Here in the Real World by Sara Pennypacker

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Cover: Jon Klassen

‘Here in the real world, bad things happen.’ (p 106)

Wow!

This is me, at the end of reading this book.

‘His heart had lifted right out of his chest, as if it had been reborn as a bird, and was now soaring somewhere near the top of the watchtower. . . And the view from there was terrific.’ (p 117)

Here (in the real world) is one of our finest contemporary novels for young readers. Think Holes; think The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas; think The Giver; think Goodnight Mister Tom; think Breadcrumbs. Sara Pennypacker’s is not like any of these books in the slightest, except in its stature, except in its importance within the canon of children’s literature, except in its potential to change the thinking, the understanding, the resolve of those who read it - and perhaps to change the world a little too.

‘I don’t think you should just take it when bad things happen. But I don’t want things to be magically what they’re not. I want them to be what they could be. And somebody has to want that, or nothing bad will ever get better.’ (p 223)

And if that sounds preachy then I have given the wrong impression. I have scarcely read a book with so much to say that is less preachy. It is simply what it is.

Simply Wow!

And what it is is simple. At least it is on the surface. 

I often admire books that do not patronise their young readers, but help them into the sophisticated narrative complexities that much of the finest literature has to offer: split storylines, varied viewpoints, time slips, or whatever. This book has none of these things. Its story starts at the beginning and runs through to its end. It is written in simple, generally direct sentences, with a good deal of realistic dialogue thrown in. It is constructed in simple, short chapters. It is directly narrated through detailed incident that shows you clearly what is happening, how its characters behave, what they are thinking. 

However, Sara Pennypacker’s simplicity is highly sophisticated and very clever indeed.  She can reveal and explore characters through a few perfectly chosen words and she crafts a storyline where every small, credible action and encounter pertinently develops themes that are at once intensely personal and profoundly universal. She renders small, apparently insignificant things, redolent with significance: the planting of papaya seeds in used snack cans; the catapulting of mud at the ruins of an abandoned church; the wearing of mirrored sunglasses. It is so cleverly, complexly simply, that I find it breathtaking. 

The ‘simple’ story involved two principal characters. Ware is a dreamer, an artist, apt to spend time in ‘a world of his own’.

Sometimes he wished he lived back in the Middle Ages. Things were a lot simpler then, anyway, especially if you were a knight. Knights had a rule book - their code of chivalry - that covered everything. . . If you were a knight you knew where you stood. Too often, Ware wasn’t even sure he was standing. Sometimes he felt as if he were wafting, in fact. A little drifty.’ (p 14)

He is the only child of highly extravert, social and capable patents, a sports fanatic of a father, and an organising planner of a mother.

‘His mother . . .operated from a clear code. . . “If you aren’t thinking three steps ahead,” she would say, “you’re already four steps behind.” The trouble was, Ware hadn’t the faintest clue how to unravel an advice-puzzle like that.’ (p 14)

Ware feels he is inadequate, a let down to them, not the son they really want. He thinks  he needs to become someone else to become ‘normal’. Thankfully, however,  there comes along  for him one hot summer of avoiding ‘ Recreation Camp’;  a piece of waste ground and a girl from the ‘’real world; an injured grandmother and an uncle who gives him a film camera. 

Jolene is the cynic, the pragmatist - largely. She is an embodiment of the injunction to ‘get real’. When Ware complains something isn’t fair, she repeatedly tells him that he isn’t in ‘magic fairness land’.  Yet she saves dandelions by transplanting them, insisting it is not right to kill them just because they grow in the wrong place. In fact she is more than a little obsessed with things not getting thrown away, not being trash. Turns out she has good reason. And the fact that her tragically difficult home life situation is explored more through implication that explanation, renders her not simply touching as a character, but deeply moving.

‘People aren’t things. You can throw things away. Usually you shouldn’t. But sometimes, things are trash. But people are never trash.’ (p 103)

Wow, American style!

The dialogue between there two young protagonists can be very funny indeed, in a dry American way. It is also sometimes very Harold Pinter, or even Samuel Becket, when they appear to be having a conversation, but each actually continue individual thought lines regardless of the other. 

