Hope Is a Ferris Wheel by Robin Herrera (review)

When ten-year-old Star naïvely lets it be known that she lives in a trailer park, her fate at her new school is sealed: no one wants to be her friend. Determined in spite of the setback, she starts a Trailer Park Club, hoping that it will attract people to her so that she can change their minds about the stigma of trailer park life. First Genny, a spunky fourth-grader, joins the club and brings her sullen older brother with her, and then the group becomes an Emily Dickinson club after Star is introduced to the poet by her teacher. The club’s new theme does attract some new members, but one of them, Eddie, is more poetry-savvy than Star, and she is threatened by his attempts to shift the attention to other poets. Her school drama is outmatched by home drama, as she finds that her beloved older sister is pregnant, and the man she always thought was her father isn’t. There are a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions in the plot, and the school setting and diverse secondary characters lack credible solidity and organic connection; they seem to have been artificially assembled for the purposes of playing a supporting cast to a character and conveniently provide her with plot fodder. However, Star’s contemplation, through poetic metaphors and real-life relationships, of what really matters in her life is compelling. Additionally, the poetry angle offers food for thought for those just coming to understand the power and purpose of metaphor, and Star’s vocabulary assignments, occasionally interspersed between chapters, provide inspiration and entertainment for word-lovers.