Into the River, an unflinchingly frank YA novel by New Zealand author Ted Dawe, and a prequel to Thunder Road, drew more international attention for being briefly banned in New Zealand than for winning the 2013 Margaret Mahy Award. Older teens will devour this fresh, engaging coming-of-age novel about personal identity and poisonous social inequality, the excitement and terror of adolescence, the nuances of friendship and freedom and much more.
The story begins with two Maori boys from New Zealand's East Coast, 13-year-old Te Arepa and his friend Wiremu, whooping it up on an eel-fishing trip to the river. Everything changes when Te Arepa is offered a scholarship at a prestigious boarding school in Auckland, Barwell's Collegiate. Te Arepa loves his lessons, especially Latin, but hates his first nickname, "Maori," said as an insult. The school is a hotbed of ugly bullying and he is one of many targets. Te Arepa is forever altered by Barwell's. When he visits his rural home, he feels he's wearing a Te Arepa "costume," and even his dear friend Wiremu seems "a bit small town" to him. He tells his grandfather he's weighted down by his name, his heritage, "nearly everything I am."
Dawe, who has been a teacher for 40 years, mostly of students of Maori and Pasifika cultures, understands the events in his novel are, as he notes, "often blunt, coarse, unfair, immoral, illegal, and shocking. But they are never gratuitous." There's awkward, urgent sex, sexual manipulation by young and old, profanity, violent bullying and drug use. Tragic, but not without humor, Into the River is a raw story that rings true. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness