looking at
when he helps her make an important discovery in life and she begins to
sort out her confused emotions.

All of the stories are reminiscent of the theme of Elaine
Konigsberg’s collection of short stories, Throwing Shadows, in that
each of the characters is changed by his or her relationships or
connections with others. Brooks’s perceptive interplay between the
unusual characters and her deft use of language make these stories
comparable also to the work of Cynthia Rylant in A Couple of Krooks and
Other Stories About Love.

Traveling on into the Light is a welcome addition to young-adult
collections, with the positive vision of the world its stories offer.
Highly recommended.