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Dean Schneider

Children's & YA

Making stone come to life

Review by Dean Schneider

William Edmondson (1874-1951), the son of freed slaves, never attended school and never learned to read and write, yet he became one of the great sculptors of our time. His works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Cheekwood Museum of Art in his native Nashville.

Edmondson always said he got his inspiration directly from God, so he set about carving old pieces of limestone, at first using only an old railroad spike, a chisel and a file. And from stone came solid, stocky, ancient-looking figures of the everyday, religious and heroic: porch ladies, a girl thinking, a rabbit, an owl, Adam and Eve, Jack Johnson and Eleanor Roosevelt. Poet Elizabeth Spires, in this beautifully made volume combining superb archival photographs by Edward Weston and Louise Dahl-Wolfe and her own 23 elegant poems, offers a celebration of an artist and his creations. For readers young and old who may not know Edmondson’s work, this volume will serve as a gorgeous introduction.

Edmondson pulled characters from stone, and Spires puts words into their mouths. The rabbit sculpture says, “He reached in his fingers, / caught hold of my ears, / and drew me right out / of that chunk of limestone!” And the narrator in “Girl Thinking” says, “Make me a girl, I wished / A girl with a space of quiet around her, / a girl with time to dream her dreams. / And he did. He did!”

Spires has Adam and Eve comment on their place in Edmondson’s yard, cluttered with sculptures, unused limestone and tangles of grass and weeds. “It’s a different kind of Eden, / arms thrown open to Creation.” And that’s the spirit of Edmondson’s work; he carved all sorts: “Preachers and schoolteachers, / shady and upstanding ladies, / and creatures you wouldn’t believe, / some humble, some proud, / some quiet, some loud, / everyone just being themselves.”

Spires, the author of such fine children’s books as The Mouse of Amherst and I Am Arachne: Fifteen Greek and Roman Myths, has crafted a memorable tribute to an important artist through words dexterously pulled from stone.

Dean Schneider is a teacher in Nashville.

William Edmondson (1874-1951), the son of freed slaves, never attended school and never learned to read and write, yet he became one of the great sculptors of our time. His works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian, the Philadelphia […]
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Accepting the unknowable

Review by Dean Schneider

In Our Town, Jane Crofut receives a letter addressed: “Jane Crofut; the Crofut Farm; Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God.” It’s an effective way to situate little Grover’s Corners in the larger scheme of things. Artist Dave McKean does something similar in Slog’s Dad, his striking new collaboration with writer David Almond, but McKean’s images move in reverse, opening the book in the farthest reaches of space, where just stars and blackness abound. Then the Earth, blue-green and marble-sized, appears. Next, we see a larger Earth, then a sketchy map of Western Europe and England, finally zooming in to a town, a town square and a man on a bench near Myer’s butcher shop. Davie and Slog see the man, and Slog recognizes him: It’s his dad. But Davie protests, “Slogger, man. Your dad’s dead.”

Slog knows that, of course, but he’s still convinced the man is his dad, returned in the spring as he said he would. Slog’s dad, Joe Mickley, was a “daft and canny soul,” whose decline began with a black spot, as in Treasure Island, except Joe’s black spot was on his toe, the first signs of a disease that ate away at his body. It was “like living in a horror picture,” said Slog, as the doctors first removed a toe, then the foot, the legs, and finally Joe died and disappeared altogether.

Is the man on the bench really Slog’s father? Davie doubts, Slog believes, and the graphic novel becomes a meditation on grieving and belief. Mystery is always at the heart of Almond’s work. In Skellig (1998), Mina says, as Slog might here, “We can’t know. Sometimes we just have to accept there are things we can’t know. . . . We have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine.”

As in the previous Almond-McKean collaboration, The Savage (2008), the ink and Photoshop illustrations and the poetic prose work together to leave readers wondering, imagining and, perhaps, believing.

