Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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"Man, man, man. I turned around and walked. Just kept walking.
"I was pissed. These guys, what was wrong with them anyway? What was it with all the fighting? So what if they were pissed off? I was pissed off, too. I was pissed off about a lot of things. About my mom. About Juliana. About living in Hollywood. About working all the time, and having to save every dime, every nickel, every penny, just so I could go to college. About having teachers and friends who looked at me like I was wasting my time by working so goddamned hard at being a good student. About being called the Librarian behind my back by every asshole who thought being a man meant ignoring the fact that he was born with a fucking mind. Damnit to hell! I was pissed off, too. But I didn't go around kicking people's asses just because I was pissed off. Shit, sometimes having these conversations with myself only made me madder. I lit a cigarette. Once I calmed down, I just enjoyed the walk. It was a nice night. Hot. And it smelled like rain."

Thinking back on my own life, it seems as if the summer of 1968 was the last time that I was contented in that innocent, blissful fashion that is the true province of childhood. I spent large chunks of that summer--which for me fell between seventh and eighth grade--happily toiling away on my dad's residential construction sites. Occasionally I'd take some of my hard-earned cash, jump on my banana bike, and zoom through the local neighborhoods over to Modell's where they always had the latest 45s and LPs in their music department. I also spent a couple of weeks camping upstate near Gloversville, NY at Woodworth Lake Scout Reservation. But--most memorably--I got to spend a healthy portion of Summer 1968 hanging out on the deck Dad had recently built around the new pool in our backyard.

"Look over yonder, what do you see?
The sun is arisin', most definitely.
A new day is comin', people are changin',
Ain't it beautiful? Crystal blue persuasion."
--Tommy James and the Shondells

It was one of those rectangular aboveground pools with a blue vinyl liner and a diving hole dug into the ground on one end. There were plenty of mornings when it was already scorching by nine or ten. I can still recall the soundtrack of those long, lovely summer days when I'd have MusicRadio WABC constantly cranked up and a sweating glass of O.J. waiting on the picnic table as I repeatedly tried to determine how many times I could swim back and forth underwater without coming up for air.

"You're just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off of you
You'd be like heaven to touch
I wanna hold you so much
At long last love has arrived
And I thank God I'm alive
You're just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off of you"
--Frankie Valli

Meanwhile, in 1968, during the summer preceding his senior year at Las Cruces High School in southern New Mexico, Sammy Santos hooks up with Juliana Rios.

"I remember her eyes, the gray of a sky about to let loose a storm. I remember the way she placed her finger on her bottom lip when she was lost in thoughts as dark as her eyes. I'd have given anything to live that close to her lips."

The powerful and achingly tragic story Sammy recounts of Juliana Rios and that summer of '68 is but a mere preface in this stunning ode to growing up in the barrio--a neighborhood that some joker has named Hollywood. A tale told in five segments and focusing primarily on the people and events in Sammy's life during the year that begins that summer, I alternately laughed, cheered, and cried as Sammy and his Hollywood friends encounter the prejudices, the Church, the hormones, the War, the drugs, the violence, the music, the aspirations, and the dress code, while making their way through that year both inside and outside of the barrio.

"I need you baby and if it's quite alright
I need you baby to warm the lonely nights
I love you baby, trust me when I say"

Back-to-back readings of SAMMY AND JULIANA accompanied by a solid week of Frankie Valli echoing in my head has me absolutely in love with this book.

"You've got to change your evil ways, baby"
--Santana

Benjamin Alire Saenz creates a beautiful and gritty cast of Hollywood teens here, and the members of that cast are so well-drawn that I will long deal with memories of each and every one of them.

And yet, they are all sooner or later upstaged by the tenacious little old lady who lives across the street from Sammy. In the long run, it is Mrs. Apodaca who arguably comes to exert the greatest influence on Sammy's life that year.

"One morning she handed out novenas in honor of the Blessed Mother to Susie Hernandez and Francisca (aka Frances) Sanchez as they passed in front of her house to catch the bus to go to school. 'Go to the priest,' she said firmly. She pointed at their skirts.
" 'God made my legs,' Susie said, then slapped her thigh as if with that slap she could make Mrs. Apodaca appreciate not only the danger but the beauty of a woman's legs.
" 'But who made the dress?' Mrs. Apodaca shot back.
"Actually, it wasn't so bad living across the street from Mrs. Apodaca. Any time I got bored, I'd wander out to the front porch. Sit. Wait. I was always rewarded for my patience. Something always happened. It was her habit to stop people as they passed in front of her house. She was a gatekeeper, and now, as I think about it, I swear she would have made one helluva border patrol officer. 'Who made that dress?' Even from across the street, I could hear her clearly, could see the deep furrows of her scowl, her face becoming a map of the world. 'Who made that dress?' "

In my own life, the summer of 1968--which had been preceded by those two assassinations--ended with the televised Chicago police riot outside of the Democratic National Convention. School began the following week, and my wonderful eighth grade American History teacher helped me to begin connecting the dots, yielding images of the country that forever shook me out of my childhood stupor. The beauty and power through which Benjamin Alire Saenz reveals what was happening in a faraway corner of America during that pivotal time in my own life, and in the life of our country, makes this the book that I'll be giving to our teen nieces and nephews for the holidays.

"She was singing from a different place. In a language that didn't matter a damn. But it mattered to Gigi. And it mattered to us--to Pifas and Rene and to Angel. La gloria eres tu. God, she could sing. And in the moonlight, she didn't seem like a girl at all. She was a woman with a voice. Any man would die just to hear that voice. I swear--just to hear it. I thought the world had stopped to listen to Gigi--Gigi Carmona from Hollywood. I could see tears rolling down Pifas' face. As pure as Gigi's voice. I could feel those wings inside me again--like they were coming back to life, like all they needed was just one beautiful song for them to get up and start beating again. Everything was so perfect, I mean really perfect. Maybe this was what the garden was like. Maybe this was the way the world should end. Not with me and my own thoughts, not with high school boys using their fists on each other, not with Pifas going off to war--but with the tears of boys falling to the beat of a woman's song, the sounds of guns and bombs and fists against flesh disappearing. This is the way the world should end: with boys turning into men as they listen to a woman sing.
"I wish Juliana was here."

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com