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: Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
Harper Collins, 1993

I’ve long been a fan of Chris Crutcher. Deadline, Whale Talk, and his collection of short stories Athletic Shorts, are among my favorites. I decided this week to reread an oldie, but a goodie, one of his better-known novels, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. Originally published almost two decades ago, the novel has aged remarkably well and is as relevant and readable now as it was in 1993, managing to touch on such complex issues as adolescent obesity, bullying, conformity, pressure for perfection, abortion, religion, teen suicide, and child abuse (just to name a few) without 1) getting bogged down in too many ideas, and 2) seeming preachy, or even suggesting that there’s a perfect solution to any of these issues (or any solution at all).

The story, set in Spokane, Washington, is narrated by protagonist Eric Calhoune, a formerly obese teen who slims considerably after joining the school swim team (earning him, of course, the moniker Moby).  Only catch, he’s concerned that his newfound slenderness and skill (and subsequent boost in popularity) will estrange him from his best friend Sarah Byrnes, who 1) is burned at age three when she (allegedly) pulls a pot of boiling spaghetti onto her face, and 2) insists on being called by her first and last name at all times because of the way her last name is pronounced (Byrnes=burns), hoping to forgo the latent potential for even more jokes at her expense when people make the ironic connection between her name and her face. So for a time, Eric eats extra, trying to stay fat.  Sarah Byrnes tells him to knock it off, which he does, and they’re able to maintain their friendship, although in a slightly diminished capacity, if just for the fact that Eric spends a lot of time swimming.

But when Sarah Byrnes stops talking one day, stops communicating altogether, and she ends up in a juvenile psyche ward at the hospital, Eric is the only one to visit her. Well, Eric and Sarah Byrnes’s dad, but Eric is the only welcome visitor. Eric is sure she’s faking her stupor, but he doesn’t know why. She won’t talk, even to him. Dale, an enemy turned friend, indicates that the boiling pot of spaghetti story might not be entirely true—or true at all. Eric investigates, and when he discovers the truth, he faces some very difficult and dangerous decisions--and circumstances--to keep his friend safe.

Crutcher does many things well in this novel, but one of my favorite elements is how he weaves together the sublpots, which carry with them such emotional weight on their own but also make the punch—the climax and resolution—of the overall story so much stronger.  Many of the subplots grow out of Eric’s experiences in his Contemporary American Thought (CAT) class with Ms. Lemry, his ally and swim coach. For instance, Eric has several run-ins with Mark Brittain, a teenage religious zealot, both in the pool and in the class, including a battle over Mark’s (ex-)girlfriend, who leaves him for Eric. Also, Mark has the vice-principal (who goes to his church) on his side, a man who’s been on Eric’s case since junior high.

With the exception of vice-principal Mautz, who’s a tad one-dimensional, Crutcher gives us real, living, breathing, complicated characters, wholly authentic and unpredictable. The bully. The religious zealot. The preacher. The single mother. The boyfriend of the single mother. All different than we expect them to be, either at first glance, or at last. Even the terrifying Mr. Byrnes, Sarah Byrnes’s father, is captivating. Trying to figure out what makes him tick is the scariest part of the novel.

And everything holds together so well (remember what I said about all of the subplots?). Eric (and we) are antagonized by Brittain, and his father, and Mautz just enough that Eric (and we) have the strength to get through what’s coming.  And what’s coming is really bad. I even understand why Crutcher draws Mautz the way that he does. His pig-headedness allows the other characters to act in interesting and inspired ways, revealing their nuances, including Mark, Brittain, whose arc is among the most poignant elements of the novel.

Thematically, and even plot-wise, Sarah Byrnes reminds me of Until They Bring the Streetcars Back by Stanley Gordon West, a sort-of historical YA thriller that’s set in St. Paul. Although Streetcars is much darker, and has less comic relief.  But I think Sarah Byrnes is emotionally heftier, and more satisfying, especially for male readers. It’s themes of friendship, shame, and courage, are subtle, but unmistakable. 

And chapter five of this book absolutely breaks my heart. Ellerby, the son of an open-minded preacher, and a friend of Eric’s, brings a recording of the song "From a Distance" with him to class. They listen to it, and the class generally thinks it’s a nice, inspiring song. But Ellerby explains that what the song makes him think about his how far away God really is, and what He, She, or It actually thinks about us, sees of us.  His belief is that God put things into motion, but doesn’t regularly interact with us, and that explains why “bad things” happen (to good or bad people) better than “God has a plan” or “it was meant to be” does.  He uses Sarah Byrnes as an example.  Did God do that to her? Allow it to happen to her?  No. He says it’s out of God’s jurisdiction. How Sarah Byrnes is treated, though, that's firmly within the jurisdiction of humans. Ellerby talks about how, although he doesn’t recall ever being mean to Sarah Byrnes, he never, unlike Eric, ever gave her the time of day. And he could have.

So Ms. Lemry asks Ellerby, given the song and his speech, if his CAT project with be the juxtaposition of God and man in the universe.

He indicates it won’t.  He says, "My subject will be shame.”

Recommended for boys ages 15-18.

