by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

The Brimstone Journals, by Ron Koertge, Candlewick Press, 2001, ISBN 0-763-61742-3
Available at Powell's Books

Ron Koertge’s The Brimstone Journals, a novel told in poetry, is a boiling kettle of teenage anxieties, both minor and major. Published shortly after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, its story about the importance of teens speaking up remains timely.

Brimstone is also a good literary vehicle for getting students to consider the storytelling power of poetry.

Voices of small-town America
Nearly 100 years ago, Edgar Lee Masters perfected the art of the novel told in poetry. He wrote about small town America in his classic Spoon River Anthology, in which more than 200 dead residents of the local cemetery share their stories and secrets through free verse poems, which doesn’t rhyme or follow a prescribed pattern.

Masters lived near the actual Spoon River in Illinois and based some of his characters on people that he knew while growing up. Koertge also grew up in small-town Illinois, just across the Mississippi from St. Louis, Missouri.

 It seems appropriate that an excellent online list of teen novels told through poetry also comes from Illinois. The Brimstone Journals is among the excellent choices recommended by Skokie Public Library.

Disquieting thoughts
In Brimstone, 15 fictional, small-town teens share their disquieting thoughts through free-verse poems. All the students attend Branston High, which is popularly known as “Brimstone.”

The novel opens with the chilling comments of Lester, a fat boy who has a semi-automatic pistol tucked in his sock drawer in case he should ever decide to wreak havoc at Brimstone, starting in the gym and making the jocks  who have bullied him “crap their pants.”

In an article published at Goodreads, Koertge said he began writing Brimstone a few months before the Columbine High massacre, which was committed by two disaffected students.

Familiar casting
To some degree, Brimstone is populated by recognizable types, including a totally self-absorbed anorexic girl, a cocky jock who picks on Lester, a preacher’s daughter who is attracted to the bad boy, the teen who loves to play violent computer games but would never imagine hurting anyone, a budding white supremacist, and a sexually active girl with a heart of gold.

Yet it also introduces some surprises such as Carter, an upper middle class African-American, whose parents unwittingly transfer him to Brimstone to avoid inner-city violence.

Fortunately, Carter manages to break through the reserve of another student outside Brimstone's cliques. He befriends Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant who prides himself on paying close attention to the gossipy “buzz” around him but never getting close to any of the students.

When Tran starts musically jamming with Carter, the two of them develop a circle of mutual friends. Tran begins to care about his classmates, and this causes him to tell the police about rumors he has heard concerning a student stockpiling guns.

Speaking up is important
Brimstone demonstrates how disasters such as the Columbine massacre can be averted when students feel like they belong and care enough about the well-being of others to report their concerns.

Tran reflects that “These people are my friends./ Nothing should happen to them/ because of my cowardice or/ indecision.”

It was a YA—short for “young adult”—librarian who first brought The Brimstone Journals to my attention. YA librarians are good people to get to know whether you are a teen, a teacher or a parent. They truly care about young people. It’s obvious from The Brimstone Journals that Ron Koertge also cares.