The book has much to say about family and about friendship. More than this though, though, I liked Here in the Real World so much because it vindicates quiet, ‘antisocial’ , artistic boys. Nay, it celebrates them. And I joyously  welcome every word, every page, every chapter of it for doing so. As someone who, as a child, had little feeling for sport and feared being made to ‘join in’, as much as Ware does, as boy often happy with my own company, buried in a book, or simply dreaming and imagining, I too was often made to feel ‘not a real lad’. How I would have taken comfort and strength from Ware’s realisation that he did not need to try to become what others wanted him to be:

‘What I really want is for it to be okay that I’m not someone else.’ (p 252)

And, of course, Ware’s right to be himself is everybody’s right to be themselves.

Sure (as they say), the social context of this book is very American, and children over here will need just a little familiarity with the cultural language use, if they are to get what’s going on. But they almost certainly have this from watching The Simpsons anyway, so what’s the big deal?  

Wow with wings!

Over everything this is a book about what can and can’t be done, be achieved, in ‘the real world’, the world where bad things happen. It is not a sentimental book that implies ours is  ‘magic fairness land’ or that we can make it so. But it is a route map to what we can and should do. It is a story for our times, and for all times. It is the ultimate story of hope. The only hope we have. We all have to cling on to it, just as all our children should read this glorious book.

‘You’re right. (In the read world) bad stuff happens. But the real world is also all the stuff we do about the bad stuff. We’re the real world too.’ (p 282)

Note:

When you get that far, try listening to the final movement of Sibelius Symphony No 5 to accompany the final chapter of Here in the Real World. 

Annie Lumsden: The Girl from The Sea by David Almond

‘I looked into my mother’s eyes. What did I see there? The delight of memories or the delight of her imaginings?’ (p 36)

What it isn’t 

I do not usually review picture books. However, as David Almond is one of our most important (and brilliant) contemporary writers for young people, even the publication of a new small picture book from him is an event of considerable note. Even if this were a picture book. Which this isn’t.  Or small. Which it it isn’t. Or even entirely new. Which it also isn’t.

Annie Lumsden may be a comparatively short book, but it is certainly not a small one in anything other than physical size Nor is it really a picture book, despite being full of (wonderful) pictures. At least not, that is, if you think of a picture book as something primarily for young children. Annie Lumsden is really an illustrated short story, from a master of the short story. But it is not actually a new one. It was first published in 2007, as Half a Creature from the Sea, and then again, more prominently, in 2014, in the brilliant story collection that was given that same title.

However, we live in an age when recycling is rightly considered a very good thing. When something recycled ends up being even more splendid than the original, surely that has to be even better. Exactly such is the case here, because what started as an outstanding story is now a quite ravishingly lovely single volume, enormously enhanced by illustrations that are both delightful and poignant.

So let’s  just look at Annie Lumsden: The Girl from the Sea for what it is now, for what it is now is very special.

What it is

What we have enclosed between comparatively close covers is a ‘little’ book whose language is a masterclass in prose composition and whose content a rich multi-faceted exploration of life on the cusp between childhood and early adulthood. It is touching, insightful, humbling, lyrical, ethereal, mystical, baffling and enlightening. It is enigmatic; and its new  title captures that enigma perfectly. Annie Lumsden is the mythic, fantastical girl from the sea. Yet the girl from the sea is Annie Lumsden; her tale rooted in the place and people of the North East coast in such a down-to-earth way that it leaves you flabbergasted at how it can be all of  this at once. In other words it is so very David Almond. 

The story’s central figure is a young girl who, over its course, moves through that stage of growing about which David Almond often evokes with such sympathetic potency . Of course it then becomes about all cusps, all periods of change, all necessary, but sometimes difficult, growth. But it is about many other things too. It is about a single parent family, and all single parent families. It is about the power of love that accepts unconditionally. It is about place; the Northumbrian coast and the sea; about all coasts and all seas.

