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

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"...I want to be strong I want to laugh along
I want to belong to the living
Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive
I want to wreck my stockings in some juke box dive
Do you want - do you want - do you want
To dance with me baby
Do you want to take a chance
On maybe finding some sweet romance with me baby
Well, come on..."
--Joni Mitchell, All I Want

(Jed)
"Here's what I know about the realm of possibility--
it is always expanding, it is never what you think
it is. Everything around us was once deemed
impossible. From the airplane overhead to
the phones in our pockets to the choir girl
putting her arm around the metalhead.
As hard as it is for us to see sometimes, we all exist
within the realm of possibility. Most of the limits
are of our own world's devising. And yet,
every day we each do so many things
that were once impossible to us..."

In traversing THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY, David Levithan has possibly created the most ambitious--and most romantic--YA verse novel yet published. Over the span of some months, twenty interconnected students from a high school each share a defining piece of their lives--one piece per character. Writing in a variety of poetic formats, including song lyrics, Levithan has created distinctive-yet-interwoven stories for each of these twenty teens, and what they tell us in those stories strikes a perfect balance between the uniqueness of the lives they reveal and the universality of the feelings and experiences within those lives.

(Lily)
"At that moment, a truck speeds across the bridge. It comes
dangerously close to us
and shakes the false ground that we sit on.
I am jolted
forward, into the rail.
The orange
falls from my hand
"And the word I think is precarious. Because as the bridge rocks like
a beast with a
tremor down its spine, as I pitch forward so close to the
air of no return, I am
struck
by how precarious it all is. How the things that hold us
are only as strong
as
the faith we have in them--
you go on the bridge because you
trust it will not
fall
the fingers will clasp because we
trust them to.
You need two hands to
hold a heart"

In fact, I cannot help but imagine hearing bits of our own former students' voices (Hi, Che!) in several of the pieces. For instance, the metalhead to whom Jed refers is Anton, whose contribution to the book is a series of wry "Suburban Myths":

"popularity is in fact a democracy. it is a fair
and square contest, each month, students vote,
and the kindest, most compassionate people
are always chosen to be the most popular,
just as we always choose the best person
in the country to be president, we always pick
the most deserving people to be popular.
they, in turn, humbly accept and prove to be
role models for all the rest of the students,
because their position is so much based
on worth and not at all on
looks or
cruelty."

"...I understand about indecision
But I don't care if I get behind
People livin’ in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind..."
--Boston, Peace of Mind

If having to deal with the popular people isn't enough, how about competing with a guy who is "frozen at this age that I can't wait to leave." The piece which will be appreciated by millions of afflicted high school students--and which I chose to read aloud to my college-level nieces and nephew after Thanksgiving dinner--is the hysterically funny and moving rant entitled, "My girlfriend is in love with Holden Caufield."

Indeed, I have already read the entire book aloud once and am impatient to find a second audience. Meanwhile, since it is a bit of a mystery at first who is talking about whom (as if you are in the hallway, overhearing one side of a conversation), I have enjoyed going back through the book with a notepad and pencil in order to draw a schematic of the interrelationships, and to then reread several of the views from "the other side."

As with BOY MEETS BOY, David Levithan's realm encompasses a joyful and optimistic range of possibilities. Things are the way they should be, with kids from various groups--whether by intention or by fate--being there for each other. And even when characters feel overwhelmed, things turn out for the best or, at least, are getting better:

"zack tells me it won't be as hard tomorrow, and I know he's right
zero hour has passed"

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