Naptime

It's the magic time. Late afternoon. Filled up and played out, our six-month-old is down for a nap. It's my writing time. Sometimes it's just a few minutes. Sometimes it's, blessedly, a couple of hours. Sometimes I have to do dishes or laundry. Or have something to eat, because I forgot about lunch. Or didn't have time.

But mostly I write.

Or sometimes nap.

Or often, like now, grab my walking shoes and BabyBjorn because I think I hear him waking up.

Featured Book: Shift

In Shift by Jennifer Bradbury, friends Chris and Win—known as Chrisandwin by everyone at school for their attached-at-the-hip nature, decide to take a cross-country bike trip from their home in West Virginia to Washington state following their high school graduation.  It’s both a last-hurrah before going off to separate colleges and a way to avoid the minimum wage drudgery of a summer job.  But something goes not quite as planned—at least for Chris. He and Win (short for Winston) get separated towards the end of the journey. And when Chris returns home, heads off to college in mid-August, he learns that his friend never returned home at all.  He faces not only the prospect that something terrible happened to his best friend, but also pressure from Win’s father (who’s hired several people to “tail” Chris—including an F.B.I. agent—and threatened to disrupt Chris’s education or even end his dad’s job) to give Win up, convinced that he knows where his son is, what’s happened to him. Or even that he had something to do with his disappearance.
   

Shift by Jennifer Bradbury
Atheneum Books, 2008
Cover art by Greg Stadnyk

The chapters alternate between the aftermath of Win’s disappearance on the bike trip and the bike trip itself. Bradbury uses this broken time effectively, offering pieces of the mystery just as we need them and staging the action for the most emotional impact when the mystery is finally “solved” (HINT: the why in this novel is the key to the mystery and the emotional heart of the story, as it should be with any good mystery novel—thanks for that lesson, Mary Logue!). I’m using a similar structure for a novel I’m currently working on, and Bradbury’s offered here an example of how it can work really, really well.

Friendship, obviously, is central to Shift. But I’ll get to that in a minute. I also want to talk about fathers, which are also an important part of this story.  Early in the novel, Chris’s dad pulls him aside and tells him to stop just talking about taking the bike trip. Set a date.  And no matter what happens, leave on that date. Apparently he had dreamed about, talked about, saved up for a driving trip along Route 66 when he was much younger. But that’s all he did—prepare. He never did it.  He doesn’t want his son to have that same regret. Later in the novel, both when Chris is on the actual trip and when he’s being harassed by Win’s dad, Chris’s dad is sympathetic, understanding, patient, wise. But believably so. He’s a father you don’t often find in YA literature. He’s refreshing. And I’m glad we have his moment of regret early in the novel, because otherwise he would have seemed a little too one-dimensionally “perfect.”

Win’s dad, on the other hand, is a father figure we’re more accustomed to seeing in YA lit.  Controlling, angry, concerned about family and personal image. He has incessantly chipped away at Win’s spirit for eighteen years.  But Bradbury tempers his otherwise unsympathetic antagonism by letting us see, through Chris’s eyes, him crack a little under the pressure of searching for his missing son. During a scene in which he comes to Chris’s college to bully him into giving up whatever information he has about Win, Chris sees that he’s shaken, almost panicky, under his seemingly cool demeanor. Chris wonders, and we wonder, if maybe it’s not just pride or his son’s shot at the Ivy Leage (Win’s late for reporting to school at this point) that he’s worried about. Maybe he’s actually—finally—worried about losing his son

But in the end, this is a story of friends. Of friendship. Of growing up. Of separation. They start their biking journey as Chrisandwin, together (as friends, as their fathers’ sons).  They end their journey, and the story, as Chris. And Win.

There’s a great scene in a barn in chapter twenty, in which Chris and Win have an all-out, no-holds-barred wrestling match.  They’re not angry at each other, exactly. They just wrestle, as boys do. But the reader senses there’s more at stake than just bragging rights in this match. Chris flashes back to a church revival they came across on their trip, in which the preacher talked about Jacob having to wrestle an angel.  The physicality of the boys working out whatever it is that they need to work out works well.  They’re boys. They don’t talk. At least not about emotion. They act. Even the Jacob v. Angel reflection works well. And when Win demands Chris let him go, we know he’s not talking about him letting him out of the near-pin he has him in. He means LET ME GO. For good.  Then he tells him he’s been a good friend.  A true friend. It's a powerful scene.

The wrestling sequence is just one example of how well Bradbury captures not only a teen male voice but the teen male world.  Chris is thoughtful, smart, and articulate, but he’s still a guy and thinks and feels as guys have been conditioned to (especially teenage guys, especially when it comes to emotion). There’s one point, during the end of the book, where she falters a bit, though.  Just preceding what is otherwise an excellent scene (which I’ll discuss in a moment), Bradbury has Chris recall, for several paragraphs, a long-sleeved T-shirt that he really likes and used to wear all the time. He’s literally outgrown it (oversimplified version: Win=T-shirt). This is a little too obvious. Too clichéd. And way too much telling.  Especially for a boy. Everything else in the novel is visceral. Punches we can feel. The wrestling match does the trick. As does the following scene. The shirt isn’t necessary.

