Middle Row

By Sylvia Olsen

Things have changed since Raedawn and Vince started going out and the racial boundaries in town have slipped a bit. But when Dune, who never took sides, disappears, Raedawn is determined to find out where he has gone -- or what happened to him. Fighting against ignorance and hate, they track Dune down and find he is in more trouble than they thought and that nothing is black and white.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
• Release date: Mar 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781551439037

Sylvia Olsen

Sylvia Olsen is an award-winning author of many books, including young adult novels, first readers, picture books, history and personal-essay. She also writes about knitting and designs knitting patterns. Sylvia teaches First Nations housing management at Vancouver Island University and works toward creating new housing opportunities on reserves in Canada. Sylvia lives in North Saanich, British Columbia on W̱SÁNEĆ territory.

Reviews for Middle Row

[jessie_bear_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Vince and Raedawn investigate what happened to a missing classmate in a racially divided town. Middle Row tries to tackle us/them mentalities as well as a separation of “the other” within a community. This is no easy feat to accomplish in about one hundred pages at a reading level of 2.4. As an Orca Soundings novel, this book is packaged as a high-action contemporary young adult mystery but reads in a simplistic and sometimes stilted manner. Olsen attempts to convey complicated relationships and feelings with a few simple words or carried by straightforward dialogue. Each character has various traits and relationships to others drawn out, but they are not fully developed or expanded upon due to length and syntax restrictions. Also, the text uses some Canadian dialect, which may initially throw off an American reading audience who may not be familiar with certain terms. This is a very specifically hi-lo styled novel and as such, is only recommended to the specific audience of reluctant readers ages twelve to fifteen with the targeted reading level.