In Our Town, Jane Crofut receives a letter addressed: “Jane Crofut; the Crofut Farm; Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God.” It’s an effective way to situate little Grover’s Corners in the larger scheme of […]
YA FictionYA

A survivor’s compelling story

Review by Dean Schneider

In this National Book Award finalist, 13-year-old Lakshmi lives in a hut, perched on a mountainside in the Himalayas. She loves the stunning beauty of the mountain's long purple shadows, the tallow pumpkin blossoms that close in the evening as the white jasmine open. On nights when the moon is full, the hillside is bathed in a magical white light, the glow of the perpetual snows that blanket the mountaintops.

This beauty, however, contrasts with the ugliness of Lakshmi's fate as a young woman in that world. Children's lives are precarious, but girls' lives are expendable. Lakshmi's lazy stepfather does little work and spends his days gambling away money playing cards at the tea shop. The family is unprepared when monsoon rains come and wash away any hope of good crops and a better future. Lakshmi finds herself in Calcutta in the Happiness House, where she is forced into prostitution. At first, she believes she can do this despicable work and pay off her debt and return home, only to realize later that believing is stupidity, hope an affliction.

In Patricia McCormick's beautifully crafted free verse novel, each poem is a hotline to the mind and voice of Lakshmi, and accumulations of detail delineate her circumstances and her inclination toward hope. Readers might see in her the fate of other survivors. When she looks in the mirror and sees a corpse, she might remind readers of Elie Wiesel at the end of Night, witnessing the same reflection after his time in concentration camps. When Lakshmi is told, If they find out you can read and write, they will think you are planning to escape, the story of Frederick Douglass learning to read might come to mind. And when she realizes she will always be in debt, always cheated out of her earnings, hers is a sharecropper's experience, her own body the bartered crop.

When Lakshkmi asks her mother, Why must women suffer so? her mother replies, Simply to endure is to triumph, a resounding reminder of survivors of slavery and genocide in cities all over the world. Lakshmi's story of survival is told in poetry that will reach right into her readers' souls.

 

Dean Schneider teaches middle school English.

In this National Book Award finalist, 13-year-old Lakshmi lives in a hut, perched on a mountainside in the Himalayas. She loves the stunning beauty of the mountain's long purple shadows, the tallow pumpkin blossoms that close in the evening as the white jasmine open. On nights when the moon is full, the hillside is bathed […]
YA FictionYA

Who shot Casey Carmody?

Review by Dean Schneider

A pistol shot, a teenage girl falling from an abandoned pier, a police interrogation, Coast Guard searches. Casey Carmody is missing. Was she shot? Is she playing a practical joke? Where is her body? Seventeen-year-old Kurt Carmody, Casey’s older brother, tells the police he heard Casey laugh after the sound of the gunshot, but testimonies differ and no one heard a splash. As Captain Lutz says, We’ve got no body, no blood, and a whole lot of people claiming to have heard a pistol shot from a gun no one claimed to fire. The teens at the scene were the Mystic Marvels, residents of Mystic Island, a small beach community on an island barely wide enough to be inhabitable. These high school students are not too bad, not too good, not too smart, not too dumb, not too rich, not too poor, just Ômarvy around,’ as Casey would say. It seems as if the group is relatively inclusive, but it becomes apparent during the interrogation that this may be a witch hunt, a group’s attempt to go after an outsider. The witchy gossip and jealousies conspire against the reputation of Stacy Kearney, the new girl at school. Her too-sure-of-herself personality is just the kind that a coven of teenagers would like to bring down. And her family connections to old money in the town don’t help. The conformist, group-minded Mystic Marvels don’t marvel at Stacy; she is someone they love to hate. And it was Stacy who brought the gun to the party on the pier. What was the sense in that? Add in the dynamics of girlfriends and boyfriends, ex-boyfriends and the vagaries of group behavior in the dark, and this pretty girl with a tenuous connection to the group is in trouble. As the morality play comes to a dismal yet realistic conclusion, Kurt becomes a narrator readers will like, a player who knows the group and ultimately rejects it. Carol Plum-Ucci’s important young adult novel about conformity to groups is a good match with her Printz Honor-winning The Body of Christopher Creed.

A pistol shot, a teenage girl falling from an abandoned pier, a police interrogation, Coast Guard searches. Casey Carmody is missing. Was she shot? Is she playing a practical joke? Where is her body? Seventeen-year-old Kurt Carmody, Casey’s older brother, tells the police he heard Casey laugh after the sound of the gunshot, but testimonies […]
YA FictionYA

Reinventing life, after the apocalypse

Review by Dean Schneider

"I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald’s would still be open," 16-year-old Miranda says when her life suddenly takes a turn for the worse. The problems begin when a larger-than-expected asteroid hits the moon and sends it out of orbit. Tsunamis ensue, drowning Cape Cod and coastal cities, and washing the Statue of Liberty out to sea. Power goes out, gas prices go up, and food becomes scarce. Within two weeks, it’s hard to remember what normal was clocks with the correct time, lights that work, access to the Internet. The death toll is incalculable along the coasts, and inland, people begin dying when food gets scarce, wells run dry and a flu epidemic hits.

Susan Beth Pfeffer opens this gripping novel with a teenager’s everyday concerns: homework, tests and who’s going out with whom, and darn if a lunar disaster doesn’t ruin everything. Life gets gray and dingy, and even the snow isn’t quite white. As time goes on, families must decide which family member must eat more and stay strong so someone will be able take care of the others as they weaken. So, what do you do when your world is dying? You reinvent the world. Miranda’s mother makes all three of her children study something, even if there is no school anymore. They chop their own wood, melt snow for water, play Scrabble and even sing Christmas carols with their remaining neighbors. Readers will witness the incipient civilization that Miranda’s family creates for itself.

In this dying world, Miranda develops a series of philosophies of life to cope with the harsh times. Early on, it’s Why feel sorry for myself today when tomorrow’s bound to be worse. Later, it’s Don’t let me be the last one to die. But by the end of the novel, having survived so much, Miranda says, [T]oday isn’t a day to worry about the future. Whatever will happen will happen. Today is a day to celebrate. Though this is a powerful story about a freak lunar event and its consequences, it’s the spirit of appreciating day-to-day life that will resonate with readers.

Dean Schneider teaches English at Ensworth School in Nashville.

 

"I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald’s would still be open," 16-year-old Miranda says when her life suddenly takes a turn for the worse. The problems begin when a larger-than-expected asteroid hits the moon and sends it out of orbit. Tsunamis ensue, drowning Cape Cod and coastal cities, […]
YA FictionYA

Tangled in fate’s web

Review by Dean Schneider

David Case was doomed. Everywhere he looked he saw threats: plane crashes, car crashes, bird flu, serial killers, nuclear waste, alien invasions. The dark malevolence of it weighed on him and wrapped itself around him. This preoccupation with impending tragedy started when he caught his little brother about to leap out the window, attempting flight. Had David been two seconds slower to the rescue, little Charlie would be dead.

Hence, David's new preoccupation with Fate. What do you do when Fate has it in for you? If you're David, you change your name and maybe Fate won't find you. So David Case becomes the more tentatively named Justin Case. Nothing bad can happen to him because he really doesn't even exist. Little does he know that Fate is a character in the novel Just in Case, too, appearing every now and then in short, bold-faced chapters, just to remind us of its existence. In case we forget. Just in case.

Meg Rosoff won the 2005 Michael L. Printz Award for young adult literature for her first novel, How I Live Now, the story of a 15-year-old girl who goes to live with relatives in England, only to find herself caught up in the outbreak of the third world war. The first-person voice she created was perfect for putting readers right in the head of her self-absorbed teenager. David Case is self-absorbed, too, but the third-person voice here provides more space for the working out of this rich tale not just David's story or Justin's story, but Fate's, too.

In escaping Fate, Justin attaches himself to a band of quirky characters who will help him move beyond his self-absorption into the fold of family and friends. But that's how David's tale is resolved. Before he gets there is the heart of the book, a quest of sorts, including an invisible dog, a first sexual encounter, a plane crashing into the airport right where Justin had been standing moments before, and an almost fatal disease. Fate plays a particularly rough game of cat and mouse with David, whose mouse's tale is notable for electric prose, ruminations about life, death and fate, and characters who are larger than life, larger than fate.

Dean Schneider is an English teacher in Nashville.