Fortunately, this sequence is followed by the scene I just mentioned. Chris is alone with his bike at the end of the trip (Win has already bailed on him).  He rolls his wheel into the ocean and says, “We made it. To no one. Then he revises, “I made it.”  And between this scene and the barn scene, and the hundreds of hints all along the journey, we get understand: Chrisandwin—as noted above—is now Chris. And Win.

Recommended for boys ages 14-17.

Featured Book: Strays

In Strays, by Ron Koertge, Ted, a shy, mild sixteen-year-old, is thrust into the foster care system when his parents die suddenly in a car crash.  He meets Astin—long time foster kid at the Rafters’ (Ted’s new foster home), who is about to graduate and “age out” of the system—and C.W., who arrives at the Rafters’ at the same time as Ted and is both a wannabe gangsta and, as it turns out, a kind-hearted dog-lover.

The book is about Ted letting go of his parents. They didn’t treat him very well, but he’s nonetheless haunted by their gruesome and abrupt end. He didn't get to say goodbye. Or tell them off.

Strays is also about Ted finding real friends. Family. A “pack” to run with.

In fact, early in the story, Ted, who is awkward and unpopular at his previous school, finds his closest friends are animals, with whom he can inexplicably communicate. It just starts, without warning, around page 14 or so. At first, I wonder if Ted’s imaging it, making it up, or if he’s just plain crazy. Is this an ability he’s always had, or has it developed since his parents’ death?  As it turns out, it doesn’t matter, because it provides for Ted (and me) what’s needed, when it’s needed. At first, it’s only animals who know him, love him, care about him.  Then it’s people, and the animals can go back to being important to Ted in a different way. They don’t have to stand in for real human relationships.

Strays by Ron Koertge
Candlewick, 2007

I like how Koertge handles Ted’s outward emotions throughout the novel.  Ted’s a guy. A teenage guy. He doesn’t want to talk about his feelings. Not to his social worker. Not to the Rafters. Not to Astin or C.W. He even lies to several of these people, claiming he’s “talking things out” with the others. But he really, really needs to talk. And as willing as animals are to listen, their open ears are not enough. Then Megan, Astin’s girlfriend, sets up Ted on a sort-of “friend date” with her pal Wanda.  Even though I thought the relationship between Ted and Wanda will bloom into a romantic one (several times), it doesn’t.  They’re friends. And each can talk to the other about their parents, or any number of other things, that they can’t talk about with anyone else, including Astin and Megan. 

Each character in Strays is well drawn—odd, unique, and authentic. Ted’s foster mother treats a doll like a real child after having lost her own. The father doesn’t particularly like kids, and doesn’t really want to be a part of the foster care system, and might just be in it for the money or to give his wife kids in a non-biological and non-adoptive way.  And he has tons of unreasonable rules. But the foster parents are demonized as foster parents often are. Neither is abusive, and both do pretty much exactly what they say they’ll do.  They’re irritating and predictable in almost a comforting sort of way, and Ted knows where he stands with them—more so than he did with his biological parents.

Astin, Megan, Wanda, and C.W. all reveal themselves to be multidimensional, too.  Astin is a tough biker who’s figured out how to live successfully with the Rafters. He decides to take Ted under his wing, even though he’s out of this place (and the system) very soon.  Megan is wealthy and can be haughty, bossy, but she cares enough for Ted to introduce him to Wanda, and she’s insightful enough to know they’ll hit it off.  C.W. constantly criticizes Ted for his clothing and strives for a tough “street” image, but he falls in love with a stray dog who he puppy-talks to, and is visibly moved when Ted offers him his seat on Astin’s bike following a shooting that C.W. witnesses.  And Wanda is bitter about her parents ditching her and somewhat ashamed of her weight, but she’s warm, witty, and kind, always being up front with Ted about their relationship while only being somewhat of a tease—no more than Ted can handle, though.

All of them are strays, lost, abandoned in some way or another, by the adults that are supposed to be responsible, in charge. Supposed to love them. But they find each other. And even though their relationships aren’t permanent, they remind them that they can have friends, family, meaningful connections, even without parents.

Recommended for boys, ages 14-17.

Electric Tuna

So my son and I go for a walk (usually several) every day. It's nice. He usually falls asleep in his Baby Bjorn, and I listen to This American Life, or some such, on my ipod.

Sometimes these walks are very early in the morning.

A few days ago, on one such early morning walk, we strolled past an automotive shop I must have walked by several hundred times.

And I completely misread its sign.

The incident, of course, inspired a sort of Americanized haiku.

Tired eyes first glance lies.
"Electra Tune," Riley--not
"Electric Tuna."

I'm Back!

Sorry about the serious lack of posts. Since mid-February, my wife and I each completed our respective graduate programs; I finished my thesis; we had a son, who's now five months old; and we packed up and moved 1,200 miles across the country.

So we've been busy.

But we've settled into our new digs and routines. And I'm ready to get down to business.

Watch for regular posts soon!