Featured Book: Harry the Dirty Dog

Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion 

HarperCollins, 1956

Illustrations by Margaret Bloy Graham

The title of Gene Zion's 1956 Harry the Dirty Dog says it all. Harry dislikes cleanliness. He hides the scrub brush whenever it's time to take a bath. To Harry, filthiness is next to dogliness.  So he runs away and indulges in joyous, untidy rebellion. His dirty doings are depicted in a series of short, simple sentences and corresponding drawings: playing in a street, at the railroad, with other dogs. Even in a coal chute! In a humorous twist, all of the grime transforms Harry from a white dog with black spots to a black dog with white spots. He looks so different that his family doesn’t recognize him when he returns home (one of several indications that Harry is brighter than his family--another being that he always outsmarts them with concealing the bath brush). Harry finally does the very last thing he ever expected to do in his entire life: beg his family for a bath.  But as the story comes to close, we’re not left feeling like Harry “gives in.”  No, Harry might be clean and safe at home, but the bath brush is still tucked safely beneath his pillow.  Only now, it seems, that instead of always refusing to be clean, he will be the judge of when he needs a bath (i.e. when his silly family doesn't recognize him through the filth!).

Featured Book: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

 Narrated by our protagonist, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst (illustrated by Ray Cruz), demonstrates the many perils of childhood, like tripping, getting gum in your hair, and not getting the prize out of the cereal box.  Fortunately, Alexander has a plan--a remedy--that pops up as an amusing refrain throughout the story: he's going to move to Australia. Before the story—and the day—comes to a close, Alexander’s best friend demotes him, he fails to impress his teacher with a drawing of an invisible castle, he sings too loudly, he forgets the number 16, he doesn’t get dessert, he has a cavity, he is pushed in the mud and called a crybaby, he gets lima beans at dinner, and he sees kissing on TV.  Ew! That’s the worst! The loveliest thing about this story is that it doesn’t feel the need to end on a positive note. Instead, Alexander admits that sometimes days are just...terrible, even. But they can be bad in Australia, too. We close the book satisfied that Alexander survives the ordeal, and we hope the poor fellow has a better day tomorrow.

Bonus Review:

Two decades after Alexander has a terrible day, the poor kid still can’t catch a break.  In Alexander, Who’s Not (Do You Hear Me? I Mean It!) Going to Move, a late entry in Judith Viorst’s Alexander series (illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser), our plagued protagonist returns, facing yet another childhood woe: moving (no--not to Australia). Told again in Alexander’s charming voice, he lets the reader know—absolutely, positively, unequivocally—that he will not move. “Never. Not ever. No way. Uh uh. N. O.”  In fact, we never hear other characters' exact words from their own lips, with their own voices. Alexander paraphrases all of it for us, including the repetition of his brothers’ opinions of him: “Nick says I’m_____ (fill in the blank with a variety of nasty things brothers might say),” and “Anthony says I’m being immature.”  Repetition is also used to underscore the sadness that sort of oozes through the humor of the story. It's really a melancholy little tale.  Alexander notes the distance between his current and new homes: a thousand miles.  He considers his not-moving options, plotting to live with the Baldwins or the Rooneys.  Or moving into his tree house.  He packs and says his goodbyes, but all the while he plots, thinking of how not to move. Finally, his parents offer incentives to Alexander, like calling his best friend long distance and maybe getting a dog. Finally, he decides that maybe he can handle moving after all. And the “incentives” are a nice touch, because when thinking about all of the things that he likes about his current home early in the story, we encounter the neighbor’s dog and the friend he’ll be leaving behind.  While not as charming as Very Bad Day, it's a worthy entry in the Alexander canon, a sweet story about loving what you have while also being willing and able to change (and hopefully love the change, too).

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst, Atheneum, 1972. Illustrations by Ray Cruz.

Alexander, Who's Not (Do You Hear Me? I Mean It!) Going to Move by Judith Viorst, Atheneum, 1995. Illustrations by Robin Preiss Glasser (in the style of Ray Cruz).

Featured Book: Antsy Does Time

Antsy Does Time by Neal Shusterman is a sequel (or companion) to The Schwa Was Here. Like Schwa, this tale is set in Brooklyn and narrated by Antsy—Anthony Bonano—and, at least at first, seems to center on someone else’s crisis. When his stoic, Scandinavian classmate Gunnar reveals he’s dying of Pulmonary Monoxic Systemia (in which your body turns oxygen into carbon monoxide instead of carbon dioxide and you’re essentially poisoned by the very air you breath—p.s. it doesn’t exist IRL), Antsy offers Gunnar a month of his own life, trying to shake his new friend from his morbid, death-fascinated funk. This simple act takes on a life of its own, and before he knows it, Antsy becomes the center of a life-donation frenzy in which he draws up and distributes legal-ish looking contracts, collecting additional life for the fast-fading Gunnar.  In no time it becomes a school-wide obsession, culminating in a rally for Gunnar at which Antsy is the keynote speaker.

Antsy Does Time by Neal Shusterman
Penguin Group, 2008
Cover art by Steven Guarnaccia

But there’s something a bit off about Gunnar’s disease, and his obsession with it. There’s something off about the Ümlaut family, in general. There’s even something off about Kjersten, Gunnar’s older sister, who starts dating Antsy in the middle of all of this.  But Antsy can’t put his finger on it. When he has dinner at the Ümlaut house early in the story, there’s a palpable tension when Mr. Ümlaut joins them at the table.  Antsy assumes that it’s due to Gunnar’s fast-approaching death, but he’s confused as to why no one in the family (other than Gunnar) seems willing to talk about it. 

