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

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Lydia:
"Mr. Botherit is holding one finger in the air: 'A,' he is saying, 'it will reduce the hostility between our schools! And two, it will be our stand against the tyranny of technology. By sending letters, we say no to e-mails! No to mobile technology and texting!! And yes to the Joy of the Envelope!'
"Mr. Botherit, as I said is an idiot. He's trying to be funny, but he can't hide the fact that he's not.
"He also can't hide the fact that he just said A, and then two. A lot of people are now offering to teach him the alphabet.
"Meanwhile, the rest of the class is in an uproar. Some people are upset because their mobile phones have been insulted. Most people are upset about having to write to Brookfield. Mr. B already tried this last year, and many students ended up dead. Or, anyway, unhappy."

I loved my '89 Camry. When I needed to buy a car in the mid-1990s, it was the first ad that I had gone to check out. The synchromesh was screwed up which caused difficulty when you tried shifting into second at too high a speed. It had a small dent back behind the rear passenger side door. And the trunk leaked during the heavy winter rains. But the former owners gave it to me for a good price, it was an absolute joy to drive (despite its idiosyncrasies), and it always gave me 30 or more miles per gallon on the highway.

My '89 Camry met its demise on the evening of December 2nd, while I was heading home from doing a booktalk for parents and students at an elementary school down in Petaluma. I was turning left on a green arrow when a young fellow from Louisiana, out cruising with the guys, ran a red light at a high rate of speed and created the slow-motion movie that's been playing over and over in my head since that night: the last-second sight of a car heading straight towards me...

More than three months later I am still a bit sore. No, nothing like that first month which was an unremitting cycle of pain/pain reliever/pain/pain reliever. I am trying to be consistent about doing the exercises assigned me for easing the knots that remain in my neck and shoulder.

Now I have another '89 Camry. This one is a wagon instead of a sedan. My computer-based quest for the difficult-to-find 4-cylinder/5-speed was fulfilled when I discovered one down in Berkeley through the free online classifieds site, Craigslist.org. Because I feared it getting sold before I could check it out, I gambled on the sellers being around in the evening, grabbed a book off the pile on my way out the door, and hopped on the bus to San Francisco that connects to the subway that runs over (under?) to the East Bay.

During that four hour trip to see (and buy) my new car, I didn't lift my eyes from that book I'd grabbed to take with me. Since numerous people of questionable character are known to frequent the buses, my frequent snorting probably phased no one. Ditto for BART. I then walked from the subway stop to the seller's home, and when there was no answer at the door, I proceeded to read by the light of the streetlamp until they eventually arrived home to find a stranger sprawled out on their front porch, totally cracking up over some book with a happy face on the cover.

A half-hour later I handed them the cash, my business card, and the information for purchasing THE YEAR OF SECRET ASSIGNMENTS, before driving my new car home.

Lots of laughs, plenty of attitude, mystery, and hijinx permeate this book. Three longtime girlfriends in high school--Emily, Lydia, and Cassie--who are connected through parents who went to law school together, are each required to become penpals with guys in a cross-town school with a bad reputation. The story is told primarily through these letters back and forth, along with some journal entries, and a hysterically funny fill-in-the-blanks writing workbook that Lydia's dad has given her.

I'd considered myself pretty waterlogged from the publishers' wave of girl-writes-a-journal books of the past few years, but this is a horse of an entirely different flavor. I'm sure there are some great lessons to be garnered from this book, but, above all, I found it to be a totally delightful read. And the author's background as an attorney is certainly put to good (comedic) use.

At first I wasn't sure what more to say about the book.

But being away for a couple of days up in the middle of the (cold, snowy) Sierras this week, with nothing to do at night, I found myself rereading it like it was comfort food. And it's as good as leftover lasagna the second time around. For one thing, I caught many of those little clues concerning who did what that I'd missed the first time through. But, more importantly, I understood all the Emily-isms that I wasn't clear about on the first go round.

In the same way that non-Americans might find it a bit more difficult to understand the wisdom of Yogi Berra or the rapid-fire dialogue in a Marx Brothers movie, I wasn't sure on the first read exactly what was Emily and what was the English language as it is spoken Down-Under. But the second time I understood what the author has accomplished in creating the wacky voice of this young woman who longs to be a lawyer someday:

"I am not saying that this is true. I am only giving a hyperactive situation of how you might give offense."
" 'You must have dislocated it. Try looking again.' "
"I was just nom-plussed..."
"I decided to use this opportunity to practice my handwriting. As you can see, I am developing a highly eloquent style."
"Anyway, I didn't believe that for one millimeter..."
"They have very sun-dewed light so you look attractive in the mirror..."
"I think this is a "play" on Thompson, which is my last name. I think it is an angiogram of Thompson, actually."
"I can't explain how beautiful the singing was because you can't write music."
"We need to cook on the element of surprise."
"It's immortal keeping a secret."
"...he says that schools which are close to one another should forge ties, and I hope you are as keen as I am to get started with the forgery."
"Hyperbole is something to do with graphs. What is it in particular? I don't know. I hate maths."
"Also, I have seen on TV that you can get head transplants and it seems to me that it is a tragedy if you are bald and you don't get a head transplant."

Bravo for the girls from Ashbury and the guys from Brookfield. I have no doubt that this will be a major hit with our students. That is, if they can wrestle it away from us grown ups.

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