There's just something about Kevin Henkes's novels that one doesn't find anywhere else. It's as if the characters that he creates are so real to him as he's writing them that fabricating a dramatic story to make their lives seem more interesting to readers would strike him as inappropriate ornamentation. Rather, Kevin Henkes gives his characters all the room they need to live their lives as naturally as any real person would, and trusts for something good to come out of what we're then able to observe. It's a storytelling approach that doesn't seem as if it would work, at least not in a culture glutted with visual stimulation nearly every second of the waking day, but it does work, perhaps even because of the overstimulation of the senses that affects most people. When a gentle, soulful, completely realistic story like The Birthday Room comes around, readers have shown that they are willing to turn down the volume on their lives for a little while and take a listen to the whispering of the author's voice. It is in this place of quiet attentiveness that one finds the genius of Kevin Henkes. This story is so understated that it would be easy to miss parts of it completely. It's the type of tale in which the exact details aren't necessarily crucial; a year after reading The Birthday Room many of the plot's specifics will be fuzzy to most readers, but the feeling that the book aroused will still be crystal clear. Throughout the story there's a sense of reaching, on the part of both the characters and reader, toward something important that we never quite get our fingers around by the end. It's like having an intricate dream that one knows is very important while having it, searching for something that is lost or maybe never even was, only to wake from the dream moments before finding it. There's a sense that it was more than just a dream, that you really missed out on something by not grabbing it when you had the chance, and that's the same feeling cultivated by this book. I can't explain it in any more detail than that because I, too, was unable to find "it". I just know that there's something very deep and important about this book, something profound in the story that I don't fully understand even after having gotten so much out of the experience of reading it. Maybe there's no finding that deeper meaning in this lifetime, but I know that I've touched it, if only for a moment. After a freak accident in the woodworking shop at age two that left Ben without a pinky finger on his left hand (a potentially gruesome scene that is mercifully left undescribed in the book so as to keep the story appropriate for the target audience), a rift has opened up between Ben's mother and his Uncle Ian, who was doing the woodworking that resulted in Ben's "minor" dismemberment. There were many smaller things that contributed to disharmony between the two siblings before the accident, of course, but the loss of her son's finger was the breaking point in Ben's mother's relationship with Ian, and now Ben hardly even remembers his uncle. That is, until the day of his twelfth birthday, when a letter arrives from Uncle Ian asking Ben and his parents to fly to Oregon and visit him. It's been a long time since the family connected, Ian says, and he'd like to get back in touch and find out what's been happening in their lives during the past ten years. Ben's mother isn't really mad at Uncle Ian; there are still some underlying feelings of detachment and resentment to confront, though, and she doesn't want to send Ben off to the other side of the country by himself with a virtual stranger. So even though Ben's father can't make the trip, Ben and his mother depart to spend a week in Eugene, Oregon, uncertain of what sort of reunion awaits them. There's not much point in walking through any more of the story than this, because the book isn't really about the specific events it describes. With a flow of heightened consciousness that relates the most mundane moments using the most beautiful of language, the story demonstrates that life is made up of a million tiny decisions, and the ones we will have to make tomorrow dangle and dance just out of our reach today so that there's no positively identifying them before their time has come. Those decisions will come at their own speed and as naturally as the flow of a river, and we will make them when we have to, without knowing in what new direction even the seemingly most inconsequential of them could spin us. All we can hope for is that the next set of decisions we make will lead us to a good place where the decision after that will be an even better one, and on and on as the right decisions we make lead us well, even if it's not where we had originally planned to go. The future moves up quickly and then in a snap is by us already in the rearview mirror, and we don't know how our decisions have affected our lives and the lives of those around us. We just deal with the present as it comes, however it comes. There's no way that I would give this book less than two and a half stars, and I gave some thought to rounding that rating up instead of down. Kevin Henkes's novels are so understated in their delivery that it's easy to read one and think that it's about nothing; until later, that is, when in retrospect one realizes that a book like The Birthday Room truly is about everything, a permanently expanding eternity of love and hope and life that could never be captured between the two covers of a book, but is perhaps expressed most genuinely in a story that endeavors to be nothing more than a portion of real life, marked not by the intrigue of the unusual but by the sublimeness of the normal, the quietness and wonder of real life as lived by most people every day. While I would still rank Olive's Ocean as Kevin Henkes's best book, The Birthday Room was an unforgettable reading experience, and I'm sure that fans of the author's other novels will feel the same way. It is a gift to be savored.
Benjamin hasn't seen Uncle Ian since Benjamin accidentally cut off a pinky finger at age two and a half in Ian's woodworking studio while Ian was baby-sitting him. On his twelfth birthday, Benjamin receives a letter from Ian, expressing a desire to reconnect and inviting him to his home in Oregon for a week. After some soul-searching, Benjamin and his mother--who has her own set of issues with Uncle Ian--decide to take the trip.I thought this was a really good story. I loved how it touched on the issue of guilt and blame for accidents in dozens of small ways. This would be a very good book, I think, for an adult or kid who accidentally hurt someone. The portrayal of Benjamin's relationship to his missing pinky finger was very realistic, as was the estrangement between his mother and his uncle. Just a very well-done story, with excellent writing.
What do You think about The Birthday Room (2001)?
The Birthday Room is about a boy named Ben who recieves two suprising gifts for his twelfth birthday: a room and a letter. The room was from his parents, and the letter was from his uncle, who invited him to come and visit him in Oregon. Ben hadn't seen his uncle since he was two, when a terrible accident occured when his uncle was watching him. When they arrive in Oregon, Ben finds out that his aunt is expecting a baby. Will Ben be able to bring his family back together again?I really enjoyed this book because it reminded me of something that happened in my family a few years ago. I'm extremely glad that it was resolved. I also liked this book because it has a good message, interesting characters, and good writing. I would recommend this book to middle schoolers.
—Rebecca
Minor spoilers included.This was the first book for younger readers that I've picked up in a while: I usually stick to YA. At first the book appealed to me because the author is from Madison, but from the first page I was drawn in. The book is beautifully and simply written, and really is a simple story which touches on some deeper themes. When he's a toddler, the main character is the victim of an accident. His uncle is blamed. When he turns 12, he reconnects with his uncle, and his mother is asked to forgive her brother. I liked this simple story for how it looks at the idea of blame and forgiveness.
—Autumn
This is one of the few books on my "read" shelf that isn't fantasy. I've certainly read plenty of non-fantasy books, however I usually don't think much about them and don't count them towards anything. So, I'm not really sure what prompted me to add this one to my shelf. I got it for my birthday awhile ago - twelfth or thirteenth I do believe. I can remember two details from this book (outside of the main plot, of course) - the ending annoyed me for a stupid reason and the book made me feel sad. I remember just feeling like the book was very sad in its core, and thus, feeling sort of sad while reading it. It wasn't a very obvious sad, just sort of nagging in the background and barely perceivable. I don't remember the book well enough to know what could have caused me to feel a sadness coming from it each time I read it, but I do find it a bit odd. As for the ending, I remember being annoyed that we didn't find out the gender or name or something about the new baby. It's just a nitpick.I do remember the book being a good read though and I certainly don't have any major complaints about the story itself. I liked it well enough back then to read it more than once and could see myself doing so again if I had some time to kill.
—Nikki
