Sunshine on Vinegar Street by Karen Comer

Title: Sunshine on Vinegar Street

Author: Karen Comer

Genre: Verse Novel

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 30^th May 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 304

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: A sweet and emotional novel about friendship, family and accepting change from a fresh new voice.

Freya’s world is turned upside down when she and her mum move to inner-city Melbourne. Now she’s …

Stuck in a new apartment on the eleventh floor and Freya is afraid of lifts. 

Stuck in a new basketball team where not everyone likes a new star player. 

Stuck in a classroom of kids who don’t know Freya is a donor-conceived baby.

Stuck, just like Little Audrey in the Skipping Girl sign suspended over the suburb of Abbotsford.

Being the new girl makes Freya feel like a dark cloud on a summer’s day. Can she figure out how to belong on Vinegar Street?

~*~

Freya’s two-house home in Eltham is breaking up – her dad is moving to Broome, and her mum has a new job in Abbotsford, and Freya has to go with her mum to Abbotsford – to a new school, to living in a flat where she uses a fob instead of a key to get in, and to mean girls who make life miserable for her. Freya doesn’t loke these changes – and she’s reluctant to make it work – plus, she’s scared of lifts and doesn’t want to use the one in her new home. She doesn’t want everyone to find out about her two-house home or that she is a donor-conceived baby. Freya feels alone – a dark cloud on a summer’s day, and she needs to find a way to fit in on Vinegar Street and get along with her new teammates on the Raptors basketball team. But Freya will need to overcome her fears and uncertainty – can she do it and make friends at her new school?

I’ve only read a few verse novels, but they seem to be gaining popularity – at least for junior fiction, middle grade books, and some young adult books, and I particularly like the Australian ones I have read, like this one and Pip Harry’s A Little Wave. Verse novels seem to be gaining popularity, much like graphic novels, but at a quieter rate. I’ve got two to review this month, and this is the first of them. Freya’s story sees her entering the final year of primary school, where she finds that she has to play mixed netball, has to try, and get on with teammates who want nothing to do with her, and where she will one day find that sometimes people are more than what they seem when she first meets them. Karen has used basketball and netball as a theme throughout this novel, as well as a light for the café, which is a beacon for the community Freya is now part of. Her story is filled with the emotions we would all feel when we are uprooted and taken away from everything that we know. Everything that is familiar. Whether it is moving suburbs within a larger city, or moving halfway across the world, everyone has concerns and anxieties when this happens.

Freya’s story will be relatable to kids in primary school, navigating tricky friendships and family situations, and I liked it because it evoked a sense of diversity and needing to belong. It celebrated and acknowledged different interests and different ways of being a family, and I think it will be one of those books that will have something for everyone – even if you don’t like sports like Freya, there will be something about the book that hits the mark. For me, it was learning how Freya became part of her community and made friends, the way everyone – from Ashok, to Bee, Damian, Eva, Calvin, and even Val, influenced how Freya became part of her new community, and taught her about acceptance and belonging. Many books can do this, and this one does it really well, and though in verse novels the language is sparser than prose novels, with very little description, the imagery that the verses and poems present are just as evocative and emotionally driven, as we experience the story through Freya’s eyes, and her uncertainty in some situations. It is as much about accepting change as it is about overcoming your fears – something that often happens in fiction at crucial points in the story where the characters are pushed into something they would rather not do, and Karen Cromer constructs this scene for Freya and Val nicely. I particularly enjoyed getting to know Freya and seeing that her insecurities and talents were all part of who she was – and like anyone, she needed to face these fears and insecurities and deal with them in her own time, because when she was forced, she didn’t always cope. It made her human and relatable, because we all have moments where we need to do things in our own time, and where being forced into decisions or situations doesn’t always help us.  

This beautiful verse novel is a wonderful addition to the Australian verse novels, and I hope it earns a place in the NCACL collection. I loved reading Freya’s story, because it captured so much heart and joy, as well as the big feelings that we all have from time to time. Karen has managed to create a story like this that is aimed at eight- to twelve-year-old readers, but I think that anyone of any age can relate to what Freya is feeling and going through during the novel. I am really enjoying discovering verse novels, and this is an exceptional one that will appeal to many and become a special book for many as well. I hope that many people enjoy this book as much as I did.