Antsy learns, as the story moves forward, that the family’s problems extend far beyond a son who says he’s dying. And just as the Ümlaut’s collective problems begin to boil, Antsy’s own life-and-death family crisis emerges.

All of this is told in Antsy’s familiar, energetic, and flat-out hilarious voice. Schwa is one of my favorite books, and I generally, unless it’s part of a trilogy or series, dislike sequels.  I put off reading this novel for some time for that reason, but I’m glad I finally did. This sequel works for me for several reasons.  First, the Bonano family is great—especially Antsy—and is definitely worth spending more time with.  Second, this story stands on its own.  It’s not following a formula from the first book, simply inserting Gunnar and his problems where the Schwa was in the last novel.  And finally—and most importantly—Shusterman, I think, successfully expands on a theme—a current—that runs through both of these novels.  Language. And meaning that comes from it.

I mentioned, a moment ago, Antsy’s great voice, which—of course—is all about language.  And there are several language-related jokes that pop up throughout both of these books.  I mean, in this one, we have the Ümlaut family.  An umlaut, of course, is that little two-dot symbol above vowels that represents vowel fronting or raising. The U in the family’s name has an umlaut, giving it the oo sound. The same symbol, incidentally, appears in the author’s last name on the cover of this book (but is not in the author’s name IRL). Similarly, a schwa, from the first novel, is an unstressed neutral vowel (or the symbol—ə—that represents it). And a schwa appears in Shusterman’s last name on the cover of The Schwa was Here. Clever. It doesn’t end there, though. Throughout the novel, Gunnar  spews 100% made up quotations, supposedly by famous people, making us question the importance of which words are said by whom.  And in chapter six, Gunnar asks Hakeem Habibi-Jones, “Doesn’t your culture ululate for the dead?” When Hakeem indicates he has no idea what that means, Antsy quips that cultural traditions are lost in hyphenation. Later, in the same chapter, when Ansty asks Gunnar if his sister likes him, they quibble over whether it’s Like with a capital L or like in italics, because the meaning apparently hinges on that distinction.

Shusterman plays with language and punctuation throughout, toying with the meanings of words, punctuation, and structure, and challenging us to understand how we come to those meanings and what our understanding of language says about us. I’ve heard it said that language is like a culture’s DNA, and I think that idea comes through in these novels.  Moreover, the understanding of language in this novel is through the POV of an adolescent. Presumably Antsy’s learning about language in school in a concrete, academic way. He learns that in real life, language is nuanced. And meaningful.

There’s larger, more obvious symbolic references throughout the story, like the Steinbeck project that Gunnar and Antsy create, using herbicide to make a dustbowl of the Ümlaut’s backyard (and half of the yards on their street). Or the name of Kjersten’s favorite band—NeuroToxin. Or the very disease Gunnar claims to have—a disease in which he’s poisoned by the air he breaths (or, figuratively, poisoned by the house he lives in, the family that surrounds him). All of these things are important, but, I believe, secondary to the focus on language. 

The importance of language is most obvious when Ansty’s family faces its major crisis of the novel—his dad’s heart-attack. When the doctor approaches the family in the waiting room, his first words to Antsy’s mom are “your husband has an acute blockage of the—” Antsy doesn’t hear or care about the rest. He focuses on the word has. Not had. His dad is. Not was. Present tense. Not past. His dad is alive.  Such a simple distinction, but in that moment, it’s all that matters to Antsy, to his family.

Shusterman has done good work here.  It’s a fun novel with some darker undertones, and a playful and healthy dose of language that challenges readers to think about the words they read and speak and the meanings behind them.

Recommended for boys ages 12-15.

Featured Book: Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie

In Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar, we’re reminded that high school is exhausting. In addition to homeworking and fretting about becoming a big brother, Scott writes for the school paper, serves (briefly) on the student council, and works behind the scenes for the all-school play. Poor kid hardly has time to sleep.

Endearing, sympathetic, and clever (without being too clever), Scott narrates the ins and outs of his first year of high school—the loss of his three childhood friends (to girls, wrestlers, and Texas), the pursuit of his kindergarten chum (who’s become the cutest girl in ninth grade), the awkward dances in which all the guys stand to one side waiting for the painful ordeal to end, and his accidental friendships with a senior bully and a girl everyone calls a freak. The movement through the novel is spot on. We cover an entire school year in 280 pages, breezing through when we can, slowing when we need to focus on important moments. Scott is reflective, but not distractingly so. We understand Scott in the way that he speaks to and interacts with others, NOT by him TELLING us who he thinks he is.

Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie
by David Lubar
Speak, 2005

One of the most charming elements of the novel is the relationship Lubar establishes between Scott and his unborn kid brother. He writes him letters, telling him about school, offering him advice and reflections about his own mistakes and misfortunes. What’s great is that Scott is able to write these things to his baby brother (who may or may not actually ever see the letters) that he doesn’t feel he can say to his dad, older brother, or former best friends. Guys don’t talk about feelings. Scott, although sometimes suspicious, and even jealous, of this strange thing growing in Mom’s belly, obviously cares about him. And his scrawling to the little alien helps him understand his own world a little better.

Finally, Lubar does a fine job with the classroom scenes—especially English class. Not only does he authentically depict interactions between students in class (when the teacher’s not looking), but he presents a teacher that all book lovers dream about having. Also, Lubar cleverly works discussions about the elements of craft into his text. For example, Scott narrates the beginning of chapter twenty-six from first-, second-, and third-person during the class’s discussion of viewpoint. This sequence is a perfect example of how Scott (and Lubar) manages to be quite clever without being gimmicky or over-the-top.

Recommended for boys, ages 13-15.