Book review: "An Abundance of Katherines," by John Green

An Abundance of Katherines (2006)
by John Green
Speak / Penguin

A friend has convinced me to try my hand this year for the first time at writing children's literature; but I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process among other ways by first reading a stack of popular books that have been recommended to me. This is my first of the contemporary "superstar" young-adult (YA) books, a whole series of post-9/11 titles now in my reading list that have each sold millions of copies, usually without most of us adults being any the wiser; and indeed, after finishing it myself, I could easily see why John Green has in just the past few years rapidly grown into one of the most popular YA authors in history. And that's because this character-based relationship comedy and coming-of-age tale is literally as complicated and witty as any better-than-average adult novel out there, sort of a teen version of a Michael Chabon or David Foster Wallace book (complete with superfluous footnotes, no less), which of course is going to get eaten up by a crowd that's usually fed a steady stream of parent-friendly morality tales and vampire soap operas.

In fact, that's the best compliment I can give this novel, that it literally made me flash back to some of the deepest, most private moments I had in my own teen years (25 years ago now for me), moments I had completely forgotten about, a laser-precise look sometimes at the weird ways intelligence and naivety and hormones mix in the high-school years; and that's always a special and remarkable thing, when an adult author can tap back into those emotions as if they were there again, and especially astonishing when you add it to Green's natural mastery over plot, ultra-realistic dialogue, and creation of all kinds of fascinatingly unique elements while still adhering to the "rules" of YA fiction (like: find a plausible way to get rid of the adults as much as possible; be dark but not too dark; make the plot at least slightly more adventurous than most teens get a chance to experience in real life; examine sex mostly by way of examining sexual tension; etc). Green has a whole series of passionately loved character dramadies out now (to say nothing of the first project that got him a lot of notice, the million-person-watching "Brotherhood 2.0" online video experiment), and I'm highly looking forward now to reading more.

Additional thoughts, as far as my struggle to become a better YA author myself...

--So far in my research, this is the book I've most pictured as the kind of novel I myself will probably write; but that said, I happily admit that Green is a much better writer than I will ever be, which I actually find oddly inspirational for some reason, the fact that a guy this funny and smart is being so rewarded by his industry right now. (He's also a multiple award-winner, and the film rights to several of his books have now been purchased by Hollywood studios.) That's another big compliment I can give, that I really want Green to write a book for grown-ups now, so that an adult audience can also discover what a wonderful writer he is.

--For being a multiple award winner, I was surprised by how much subversive material there is in here: all the teens curse like sailors, most of them get drunk at one point or another without any repercussions, and there's even a scene where two teen boys come across another teen couple making love in a field completely naked, and end up watching them for a bit before making their presence known. I'm sure it's another reason why these books are so massively popular among teens themselves. Also, I was happily reminded while reading this that teens actually have a much more nuanced understanding of things like relationships than we tend to remember by the time we're in our forties; the characters seen here can get surprisingly jaded and adult in their observations about romance and the like. This is one of the nice things, of course, about a book like this becoming so popular, that it confirms that teen readers really are intimately connecting with the highly sophisticated writing style seen on display here. It's one of the things I'm starting to realize these days, that the entire YA industry is a much different thing than when I was a young adult myself in the early 1980s, and that the most popular YA novels out there (the ones specifically for ages 14 and up, that is) are routinely as large, complex and realistic as any adult book, just with teenage characters.

--Did I mention yet all the infinitely unique and utterly charming details that Green comes up with for this book, all while servicing the traditional blueprint for what a contemporary novel should contain? This is why he reminds me so much of the adult-lit author Michael Chabon, and especially that author's early hit Wonder Boys. I love how Green starts us out in Chicago, for example (in fact, just around the corner from where I live in real life), but somehow comes up with an entirely plausible way for our teen heroes to end up spending the rest of the novel in a tiny little hillbilly town in Tennessee, one that they just happened to randomly come across during an impromptu road trip. I love that the comic-relief best friend is an overweight slacker Muslim, filthy-mouthed and addicted to daytime television and who introduces himself to everyone with, "Hi, I'm not a terrorist." I love how the story ends up centering around a factory that makes the pull-out strings for tampons, and I love how that ends up providing this lovely, completely surprising, visually magical moment at the book's climax. I love how the main conceit is that our male hero has had 19 romantic relationships since the age of eight, and that every single one of them was with a girl named Katherine with a "K;" and I love how Green uses this quirky fact as an excuse for these long, (500) Days of Summer style reminiscences about them, all in the service of this science nerd trying throughout the course of the book to perfect a mathematical formula that can be used to predict the outcome of any new relationship. There's a hundred other details like these I could mention, but I won't.

