BURNING UP
Caroline B. Cooney
Laurel Leaf
Fiction
ISBN: 0440226872
184 pages

There's a quote that always stays with me, not only because it's a great quote, but because it's really a hard one to live with. Back in the '60s, when he was heading up the Black Panther Party during the civil rights turmoil of the time, Eldridge Cleaver said this about racism: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." He was right then, and he's still right now.

But sometimes it's very, very easy for us to be part of the problem simply by not being, as Cleaver said, part of the solution. When you're growing up in a nice, white, wealthy family in a nice, white, wealthy town, it's easy to look the other way.

This is the ground Cooney covers in her latest novel, BURNING UP. A novel filled with fire, it tells the story of Macey Clare, a 15-year-old who lives in a nice white town in Connecticut with her nice family, goes to school and even has a nice relationship with the nice boy across the street. One day, she and her friends volunteer in an inner-city church and she befriends a black girl named Venita. They're just getting to know each other when the kids are caught in a church fire --- arson. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the fire inspires Macey to start researching an old barn fire in her hometown. Suddenly no one wants her to find out about that fire. When tragedy strikes her new friend, Macey can no longer look away, she has to know whether that barn fire was racially motivated arson. As she tries to uncover the truth, Macey learns some important truths about accountability and responsibility.

Cooney is an amazing writer. Although her books are for Young Adults, I was gripped from start to finish and amazed by the intelligence she writes into her characters and also credits to her readers. It's a well-written, rewarding book that I'd advise anyone, teen or adult, to read. But be prepared --- after reading it, you'll be compelled to sit down with yourself and find out what side of the problem you're on.

   --- Reviewed by Jordan Baker

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