Jumping Off Swings

Jumping Off Swings

By: Jo Knowles


Swings is about a girl who gets pregnant in high school and the story is her path to acceptance and her choice. To explain why I loved this book, I am going to draw from the author of the book herself (talking about a girl from her high school): "When she came back to school after having the baby, no one said a word about why she'd been away. Her ex-boyfriend acted as if nothing had happened. i used to watch him in the halls and wonder if he'd been changed at all. One night she told me it was her baby's birthday, but she hadn't seen him since his birth. I could see the pain in her eyes. I couldn't stop thinking about the silence surrounding what happened, but how it must have changed so many people's lives. I wanted to explore how one pregnancy can affect many people in vastly different and profound ways."

I don't exactly know why I was so affected by this book. I am not personally a mother, which obviously means I am not a TEENAGE mother either. Yet I have a surprising amount of friends who are. Swings is a story that I have no specific relations to but I do have one friend who got pregnant about a year out of high school and she made a difficult decision--actually each decision surrounding teenage mothers is difficult--but she made the decision to keep her son. She has tried her hardest to make her life better so that she can make her son's life better. She did not get a dead-end job and disappear or give up hope for a stronger life. She just recently received her bachelor's degree. I am so proud of her.

But that is not the point. The point is this story. This story shows that while the pregnancy physically affects one person, it emotionally affects many others. The friendships that are strengthened throughout the pregnancy is incredible. In my friends' lives, there were some who were lucky and kept their true friends, but there were some who didn't. Some had the fathers stick around, yet many did not.

I loved this book because while I have NO personal connection/relation to this story, I felt every sadness the main character, Ellie, felt. I felt every hurtful word or rumor. Getting a reader to so strongly feel the words and scenarios an author is trying to get across is a difficult job, but Knowles was so successful. She develops these characters with such sensitivity and with love that I knew she genuinely wanted to tell a story not out of judgement but out of compassion. I don't think that Knowles is saying to readers (especially young girls!) that if a young girl has good friends around, getting pregnant in high school is okay, but I think that she is saying that if by some unfortunate turn of events a young girl does get pregnant that all hope is not lost. Ellie's story turned out alright. Her friends got a happy ending. Everyone is going to be okay.

I wish that I could more eloquently explain the enjoyment I got from this book. Instead, I am just going to strongly recommend this book to you. Please read. Please enjoy.
Two thumbs way up.