‘You can’t always pinpoint the moment everything changes. Most of the time it’s gradual, like grass growing or fog settling or your armpits starting to smell by mid afternoon.’ (p 223)
Serendipity
I found this book almost by accident. I was intrigued by reviews of a new novel, Finding Orion, by an American author I didn’t know, John David Anderson. I put in an order for it, hoping it just might be a discovery, but was disappointed and a little frustrated to learn that it won’t be published until later this year. As a kind of compensation ,I decided to try one of his earlier books, and what I came up with just happened to be Ms. Bixby’s Last Day. Well, talk about serendipity. I was looking for an exciting discovery and this title , actually from only as far back as 2016, turned out to be exactly that. A real gem. Had I but known it, I would have been devastated to miss out on a work of children’s literature such as this. It has a rare quality of being entertainingly accessible yet hugely enriching at the same time.
Laughter through tears
The story concerns three ‘fifth grade’ (10-11 year-old) boys and Ms. Bixby, a teacher they think of as being of a rare, very special kind.
‘The (ones) we simply call the Good Ones. The ones who make the torture otherwise known as school somewhat bearable. You know when you have one of the Good Ones because you find yourself actually paying attention in class, even if it’s not art class. They’re the teachers you actually want to go back and say hi to the next year. The ones you don’t want to disappoint. . . . Like Ms. B.’ (p 7)
When they learn that she has terminal cancer, and will soon have to leave the school, they set out to do everything they possibly can to make her last day a very special one. Now, this may sound either morbid or sentimental, or both. But believe me it is neither. Although it is both touching and sad in parts, thoughtful and, ultimately, quite deeply moving , it is overwhelming a very heart-warming and life-affirming book. More than anything else, it is very, very funny. It quite wonderfully mixes what I think of as a particularly American dry humour with elements of anarchic farce. Often, the boys’ behaviour is ever so well intentioned, yet naively childish. The author captures brilliantly, and very endearingly, their uniquely pre-adolescent combination of insightful intelligence and worldly inexperience - with hilarious results.
Complexity beneath simplicity
However, I found that there was even more about this book that left me feeling very excited indeed. The way it is written is also especially wonderful. To start with, the narrative unfolds through the interleaved perspectives of the three boys. Each had a very different personality, different needs and different ways of coping with life, and their three distinct voices are each caught most effectively. This adds enormous richness to both the content of the story and the nature of its telling. On top of this, the major part of the book’s action has much of the unity of time that characterises Classical Greek drama. That is to say, it happens in ‘real time’, over the course of a single day. However, within this , are narrative sections where the boys recount revealing incidents from their pasts. Yet, the author very cleverly uses tenses and voices to ensure that the whole narrative sequence remains perfectly clear for his young audience.
The result is that storyline, characters and relationships - all of them rich, complex and resonantly truthful - emerge and coalesce gradually in the course of reading. It is skilful writing, really very sophisticated in an authorial sense. Yet the book remains a hugely entertaining page-turner, an easy, comfortable read that engages from first page to last. This unusual combination makes it a quite superb, accessible introduction for young readers to complex narrative forms and devices more often characteristic of fiction intended for a much older audience. It is a real gift for those wishing to extend and develop children’s reading, without trying to force them into text inappropriate for their age and interest.
Books teach too
On top of this, of course, there is all that is to be learned from a book that deals with some of life’s very real and important issues in a sensitive and fully appropriate way. It is a story that I think will truly help children to cope with life, and encounters with death, not only at the time of reading, but quite possibly well into their futures.
And one final bonus. Whilst it is wonderful (and important) that so many current children’s books feature strong girls as principal characters, it is equally good to find here the clear promotion of boys who are caring and sensitive. Patriarchy harms many boys, as well as girls, and alternative role models to boys who are sports-playing, sword-wielding monster-bashers are to be warmly welcomed.
This is a very American book. It is centred in US Elementary School life and ‘small town’ culture. As such, it is a valuable window into childhood on the ‘other side of The Pond’ - its stark differences and its remarkable similarities. It is also somehow very American in its emotional openness; a freedom of expression that is all too easy for us to dismiss as sentimentality, but is actually an honesty we would perhaps do well to emulate more often.
This novel celebrates a ‘day in the life’. Its three protagonists seek with all their young hearts to make it a special day -and ultimately succeed. It is a Carpe Diem sort of book. It is a book about a last day, but emphatically not a lost day. Ms.Bixby’s last is not a day to be shunned, but one to be sought and caught and kept.
‘After all - you never forget the Good Ones.’ (p 300)
. . . teachers or days - or books.
Roll on Finding Orion. Meanwhile I must try to catch up with some other books from this fine author.