‘All seas flow into each other . . . and into us.’ (p 46)

It is about places where minor artists make tourist trinkets from pebbles and shells. It is about what we learn, and when we learn it, and how.

‘Things that’d seemed fixed and hard and hopeless started to shift. Words stopped being barnacles. Numbers were no longer limpets.’ (p 58).

More than anything, though, it is about tales; tales with the quiet resonances of the traditional, of selkies.

‘In the water I am truly as I am - Annie Lumsden, seal girl, fish girl, dolphin girl, the girl who cannot crow,’ (p 23)

It is about a thin line between reality and story, so that one segues into the other, and neither the reader nor Annie quite knows which is which, until realising that both are the truth. It is about being strange and being normal, and how both of those are the same too.

‘Sometimes the best way to understand how to be human is to understand our strangeness.’ (p 58)

All of this David Almond wraps in  language that continually seduces and enchants the reading ear. He has a poet’s sensitivity to language. Perhaps an orator’s too, for he knows the power of repetition,: of sounds, of words, of phrases. He also knows exactly the moment when enough is enough. No, it is not so much the language of the poet or the orator; it is the language of the world-weaver, the bard, the consummate storyteller. 

Mastery of mystery

How is it possible to condense so much in a book of only sixty-odd pages, many of which are shared with extensive illustrations? Well, by being David Almond. And I should not really be surprised. 

And, of course, the illustrated element is of integral importance, too. It would be quite wrong here to reserve all the praise for the writer. Beatrice Alemanga’s art work captures wonderfully many of the same telling ambiguities. Her pictures are childlike, yet sophisticated; dreamlike, yet starkly real, dusky-hued yet vivid, and, more than anything, movingly beautiful. Most importantly of all, words and pictures enhance each other and together conjure images of rich resonance.

Towards the end of the tale, one character offers an insight, and a challenge:

‘Sometimes the biggest mystery of all is how a mystery might help us solve another mystery. . . Pick the sense out of that!’ (p 58). 

David Almond and Beatrice Alemagna teach us how to pick out that sense, and allow us space to do it, each in our own mysterious, strange, individual, universal way.

Some very special books by Patricia Reilly Giff

A national treasure in The States 

In the world of American children’s literature Patricia Reilly Giff, born in 1935, and, as far as I know, still writing, is  something of an icon. Through the 1980s and well into the 90s she wrote over twenty titles in a hugely popular humorous  series about the young kids from Polk Street School. Countless American children have grown up with them. Yet it is since then, in her later years, that I believe she has become an outstanding and internationally important writer. More recently she has written a string of quite remarkably sensitive and beautifully crafted books for slightly older children, often with a setting in recent history,  including two Newberry Honor award winners (Lily’s Crossing, 1998, and Pictures of Hollis Woods, 2003), no mean achievement in the crowded US children’s market. Her latest novel, Genevieve’s War, was published as recently as 2017, again wining awards and accolades in the States.

As I think her books are far too little known and read over here, I have decided to intersperse my other reading by revisiting some titles of hers that I know and love, as well as exploring some new ones. I hope to add further reviews to this blog post as I finish them. 

Pictures of Hollis Woods

This is a ‘classic classic’ of American children’s literature. Think The Great Gilly Hopkins (Katherine Paterson) or The Pinballs (Betsy Byars)*. In fact there are a good number of books from both sides of the Atlantic about children  in care who are shuttled from one unsuccessful ‘placement’ to another. However, although this novel repeats that basic scenario, it is not so much the story itself that is so special here. Although it is painful, touching and ultimately heartwarming; it is the way that this particular example it is told, or rather the way it is written, that makes it so very special. Take the basic storyline away from the writing and it might even be considered sentimental. Yet the writing lifts it to a totally different level. Patricia Reilly Giff’s unobtrusive command of her medium is masterly. 

For starters, her young eponymous protagonist is a talented artist. Hollis sees, explores, discovers and, perhaps especially, remembers her world through the pictures she draws. This wonderful writer help us to see those pictures vividly too, and, through them, takes us not only into her world but inside the thought and, indeed, the psyche, of Hollis Woods herself. She clearly ‘gets’ children, in the deepest way, and Hollis lives through her - and, consequently, in us. 

