The Ending of Alice

In some ways, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice books strike me as the Maisy books for teenagers. When you go to preschool like Maisy, you will have naptime, and you'll put on your coat to go outside, and you'll go to the bathroom with your class, and don't forget to wash your hands! When you go through adolescence like Alice, you'll have a whole list of new experiences, and don't forget to be careful! The Maisy books are most noteworthy for the comforting way they use appealing characters to talk children through what life is going to be like. They're exactly what very young children need sometimes, especially when they don't quite have the words to ask about what they don't understand.

Whether or not they have the words, adolescents don't necessarily feel equipped to ask their questions. Much like Maisy, Alice serves as a comforting and informative presence and, as is appropriate for her readers, often does her learning through hilarious stories, or at least ridiculously awkward conversations with her older brother. (Naylor says that of all the major characters, Lester is the one who comes most from her imagination, and I think he's one of the strongest characters.) This isn't the first time I've read an Alice book in (early) honor of Banned Books Week, and these books are a perfect demonstration of how books can responsibly show things that might make parents nervous. These books show the full spectrum, from characters who want all the sex and drugs and rock and roll they can get to characters who would rather run and hide from all of the above, and everyone's personal speed is normal. Sometimes the books get preachy. Sometimes they get downright Afterschool Special-y. But there's always something funny enough or tender enough coming up to make it worth reading to the next chapter.

Spoilers

below

for

Now 

I'll 

Tell 

You 

Everything. 


(There was Alice-level agony in resisting a comma after below in that sentence.)

The good: It's no particular surprise that Alice marries Patrick, whether or not it's realistic, but I'm very glad it doesn't happen in a fairytale way. Both have other relationships beforehand, and Alice even breaks an engagement with someone else. Even better, though their marriage is mostly happy, the wedding doesn't constitute a "happily ever after" ending. They have another thirty-plus years of the book to get through, and we see arguments and even moments when infidelity is a possibility. Naylor talks readers through birth control, sex, and labor the same way she talked them through periods and bras, but she keeps the narrative moving. (She has to. She has decades to cover.) I also really like that Alice becomes a school counselor. It gives some believability to her level of investment in everyone else's life, which otherwise one might write off as a necessary stretch in a first-person series that tells lots of people's stories.

The questionable: Throughout the series, there are times when Alice's voice seems to give way to the author's, and that happens more here. The last third of the book covers what's probably the bulk of Alice's married life, which means picking a very few memories to represent a long period of time. (Facebook is a constant presence over those years, which would make the timeline feel more like a treadmill even if there weren't eighties references in the time capsule Alice and her seventh-grade classmates open at age sixty.) Many of the choices work - exchanges with Alice's daughter Patricia, in particular, mirror the earlier books well, and I could practically hear Patricia's eyes rolling when appropriate. But much of the book is necessarily episodic, and that only works if the episode is interesting enough to relate. Little Tyler spitting in his urine sample and making everyone think he's seriously ill? Worth including. Alice fainting on the family trip to London? That's more the sort of story one tells at a dinner party than the sort one includes in a novel, unless there are larger health implications that have later bearing (there aren't).

The definite: These books have been in and out of my life for two thirds of it, and I'm glad of that. I still remember that after I read one in third grade, my mother asked me - asked, not told - to hold off on reading more until I was a bit older, and I set and stuck to my own plan: "I'll wait until fifth grade." That felt very grown-up, and though it's no more exciting than, say, fainting on a trip to London, it's a memory I come back to whenever the subject of censorship comes up. As the novel's original title puts it, always Alice.

Seeing Red, Alice, Sean Rosen, Better Nate Than Ever, and first award prediction of the year

Another round-up of good recent reads:

Seeing Red, by Katherine Erskine. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about this one, out in October. Katherine Erskine's writing process seems to involve putting a character in a tough situation, finding several ways to make the situation tougher, and then challenging the character to do the right thing. In this case, Red, who lives in 1972 Virginia, has just lost his father and is desperately against his mother's plan to take the family back to her home state of Ohio. That desperation makes him willing to do anything (he thinks) to prevent the sale of their land, but that "anything" turns out to include using race. Red gets caught up in things he doesn't believe in, and ends up a reluctant participant in a scene that amounts to kids playing at KKK-type activities. There's no permanent physical damage, but the images are frightening nonetheless, and I admire Erskine's willingness to show how a generally sympathetic character can be driven to do something evil, and then to stick with that character through the fallout. This is upper-middle-grade, and I think I would've been ready for it around 11 or 12.

