My Name Is Mina by David Almond (Delacorte Press, $15.99, 9780385740739, 304p., ages 10-up, October 11, 2011)
David Almond's books reveal the magical moments waiting to be discovered in the course of everyday human experience.
With his first book for young people, Skellig, he introduced the title character--perhaps human, perhaps angel, perhaps a mixture of the two. Young Michael discovers Skellig living in the garage of the rundown home he has recently moved into with his family. As his parents focus their attentions on his premature baby sister, whose fragile life hangs in the balance, Michael tends to Skellig. The boy soon recognizes a kindred spirit in his neighbor Mina McKee and enlists her help. Nine-year-old Mina is like no one that Michael has ever met. She's home-schooled, writes constantly in her journal, and her motto is a quote from William Blake: "How can a bird that is born for joy/ sit in a cage and sing?" She takes Skellig's presence in stride, and together they help make Skellig stronger in body and spirit.
David Almond dedicates this new book entirely to Mina, and it takes the form of a journal. She confides the events that have shaped her, the ideas she contemplates as she perches high in her tree and observes three blackbird eggs until they burst with life, and her thoughts about the closed mining tunnel that runs beneath her town and compels her like Persephone to the underground. While many of the motifs reverberate between Skellig and My Name Is Mina, each of the two novels stands entirely on its own. Taken together, they are doubly illuminating.
My Name Is Mina begins before Michael moves in across the street, into the home of the late Mr. Ernie Meyers. It begins with Mina's trouble in school because of her raw honesty and her need to tell things as they are. It begins over a conflict about Mina's writing. "I was told by my teacher Mrs. Scullery that I should not write anything until I had planned what I would write," Mina records in her journal. Mrs. Scullery gushes over Mina's writing plan. However, Mina's story veers in another direction. "The story... does not fit the plan!" Mrs. Scullery declares. "But it didn't want to, Miss," Mina answers, and thinks to herself, "My stories were like me. They couldn't be controlled and they couldn't fit in." The situation comes to a climax when Mina must write a timed essay during the SAT exams. "Did William Blake do writing tasks just because somebody else told him to?... And what about Shakespeare?... Would Shakespeare have been well above average?" So Mina writes a brilliant Edward Lear–esque page of nonsense, and Mrs. Scullery calls Mina "an utter bloody disgrace!" in front of the whole school. That's when Mrs. McKee decides that the kitchen table may be a more fitting desk for her uniquely gifted daughter.
Mina's mother encourages her daughter's passions for nature, food and language. Mina loves pomegranate ("Pomegranate! What a taste! And what a word!") and paradoxes ("Paradox! What a word! It sounds good, looks good, and the meaning's good!"). The great paradox of her life, however, is her father's death when she was too young to have clear memories of him, and the sensitivity it has given her to the beauty in the world: "The sad things in my life make the happy things seem more intense," she writes.
The inspired design of the book allows Mina's boundless enthusiasm to leap from the pages. The typeface evokes the feeling of handwriting, overlarge letters emphasize a beloved word, generous white space plays up the "squawk squawk squawk" of the three blackbird fledglings. As a homeschooled student, Mina invents "Extraordinary Activities" that she would use were she the teacher. These boldly outlined text boxes suggest equally bold exercises, such as, "Stare at the dust that dances in the light" (then goes on to explain, "Dust in houses... consists mainly of tiny fragments of human skin") and make a ring with the index finger and thumb through which to stare at the sky, both during the day and at night ("Do not worry about staring into the dark. It is an excellent thing to do"), and "write a page of words for joy" and another "for sadness." At nine, she is completely aware of the fullness of life, its moments of happiness and sorrow.
Mina may not always be understood by her teachers or her peers, but when she connects, she connects completely. She bonds with Sophie Smith, a classmate who limps, for instance, and with her history teacher, Mr. Henderson, who speaks of the town's coal-mining past and the fruits of their labors, "the stuff as black and bright as Mina McKee's hair," and he sings to his students "A Miner's Lullaby: Coorie Doon." ("Coorie doon" means "snuggle down.") Mina connects the sealed-off mines with Hades' habitat: "In her dreams, the entrance to the Underworld was there, behind the rhododendron bushes, in Heston Park." If only, she thinks, she could go in like Orpheus and bring back her father. The characters from books and poetry are alive to Mina. As her journal progresses, she also remains open to the possibility that there might be other teachers like Mr. Henderson and fewer like Mrs. Scullery, and other students like Sophie.
Her musings remind us that the imagination allows us to live life fully. At one point she observes the new family in Mr. Evans's house across the street. "The boy is sullen as always. The parents are pleased. They leave in the little blue car. I watch them leave the street and leave my page. I think of the mysterious connections between words and the world, and my pen soon moves again." This sullen boy soon becomes the reason for Mina to leave her tree and her yard and cross the street, knock on the door and introduce herself: "My name is Mina!" Mina's connection between her words and the world help her to know herself better, and that makes her brave.
David Almond has called Mina his muse, but she can be ours, too. She reminds us of life's many paradoxes, the simple and the complex, joy and sorrow, fear and courage. Most of all, her bravery in seeking her own truth inspires others to find theirs.