And then this story is a quite wonderful example of a two stranded narrative. Intimately interleaved storylines recount Hollis’s present situation even as she frequently recalls an unexplained past. Constantly switching the reader’s piqued curiosity between ‘What will happen?’ and’What  did happen?’ makes for compulsive page-turning  and the result is heart-wrenching where it could have been maudlin. 

Although never difficult or obscure, Patricia Reilly Giff doesn’t patronise her young audience in any way. She leaves her readers to discover Hollis for themselves, and in doing so provides the most telling of opportunities for empathy. Whilst I would never dream of trying to compel a child to read a particular book, this is one of those titles that I desperately hope every child might discover at some time in their growing lives. It is a book about a universal yearning to belong and any reader will be hugely the richer for it. 

Eleven 

Cover: Shane Rebenschield

Here, from just over ten years ago, is another book that showcases Patricia Reilly Giff at the height of her long career as a children’s writer.

 

A boy is approaching his eleventh birthday.

There is a model ship and a memory of a real ship, each with two masts standing  tall like the number eleven.

The boy can’t read, but he has an affinity to wood, and to making with wood, shared  by a loving grandfather.

There is a  girl who can read, but who uses it as an escape from a life forever moving from one place to another.

The boy had questions about who he is, who his parents are?

He has dreams that might be memories; he remembers a large and dismal house with eleven over the door.

There are clues  and mysteries; frustrations and unexpected help.

There is the building of a model castle.

And the building of more besides.

 

And through all, the number eleven is a recurring theme, beautifully pointed by the writer in brief, almost poetic interludes between chapters. It is skilful work from a skilful writer in whom both storytelling and language have been honed over a lifetime of writing experience.

 

This is a  gentle book. There is little excitement as such, but plenty of intrigue to keep the pages turning. There is also a deep, and sensitive exploration of character and relationships, of friendship, where friendship is rare and special, and of love and family, found beyond the common nuclear arrangement. It is a book about building and discovering; discovering, too, that what you are looking for is sometimes to be found right where you are. It is a book about reading and the importance of reading. But it is also a book that does not condemn to failure, that offers ways forward with loving support. Most of all, perhaps it is a kind and caring book, the sort of book that may help our world, or at least our part in it, to be more kind and caring too.

*Both, incidentally, still very well worth seeking out for anyone who doesn’t know them.

Orphans of the Tide by Struan Murray

Illustrations: Manuel Šumberac

Time and tide

I have been late to catch this particular tide, but am highly relieved not to have missed it altogether. I was aware of a very positive buzz about the book on social media and, now I have read it for myself, I can quite see why.

This is a novel with a level of originality relatively rare in a children’s debut. It oozes quality. The vivid world Struan Murray creates centres on an isolated island city, the hierarchical nature of whose society is reflected in the physical layout of its conical structure. Much of life there is dominated  by fear of a powerful supernatural ‘Enemy’ and its potential manifestation in  a  human ‘Vessel’. Supposedly protected by an autocratic elite of ‘Inqisitors’, life there has many dark, disturbing aspects. The obsession of those in power is a version of witch hunt that echoes  many regrettable  periods of our own history, dominated by religious, or pseudo-religious persecution of the innocent and driven by prejudice masquerading as protection. The post-apocalyptic implications of the setting, which could easily be post global warming, add further to disquieting  contemporary resonance.  The whole amounts to a creation of chilling imagination, backgrounding a story of consequently visceral excitement.

