The 2011 Cybiles Award: My perspective on Frost

Appetizer:  The last of the Cybils realistic young adult novels that I'll be featuring is Frost.  The novel is the story of

Opening Line:  "Before I lived there, before any of this happened, I imagined Frost House as a sanctuary.  It crouches on the northern edge of Barcroft Academy in a tangle of lilac and evergreen bushes, shadowed by oaks and sugar maples.  Hidden enough that I didn't even know it existed until junior year, when I chased a field hockey ball through the underbrush into its backyard.  I assumed the white-clapboard cottage was a faculty member's house.  Most Barcroft dorms are three-story brick buildings' this was a weathered old Victorian, small and squat, with a wraparound porch and a mansard roof hugging the second floor.  The kind of place a family would life.  The first time I saw it, I could almost hear a whispered call mingling with the soft rattle of leaves:  Come inside, come inside...  (p. 3)


My Thoughts of the Nominee:  Frost a wonderful haunting novel.  Baer does a wonderful job of bringing the house and setting to life and of slowly revealing Leena to be an unreliable narrator.

I did have some trouble engaging with Frost though.  I wasn't too crazy about Leena, Celeste or any of the other characters.

The one aspect I really loved were the descriptions of Frost House.  It really came alive...and became the coolest character in the book.