--And finally, definitely one of the reasons Green has grown so absurdly popular is that he has a brilliant handle over teen stereotypes, and of all the massively complicated layers of personality that actually reside under that top stereotype in real life. Just to cite one example (and again, I could do more if I wanted), look at how our main female character Lindsey comes across at first as a typical redneck with too much makeup and who dates the town quarterback (literally); but how as we get to know her, we come to realize that she's actually an emotional chameleon, whose personality and even dialect changes radically based on who she's around; and how under that, there's actually a very rebellious creature who was once an angry junior-high goth; and how underneath all THAT, what really lurks is the heart of an intelligence-loving nerd, which is how it is that she and our nerdy male hero click so profoundly, despite the surface-level details of their lives being almost diametrically opposite. It's easy for adult readers to look at a character like Lindsey and imagine her as the sassy graphic-designer ingenue or cultishly loved punk-rock bassist she's fated to be; it's absolutely wonderful to watch Green so completely peg this type in the years before she grows into the person she was always meant to be. (And speaking of all this, that's the secret behind Green's miraculous feat of writing a relationship book that somehow appeals to boys as well: he makes the male hero an antisocial, book-obsessed former child prodigy who nonetheless has an insanely busy love life, manages to get the hot white-trash girl by the end, and actually beats up the town quarterback, a wish-fulfillment wet dream for nerdy boy book-lovers if I've ever heard of one.)

Book review: "Bird Lake Moon," by Kevin Henkes

Bird Lake Moon (2008)
By Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow / HarperCollins

A friend has convinced me to try my hand this year for the first time at children's literature; but I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process among other ways by first reading a stack of existing books that have been recommended to me. Kevin Henkes' Bird Lake Moon was recommended as a good example of books for older grade-schoolers and middle-schoolers (so roughly ages 10 to 13) that deal with dark material in a gentle yet realistic way; it's almost 40,000 words total, on the heavy side of such books, and also contains an expansive vocabulary that will be a pleasant challenge for younger readers. It's the story of two boys who one summer move next to each other in the sleepy Wisconsin cottage community of Bird Lake; one has a set of parents who are going through a divorce, which is why they've temporarily moved in with his mother's cantankerous grandparents, while the other has a brother who drowned at Bird Lake almost a decade ago, with this being the traumatized family's first trip back.

Things I took away from this book, as far as my own struggle to become a better children's writer...

--Although really well done, I can see here why people recommend so much that character-oriented novels for kids be loaded up with a lot of extra drama and unique events, with this book many times coming off as what I imagine is too subtle for many kids, and therefore with only a limited potential audience (although of course with that audience intensely passionate about the book, precisely for these reasons). Also, to reference my own reading habits as a kid, this book many times feels not like the best of someone like Judy Blume (where the characters create and drive the situations being played out) but more like her second-tier work, minor books like Deenie and Iggie's House where it feels like first an issue was picked ("I think I'll write a book about desegregation in the suburbs") and only then were characters created and a plotline written. Although I want to reiterate that Henkes does a great job with the material he's chosen here, just like adult literature these kinds of stories need to feel natural and not forced, which Henkes teeters just on the edge of many times.

--And speaking of all this, I thought Henkes treads a very fine line here as far as how dark is too dark for kids in the 10-to-13 range; this is one of the issues I find fascinating as an author, in that I imagine many of my own future kid's books will be dark in tone as well, and I'm trying to learn exactly where the balance is for the pre-YA crowd. I really loved for example that one of our heroes, Mitch, is in typical divorced-kid fashion acting out just all the time, in ways that are sometimes surprisingly destructive for a person who's supposed to be our protagonist; for example, as part of his ongoing secret campaign to convince his new neighbors to leave again, in the desperate hope that his own family could move in next-door so that his mom and grandparents will stop fighting all the time, he actually unchains their dog and lets it run away while the family is gone for the afternoon, in what could've easily led to the dog's death or permanent disappearance in the real world. The book is full of moments like these, uncomfortably real details of just how dysfunctional people can get in the middle of a divorce or the grieving of a dead child, a polarizing element that I imagine young readers will either intensely love or hate.