On a very different note, several omnibuses of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice books have recently come my way, so I've been catching up on my Alice in preparation for upcoming series finale. I'm sure I'll have more to say once I've finished the series, but oh, Alice, I'm glad you're there in all your sometimes ridiculous and didactic glory.

I Represent Sean Rosen is a fun and silly middle-grade novel about a kid who has a cool idea for Hollywood, but no idea how Hollywood works. Think of him as a slightly more successful Timmy Failure, and though it's not quite semi-graphic, parts of it are written in screenplay form, which breaks up the text. Between that, the humor, and the Hollywood connection, this could be a great light read for readers on the reluctant side. I'll very likely recommend it the next time a parent begs me for "something that isn't Wimpy Kid" (while I praise Wimpy Kid as a gateway series).

Better Nate Than Ever is another story about a kid with grand showbiz dreams, one who sneaks off to New York to try out for a Broadway musical. I did a lot of you're thirteen and innocent and practically penniless and alone in New York, you brave idiot panicking for the poor kid, but I also did a lot of nodding. Because this is a middle-grade novel about a boy who's getting teased about maybe being gay, and who isn't quite sure whether he is or not, but who is reassured to see same-sex couples walking around openly in New York. With the exception of the graphic novel Drama, I haven't seen this topic covered at length for an audience younger than YA. (Books showing gay parents and other adults are a valuable thing, but they're a different thing from this.) I have thoughts, lots of them, about how children's lit as a whole portrays boys with nontraditionally male interests, but that's a topic for another post (probably in the near future). For now, I'll just say that this is one of the types, though not the only type, of book I'd like to see more of.

The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata shows a family of Japanese-American migrant workers. Summer, age 12, has a lot to put up with, beginning with a prickly grandmother whom I kept wanting to shake. There's a lot of humor and a lot of originality in this one - how many novels have main characters obsessed with bug spray because they've just recovered from malaria? A great glimpse into the modern migrant working culture, which I hadn't known much about, and also a great story.

Finally, if Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane doesn't win an Alex Award, I'll eat a bug. (There are, like, chocolate grasshoppers or something to get me out of this if I need it, right?)

Fasten your Backseatbelts...

NPR released its "Ultimate Backseat Bookshelf" this week - its recommendations of "books that every 9- to 14-year-old should read," in the words of the call for listener suggestions. That phrasing sticks in my craw; I'm sure the intent was to highlight the awesomeness of the books, but it comes off as prescriptive, and if there's one thing I'd love all whatever-to-whatever-year-olds to learn, it's that they can make reading into whatever kind of experience they want by choosing their own reading material.

And once you get rid of that "should" business, it's a great list that sends exactly that message. Like the extensive summer reading list from our local schools, this list is broken into categories that practically scream, "You get to spend your reading life on whatever kinds of books you want!" You like magic? The NPR list has a "Fantasy Worlds" category. Prefer a cozier read? Try something from the "Family Life" list. Graphic novels count. So does nonfiction, with or without lots of pictures (or adolescent snark from a certain young diarist). You can read about kids whose backgrounds are like your own or different from your own, whoever you are. You can read a book that says "ages 9 to 12" when you're 8 or 13, and you can skip a book that doesn't look interesting and, if you want, come back to it when you're 29 or 92.

"Must-read" in the sense that we might call a summer blockbuster a "must-see?" Heck yes. I just hope no one's looking at that list as "must-read" in the homework sense.

Preview time!

Is it just me, or are there a lot of cool projects on the horizon?

Here's one: Laurie Halse Anderson and artist Emily Carroll are adapting Speak into a graphic novel. There's so much that's visual about this story, and I imagine the new format will highlight the contrast between Melinda's silence and everyone else's chatter. Just look at that piece of sample art in the article linked above. I really think this has the potential to be something special. Tentatively Fall 2016 (which makes me think they're putting a lot into it.)

So does the Hallmark Channel's upcoming film of The Watsons Go to Birmingham -1963 (film title simply The Watsons Go to Birmingham). What I love about Christopher Paul Curtis, especially in this book, is his power to create absolutely hilarious characters who are loveable in completely three-dimensional ways. When history happens in his books, we care that it's happening because we care about the people it's impacting. My sense from this featurette is that the movie remembers to emphasize all that; I see loving family scenes, I see Byron's tongue frozen to a car window, and I see the serious aspects of the book, too. (September 20) (Fear not, fellow lackers of cable - it looks like there will be a DVD.)

And then there's Dear Mr. Watterson. The first person who says anything in the trailer talks about how Calvin and Hobbes got him to read. Sounds like a movie after my own heart. (November 15)

I'm not saying the summer should end any faster. I'm just saying good stuff is coming afterwards.