High tide

This narrative is developed through a cast of fascinating and highly engaging characters, with a feisty girl protagonist in orphaned ‘inventor’, Ellie. complemented by her gentler sidekick friend, Anna. However, boys are not neglected either. The mysterious ‘Seth,’, pulled by Ellie from the body of a stranded whale, is soon in need of her help when he is accused of being The Vessel and condemned to death by burning. He is an intriguingly enigmatic character, who may not actually want Ellie’s help an much as she is prepared to risk her own life to give it. There is also Finn, a young boy keen to become Ellie’s ally, but to whom she has an initially unexplained antipathy. Indeed many unanswered question emerge as this story develops and quickly give it compelling impetus. Many of the adult characters are ambivalent in motivation too, only adding further to the narrative drive. In fact, the story develops so strongly and  so much is not what it initially seems, that only rarely recently have I felt so involved in wanting to press forward with  a children’s book. The plotting is masterly and every chapter brings new questions matched by edge-of-the-seat action and excitement.

Moreover, a cleverly interleaved narrative gradually reveals, to both reader and characters,  a historical thread concerning a previous incarnation of The Enemy in a human Vessel. As the two story strands entangle the whole is precipitated into something that would approach a storytelling masterclass, if  the reader were not  too carried along in the moment of the narrative to appreciate the underlying skill of its construction.

Manuel Šumberac’s whole page greyscale illustrations also contribute strongly to the conjuring of this disturbing world.

It would be very wrong to reveal anything of the shocking denouements of the story, beyond saying that the reader will end up holding their metaphorical breath to the very end. However, this is no facile adventure. It is packed with things to think about as well as action to thrill over. Whilst it is never didactic, it is probing, provoking and challenging. This is no territory  for the faint hearted reader. 

Turning tide 

I was enormously impressed too by Struan Murray’s command of English prose. As a former teacher, this only adds to the strength of my recommendation. It is not that young readers will necessarily be consciously aware of the unobtrusively skilful quality of his language use, but they will nevertheless assimilate it as they read. For them to be exposed to such models is enormously beneficial, perhaps particularly in this age of truncated and abbreviated digital communication. When this is in the context of such a motivating and engaging  read, it is a particular asset.

0rphans of the Tide is not a book for the youngest readers; it will perhaps be best suited to older children and younger teens. However, I am sure any who enjoyed Frances Hardinge’s equally wonderful Deeplight* will revel in this too (or vice versa). Despite each of these works being distinctly its own book, there are many most interesting points of comparison between them.

The great news for us all is that a sequel from Struan Murray is due in March next year. I can’t see myself being so tardy in riding the next tide.

*See my review from December 2019

Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly

Cover illustration: Isabel Roxas 

Too gold to miss

In 2018, Hello, Universe won the Newbury Medal in the USA, the close equivalent of our Carnegie Medal. Happily, it has recently been published here in the UK by Piccadilly Press.

It is yet another example of the stunningly high quality of the best of contemporary American children’s literature, and might well be a good place to start for any young readers (or their teachers) who have not yet ventured so far afield. It is a reading journey that will enrich experience enormously and reap manifold rewards. But whether or not you have already made such an  overall discovery, this is a treasure of a book and not to be missed. It has an outward simplicity and easy, entertaining charm, yet communicates with considerable depth, both intellectually and emotionally. Although it wears its authorial skill lightly, and is ideally pitched for its young readership, it is a masterclass in skilfully sophisticated storytelling. It opens some of the glorious potential of quality fiction, at the same time as entertaining hugely.  Moreover, it carries many messages about human worth and potential that are vital to the world in which its readers are growing. It is a book that may just help them, and  the world itself, to be better.

Wonderfully diverse

One of many things that this author does supremely well is to represent diversity through the young characters of her book. The story is told through the voices of four children, each very different in background, but all living in close proximity within the multicultural society of the USA. 

Virgil is of Filipino heritage and his story is replete with the folklore of those islands, mostly passed on to him by his beloved Grandmother, his Lola. Further, he suffers from being a quiet, shy, introverted boy in a loud, brash, extrovert family. He is often called Turtle by his mother, as a joking reference to his need to ‘come out of his shell’. It is not a implication he particularly likes, and in his heart of hearts he is tempted to think that, as with an actual  turtle, his shell is perhaps an integral part of who he is.

