Jellicoe Road

BOOK REVIEW 6
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Melina Marchetta; Harper Teen; Publisher: New York, NY : HarperTeen, 2008, ©2006. ISBN-10: 0061431834
PLOT SUMMARY
Taylor is abandoned by her mother at a 7-Eleven store on Jellicoe Road where Hannah and her later caretaker takes Taylor to the Jellicoe Road State school and keeps Taylor under her wings. Taylor is in charge of one of the dorms and is the leader of Jellicoe’s School gang. Three gangs have a long history of gang rivalry and one of them is the cadets whose leader Jonah Griggs knows Taylor better than she knows herself. Taylor is in constant mental agony about being abandoned by her mother, her father’s death, and Hannah’s sudden disappearance. This propels her to start looking for answers about her past. She allows herself to have a relationship with Jonah Griggs and they set out on a journey to find her mother Tate or her whereabouts to bring closure to Taylor’s painful past that hunts her up till now and move forward.






SUMMARY ANALYSIS
Melina Marchetta’s novel JELLICOE ROAD winner of West Australian Young Readers’ Book Award (WAYRBA) for Avis Page Award (2008) and Printz Award (2009) for Excellence in Young Adult Literature is told from the first person point of view of a seventeen year old girl living in a state school due to her mother’s abandoning her when she was eleven years old. She is taken into Jellico School’s teacher Hannah who plays a mother figure for Taylor and this is the only world that Taylor knows. Melina Marchetta’s writing style in the first third of the book is difficult to read as Taylor throws words without any connection to anything else or point of reference. She takes the beginning of the story and weaves it back and forth to create different themes within the novel. She weaves them into different themes such as, adolescents dealing with identity crisis, abandonment, gangs, friendships, relationships, and most important finding peace with one self by accepting life as it is and moving forward.
The language in the book is engaging because of its familiarity of dealing with teenagers such as when Jonah tries to understand Taylor; “What do you want from me?” He asks. Taylor thinks to herself, “What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.” She is afraid that Jonah will see that she is desperate to have someone in her life that cares about her.

This writing style keeps reader turning the pages because just as a conflict is solved another arises leaving the readers with a mystery that must be solved. An example of that is when two gang leaders, Taylor and Jonah become friends they have clues about where Taylor’s mother is and they set out to find out about Taylor’s mother. During this journey, Taylor and Jonah Griggs take off the gang mask that covers the individual’s ability to care and love each other. They go back to Jellicoe Road where they find Taylor’s mother and that Taylor was left at the 7-Eleven because Hannah was going to pick her up. Taylor comes to peace with her mother who dies soon after that. Hannah has been taking care of others, Taylor and Jonah will have a long distance relationship.

4. EXCERPTS
From BOOKLIST
Taylor Markham isn’t just one of the new student leaders of her boarding school, she’s also the heir to the Underground Community, one of three battling school factions in her small Australian community (the others being the Cadets and the Townies). For a generation, these three camps have fought “the territory wars,” a deadly serious negotiation of land and property rife with surprise attacks, diplomatic immunities, and physical violence. Only this year, it’s complicated: Taylor might just have a thing for Cadet leader Jonah, and Jonah might just be the key to unlocking the secret identity of Taylor’s mother, who abandoned her when she was 11. In fact, nearly every relationship in Taylor’s life has unexpected ties to her past, and the continual series of revelations is both the book’s strength and weakness; the melodrama can be trying, but when Marchetta isn’t forcing epiphanies, she has a knack for nuanced characterizations and punchy dialogue. The complexity of the story will be off putting to younger readers, but those who stick it out will find rewards in the heartbreaking twists of Marchetta’s saga. Grades 9-12. --Daniel Kraus
CONNECTIONS
The Surrender Tree by Engle, Margarita
After Tupac and D Foster (Newbery Honor Book) (Hardcover) by Jacqueline Woodson