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

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"I was so in love, I went into my room and drank half a bottle of Robitussin."

Reading Adam Rapp's upcoming novel, UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG, is like watching a car wreck in slow motion...and it's such an awesome wreck that taking your eyes off of it for even a second is totally out of the question.

"We smoked and watched the trash whip around for a few minutes. Trash will make some pretty interesting shapes if you watch it long enough. I thought maybe it was trying to tell me something. Like my future or whatever. The same way people look at tea leaves."

In fact, not only couldn't I take my eyes off this book, reading it as I traveled over last Wednesday night from San Francisco to Chicago for Book Expo, but then on the flight home from Chicago last night, despite traveling with backbreaking quantities of new books in tow, I chose to read this one a second time. It's that good.

"It was amazing. If you ever want to change your life immediately, just sit down in some random fast-food place and start urinating in your pants. My lap was all wet and warm, and it was running down my legs and filling my Red Wing boots.
"I even told the manager. I said, 'I'm totally pissing my pants, man. Sorry.'
"The manager twiddled the ends of his mustache.
"He went, 'Well, that's not very sanitary, son.' Now I was his son. 'I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave.'
" 'Whatever, Dad,' I said. I was his son, so he was obviously my dad, right?
"We were one big happy Pizza Hut family."

UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG is the emotion-filled story told to us by Steve Nugent, a lovable and confused sixteen-year-old Gifted and Talented student who is tall and skinny, tends toward the socially inept side of the scale, and who, when we meet him, has ended up in a facility after his mother dies from cancer and his big brother kills himself shortly thereafter.

"I'm from East Foote, which is on the Illinois side of the Mississippi. Foote is on the Iowa side, and it's about ten times the size of East Foote. To put it in perspective, before I left, most people in East Foote had to go stand on this old livestock promontory just to get cell phone reception.
"So I'm currently in residence at this place in the middle of Michigan called Burnstone Grove. There are about thirty-five kids here. About half of us are drug addicts, and the other half have tried to check out of this world in one way or another. Probably a third of us have dabbled in both pursuits. I don't entirely fit into either category, so I'm what they call a Gray Grouper. The Red Groupers are the junkies, and the Blue Groupers are the suicide kids. There are only seven Gray Groupers, and we're generally kept here for a month or two before we're either shipped back home or sent to another, more affordable, facility. The Red and Blue Groupers can stay here for over a year sometimes. They get to see the seasons change and everything. So far it's been nothing but snow and ice and frozen trees and this very low-looking iron sky."

As Steve spends his time with the Groupers and staff members at Burnstone Grove, he reveals to us the circumstances which led up to his current residency.

"That's when this bailiff guy entered the room with the judge. The bailiff was pretty weird-looking. He had a shaved head and wore these yellow safety glasses, like he'd just returned from a rigorous go of it at the Foote gun club or something. The judge was pretty old, at least sixty-something, and his black gown made him look like some sort of geriatric Halloween creature in drag."

UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG is a very personal and often humorous story. We're charmed by a whole sideshow of quirky characters, including Steve's brother's wretched drug buddy, Dantly, Shannon Lynch, the young man at Burnstone Grove who can stuff $1.87 in change up his nose, and ten-year-old June, who may haunt my dreams for some time to come.

But above all, this is a terrifying and heartbreaking story about a sensitive kid with whom we can so easily identify, who's had so incredibly much to deal with.

"Suddenly the steering wheel was vibrating. For a second I thought that something had broken--an axle or the steering column or whatever--but then I realized it was me. I looked at my hands and they were trembling so bad I thought the veins in my wrists would burst."

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