Kaori is Japanese in ancestry although second generation American in reality. She likes to think of herself as having inheritated the mysticism of the orient and to be something of a psychic. However Erin Entrada Kelly’s implicit messages of  understanding and inclusion are not so much about awareness of particular backgrounds or cultures, but about the understanding that every heritage has richness and value to offer as a piece in wonderful jigsaw that is humanity.

Chet is a bully from a family that appears to embody something of the extreme right wing conservatism.

Perhaps most pertinent of all, though, the other principal character, Valencia, is deaf. I know of relatively few children’s books that so sensitively convey some of the pertinent issues that affect children with hearing loss I am sure readers who are also deaf will delight in finding themselves prominently portrayed, as so rarely happens, in a mainstream book. Hearing children too, though, will learn a very great deal about how they need to behave to best help those who can’t hear. Even more importantly, Valencia is a strong, clever, highly articulate character. Her positive image is an salutary lesson to any inclined to see deafness as a disability rather than as a fully surmountable disadvantage.

A quartet of voices

Yet this book is not some sort of polemic on intolerance. Its many positive and important messages are fully embedded within a totally engaging story. And it is a story quite wonderfully told. Its themes and its style complement each other perfectly and are equally integral to its endearing (and I suspect enduring) appeal.

Each of the voices is beautifully evoked and takes us right inside the thoughts and feelings of the very particular child to whom it belongs, evoking very  effecting empathy. These four narrative accounts weave and interplay through the book like the instruments of a string quartet. Although the characters are sometimes eccentric and zany, and often amusing too, they are very much grounded in childhood truth. We are even led to a degree of understanding for bully Chet’s behaviour, even whilst not approving it. The story is very much about the way the lives and actions of these four different children move ever closer together over a few hours of their lives, and that is just what happens in the telling of that story too. Whether it is fate or coincidence that brings them together is one of the fascination questions posed by this fascinating book. Either way though, that conjunction results in hugely important growth for  both the characters themselves and for the reader. 

When the present is timely

Narration in the first person present tense can be very effective in the hands of a skilful writer. However, I have to admit to finding it rather tiresome that it has become so ubiquitous in current children’s fiction. Especially so, where it appears to have no real literary justification but to be emplotpyed solely in the cause of trendiness. However these reservations decidedly do not apply to this author. She uses the present tense for only one of her four narrative voices, thus creating distinction and variety whilst avoiding monotony or restriction of viewpoint. Further, the voice she chooses for the present is that of deaf Valencia, where it not only emphasises her very particular perception of the world, but also gives her feisty attitude a powerful immediacy. It is most cleverly done. 

An interesting comparison

Surprisingly, there were several times whilst reading this book when I was put in mind of this year’s UK CLIP Carnegie medal winning novel, Anthony McGowan’s stunning Lark. I say surprisingly because the two books are in many respects completely different. Hello, Universe is very much a children’s (MG) novel, with the sort of cutely smart kids that always seem to me distinctly American. Don’t get me wrong, Erin Kerry’s  are vivid, convincing protagonists, but they  are nevertheless distant cousins of Charles M Schultz’s Peanuts characters, somehow capturing something of the essence of American (and maybe universal) childhood. They dress a good deal of human truth in light, bright clothing. Lark, by contrast, is a book for slightly older readers, set in the gritty realism of the British north country, offering a short tale that is is harshly demanding emotionally, even if not without its own beauty.

Yet the two books each tell superficially simple stories developed around a central incident where the principal protagonist in in fear of his life and in desperate need of rescue Nicky in Lark falls down a rocky ravine; Virgil in Hello, Universe finds himself trapped at the bottom of a disused well. Even more though than this narrative parallel, I think, it is the fact that both books are fundamentally about character and relationships, and draw their potency from the way that, through the unfolding of a few hours of story, the  reader learns more about the protagonists at the same time as those protagonist learn more about themselves. Notwithstanding the warm charm of one and the raw emotion of the other, these are each in their own way books that show young readers the power of literature to grow understanding of others - and of themselves.

And now . . .

Another of this authors most popular titles, Lalani of the Distant Sea, has also been published in the UK in a fairly recent Piccadilly Press paperback. I now anticipate reading it with excitement.