And what would *you" steal from a children's book?

This week, I've been getting my background noise from the Kidlit Red Carpet. Interviewers Jim Averbeck, Betsy Bird, and Kristin Clark spend blessedly little time grilling Newbery-Caldecott-Wilder Banquet attendees about their outfits, instead getting actual interesting information out of them. Many of the authors and illustrators revealed their upcoming projects, some of which were new to me. For instance, did you know Brian Selznick is working on another book in the style of The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck? The word "trilogy" came up (in terms of "structure" and "theme"), and if this one has another one-eyed spine, the S-shelf is going to look a little creepy... but seriously, I can't wait. (And yes, that's what face-outs are for.)

Daisy of Chris Raschka's A Ball for Daisy is getting another book, and Patricia Polacco has a new companion coming out to the 25-year-old The Keeping Quilt. Katherine Paterson and her Brother Son, Sister Moon collaborator Pamela Dalton have a beautiful-sounding new book about how people give thanks around the world. Sheila Turnage says her protagonist keeps giving her sequels; we'll see Three Times Lucky heroine Mo LoBeau at least three times. And Leonard Marcus has a new biography of Randolph Caldecott, who sounds like he was quite a character himself.


In honor of the high-profile theft in current winner This Is Not My Hat, the interviewers asked the passing luminaries what object they would most like to steal from a Caldecott winner/any picture book/any work of children's literature; the parameters changed a few times. If the answer is limited just to Caldecott winners, I think I'd have to go for Sylvester's magic pebble and just use it very, very carefully. If the pilfered item can come from anywhere in kidlt (and not necessarily American kidlit), then the real question is which magical gadget I would steal from Harry Potter and friends. Hermione's time-turner, I think. Of course, there are other magical worlds full of goodies, and Lyra does have an alethiometer, though I might first have to steal Will's knife to get to it... Maybe I should just keep it simple and, in the tradition of a Klassen character, steal a snazzy hat.

If you need me, I'll be sneaking through the pages of Go, Dog, Go.

Catching Fire trailer!

The Hunger Games movie franchise could easily rest on its popcorn potential. These are suspenseful stories featuring hot young movie stars whose characters' fates hang constantly in the action-packed balance. What I love about these movies is that they play up their serious side even though they don't have to. The books were written largely to make us think by making us feel something more than just our pulses pounding. The tone set in the first movie, particularly during the Reaping, did the same thing, and this trailer takes that same tone. Yes, Katniss Barbie exists, but you don't have to have read the books first to realize why that's funny. (If you read them afterwards, as so many people did when the first movie came out, so much the better.)

I'm sure I'll have more to say once I've seen more than two and half minutes of the movie. But given the trailer's emphasis, I'm inclined to thank Lionsgate for trusting our intelligence.

A thought for publishers

Dumps are often a great idea, at least to this bookseller's mind. (For the uninitiated, a dump in this context is a cardboard floor display designed to hold lots of copies of a particular book or sometimes a series.) They make a new book visible, which obviously makes a huge difference in sales. They tell customers (and us booksellers) that a book is kind of a big deal. They save us from finding space for huge amounts of overstock - not the basis for display decisions, but a nice perk. But they only work when we can use them.

We're a midsize indie, and nearly every square foot is accounted for, either by merchandise or by a thoroughfare. On a sunny Sunday when everyone's picking up summer reading for camp, our aisles can get pretty crowded. I can only imagine how precious space is for smaller stores than ours, of which there are many.

I'm much more likely to put up a dump if it's relatively small, and I bet I'm not the only one. A display with one column of slots for books and a topper with the title and an image will still get much more attention than a faceout on the shelf, and it's much easier to use than one that's two or three feet wide. (Having the book's title on the top piece is a simple thing that can help; if I'm not able to use the dump, I do try to hang the top piece as a poster.)

Every store's space has its quirks. Our kids' section's layout is such that there are several nooks and crannies for dumps around Intermediate Fiction, but not many around other sections, and that's probably different in other stores. And of course, some stores are bigger than we are, and their booksellers might be more eager for a giant display to draw attention to a big new book. I wonder if it would be feasible for publishers to provide dump options in different sizes and let buyers choose, if that isn't happening already.

You want customers to notice your big titles, and we want the same thing. The easier it is to display them prominently, the better for both of us.

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I'll be away next week, and probably playing catch-up when I first get back. If this blog is quiet for a bit, rest assured I haven't abandoned it!