--And finally, I thought this book did a particularly great job at examining the subtle relationship between kids at different ages, which I'm told is a topic that's really loved by many child readers at this age; ten-year-old Mitch admires his neighbor Stewart for being twelve, Stewart admires Mitch back for his above-average athletic skills, while both have a begrudging tolerance only for their fairytale-spouting, costume-wearing chatterbox grade-school siblings. And I also think that Henkes does a great job at examining the heavily flawed parents that are around these kids, and how their only so-so dealings with these family dramas end up creating new legitimate hassles sometimes for the kids themselves; just to cite one good example, how Stewart's mother after a few days realizes that the cloud of her first son's death is hanging just too heavily over the entire environment for her comfort, even though the entire rest of the family has quite intensely fallen in love with being there by then. This is such a subtle thing in children's literature, the question of just how much of adult personalities and adult weaknesses one should add to the story in the first place -- because obviously most kids are at least a little fascinated with adult behavior, and especially when they get a chance to glance at truly adult reactions that they suspect they're not supposed to be seeing, although ultimately most kids prefer that the books they read be primarily about other kids, and of the ways those kids live their lives when the adults aren't around. I have a lot more to learn about the various ways that authors deal with this subject, and is something I always keep a close eye on whenever reading yet another character-oriented middle-school drama.

Book review: "The Tale of Despereaux," by Kate DiCamillo

The Tale of Despereaux (2001)
Kate DiCamillo
Candlewick Press

A friend has convinced me to try my hand this year for the first time at children's literature; but I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process among other ways by first reading all the books that have won the Newbery Award in the last ten years, although I've been warned that there is sometimes a strong disconnect between such books and what the actual book-buying public really wants. This was the 2003 winner, a fairytale set in medieval France which like Pixar's Ratatouille concerns a mouse that develops a taste for the finer things in life, like art and beauty; and while I found it just fine for what it aims to be, there's a certain overly twee preciousness to this story that I myself don't care for in children's literature, sort of like combining the worst elements of Lemony Snicket, Victorian first-person narration, and that Simpsons episode where they make fun of Cirque de Soleil. Although I recommend it for people who are looking for that kind of thing, it's just not the kind of kid-lit I'm interested in writing, which is why I don't have much to say about it. The book is around 30,000 words altogether, and is best in my opinion for third, fourth, and some fifth-graders, a nice challenge for those getting more and more comfortable with smaller chapter books.

Book review: "The Higher Power of Lucky," by Susan Patron

The Higher Power of Lucky (2006)
Susan Patron
Richard Jackson / Atheneum / Simon & Schuster

A friend has convinced me to try my hand this year for the first time at children's literature; but I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process among other ways by first reading all the books that have won the Newbery Award in the last ten years, although I've been warned that there is sometimes a strong disconnect between such books and what the actual book-buying public really wants. This was the 2006 winner, which reminded me a lot of the '70s Judy Blume / Betsy Byars stuff I myself grew up on -- complex character dramas featuring significantly flawed heroes, that is, and with a strong sense of melancholy throughout. It's the story of ten-year-old Lucky, a strange and slightly arrogant girl living in a dying, post-boom Industrial town in southern California, almost comical in its post-apocalyptic surrealism; the story consists of us simply watching her life for awhile, as among other things she contends with the flighty young French woman who has through bizarre means become her legal guardian, the lonely five-year-old neighbor who constantly trails her like a shadow, and her growing confusion over what exactly she's supposed to do with the ashes of her mother, who died in a recent accident that Lucky blames herself for. The book is around 30,000 words total, and is best in my opinion for older grade-schoolers and younger middle-schoolers.

Here are the main things I took away from this book, as far as the struggle to become a better children's writer myself...

-Patron uses a series of clever devices to get rid of nearly all the adult authority figures, which of course almost all kids love seeing in their favorite literature; the mom dies at the beginning, and the deadbeat dad wants nothing to do with her, convincing his first ex-wife instead to come in and clean up the mess, the flighty young French woman already mentioned, whose life was kind of a trainwreck back in Paris and so didn't have much to lose. And by setting this in a comically post-apocalyptic Industrial ghost town, it gives Patron the perfect excuse to make all the rest of the adults either mentally ill, fried-out hippies, or hermit Unabomber weirdoes. And speaking of which, making Lucky's guardian a flighty young French woman injects a lot of quirky, original humor into what's usually a boilerplate-type character in books like these. They are all inventive ways to stick to age-old kid-lit conventions.

--I like how Lucky is a significantly flawed character who makes plenty of mistakes, an overly curious slight know-it-all who I imagine mirrors many of her real-life fans. It not only brings extra complexity to the story (highly needed in a character drama during these "all vampire, all the time" days), and makes her more easily relatable, but also teaches kids that even when you sometimes mess up, it's still possible to pick up the pieces and keep trudging on. That said, there's also a precocious side to Lucky that I kept thinking just has to make actual kid readers roll their eyes, but that is the very kind of parent-friendly detail that won it the Newbery in the first place. For example, look at the overly cutesy situation that inspires the book's title, the fact that Lucky secretly listens in on the town's 12-step meetings, and has incorrectly surmised that a "higher power" is a literal object that one can acquire, and becomes convinced that it's just what she needs to sort through her mess of a life these days. I can already hear the anguished cries by 12-year-old readers nationwide of "whatEVER," even as the parents fawn at such a concept.

--And finally, how dark is too dark for middle-graders? There's as many different answers as there are people answering it, and it's of course a topic that Patron toys with here too; after all, this is the book that infamously starts on page one with a dog being bitten by a rattlesnake in the scrotum, and Patron actually using the word "scrotum." It was interesting to read a book like this that actually got published and did well for itself; I kept imagining it as one of those manuscripts that gets passed around the industry unsigned for years, until finally the exact right editor comes along who says, "You know, this could very well win next year's Newbery."

Series review: "Underwhere," by Bruce Hale

Prince of Underwhere (2008)
Bruce Hale
HarperTrophy / HarperCollins

A friend has convinced me to try my hand this year at writing children's literature; but I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process simply by reading a large selection of titles that have been recommended to me. I was told that Bruce Hale's "Underwhere" series is a good example of literature perfect for third-graders; and indeed, as I read this first volume myself, I saw that it matched up with a lot of common advice I've now been given regarding writing for this age group, including a strong sense of humor, a quickly-paced but not too complicated storyline, a concentration on the ways that boys and girls interact at that age, lots of action and mystery, many scenes set in a school environment, and sentences that average around ten words.

Of course, this differs quite a bit from the last series I read, Nancy Krulik's "Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo" books, even though they share nearly the exact same literary traits; the "Underwhere" books are designed specifically for boys, and rely on a steady concentration of gentle potty humor that I've seen many parents actually complain about now online, but that is apparently like catnip to eight-year-old boys. (I also find it interesting how both authors paint similar views of the relationship between boys and girls, but with competing looks at who's supposed to be the hero; in both series, for example, the boy characters are obnoxious and gross, but with it being a hinderance to our girl heroes in "Katie Kazoo" while being the key to the solution in "Underwhere.") I'm also told that this is a great title for the infamous "reluctant readers" of this age group, in that half the story (all the chapters that take place in the fantasy realm of "Underwhere") are done in comic-book form, in an abstracted, engaging heavy-line style by Shane Hillman. The book is around 10,000 words plus another 70 pages of comics, for a total of 165 pages, making it on the long side of the books I've now read for this age group.

By the way, my fellow aspiring authors would be wise to check out how proactive author Hale is with his career -- he's also a trained storytelling performer who appears at dozens of conferences and schools each year, with a website, lifestyle and even wardrobe that is almost entirely kid-friendly. Just like with adult literature, this is a highly important part now of how successful an author is, of how willing they are to really go out there and hunt down as many promotional opportunities as they can, and chances to directly connect with their audience.

Series review: "Katie Kazoo," by Nancy Krulik

No Bones About It (2004)
Gotcha! Gotcha Back! (2006)
By Nancy Krulik
Grosset & Dunlap / Penguin

A friend has convinced me to try my hand this year at writing children's literature; but I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process simply by reading a large selection of titles that have been recommended to me. Nancy Krulik's "Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo" series was one of them, which I was specifically told is a great example of books perfect for third-graders; and indeed, the two books I read (Gotcha! Gotcha Back! and No Bones About It) seemed to feature many of the traits that I was told are important to include in literature for this age group, including a strong sense of humor, a quickly-paced but not too complicated storyline, a concentration on the ways that boys and girls interact at that age, lots of action and mystery, many scenes set in a school environment, and sentences that average around ten words. For parents, also know that Krulik designs each book to center on one or two common moral lessons she details at her website, and that all the titles feature a racially diverse cast of schoolmates and teachers. These are chapter-books with Americanized manga illustrations by professional duo "John & Wendy," each lasting a little under 10,000 words; 32 exist in the series as of January 2010, and a plethora of supplemental information is offered at the website for teachers and parents.