David Case was doomed. Everywhere he looked he saw threats: plane crashes, car crashes, bird flu, serial killers, nuclear waste, alien invasions. The dark malevolence of it weighed on him and wrapped itself around him. This preoccupation with impending tragedy started when he caught his little brother about to leap out the window, attempting flight. […]
YA FictionYA

A society where safety comes first

Review by Dean Schneider

In the late 21st century in the USSA United Safer States of America safety is paramount. Citizens of the USSA live longer than in any other country, but 24 percent of all adults are in prison, and the economy depends on their labor. McDonald’s Rehabilitation and Manufacturing is the largest employer in the nation, running prison farms, factories and restaurants.

Sixteen-year-old Bo Marsten has been at odds with this society, and now he is in trouble with the three-strikes-and-you’re-out spirit of the times. He threw a pencil in class, called someone a name and shoved a fellow student in the hallway, all very unsafe behaviors. This in a society where a person can be sent away for dropping an apricot if someone slips on it, where everyone must wear walking helmets, where walls are padded and freeways automated. Now Bo has been falsely accused of causing a rash afflicting students at his school. He is arrested and sent to work in a pizza factory in the middle of Canada, now an annexed property of the USSA after the Diplomatic Wars of 2055.

Escape seems impossible, as vicious polar bears roam outside the gates and a sadistic warden rules within. But escape does come with the help of a computer-generated artificial intelligence named Bork, and Bo journeys across 26 miles of no man’s land to return home.

In his latest novel, National Book Award-winning author Pete Hautman has created a fascinating satire of where society’s current trends might lead us. The humor is often coarse, with plenty of farting, faces compared to dog anuses and the like. But there is friendship in the form of an overweight cellmate, incarcerated for eating too much and sentenced to lose 200 pounds, and a family relationship that becomes important, as Bo comes to appreciate his grandfather’s criticism of the modern times and the glory of his beer-drinking, less safe past. This fast-paced, plot-driven satire will appeal to young teenagers who enjoy the what if? speculations of futuristic novels. Dean Schneider teaches middle school English in Nashville.

In the late 21st century in the USSA United Safer States of America safety is paramount. Citizens of the USSA live longer than in any other country, but 24 percent of all adults are in prison, and the economy depends on their labor. McDonald’s Rehabilitation and Manufacturing is the largest employer in the nation, running […]
YA NonfictionYA

A real-life survival story

Review by Dean Schneider

This true tale of a whaling disaster averted begins in late spring 1871, when 1,219 men, women and children sailed in 39 whaling ships to the Arctic in pursuit of the bowhead whale. Later, when Eskimos warned them that winter was already settling in, only seven ships left to avoid being trapped in the ice. Captains of the other ships would not abandon the rich whaling grounds. How could they ever explain such a retreat to the owners of their vessels? How could they take advice from these people they viewed as so primitive and childlike? But sure enough, the remaining 32 ships became trapped. After an agonizing decision to abandon their ships, it took a heroic 80-mile journey in 200 open boats down a channel, facing extreme temperatures, snow, hail and driving winds to reach the seven ships they hoped were waiting for them. How many could survive such an ordeal, inevitable though it was? As it turned out, all survived, making this one of the great survival stories of all time, a tale of success against the odds, and Martin W. Sandler relates it with all the vigor and passion his subject demands. The narrative opens with a superb discussion of whaling itself. The dangers whalers faced from temperatures, fog, winds and ice are laid out, followed by an answer to the logical question: why did so many young men sign on if the dangers were so great? Lured by employment, adventure and glory, knowing they were entering one of the most dangerous jobs possible, the men could go home with tales to tell, if they ever made it home. This attractive volume is nicely embellished with an abundance of paintings, lithographs, photographs and maps. Excerpts from whalers’ songs add to the fun, and the many sidebars add background information about whales, women at sea, whalers of color, harpoons and New Bedford. The bibliography and glossary are useful, and Sandler’s clear, lively writing makes the adventure palpable. Trapped in Ice! is a fine companion to other excellent true tales of the sea, such as Jennifer Armstrong’s Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World and Walter Dean Myers’ Antarctica. Dean Schneider is a teacher in Nashville.

This true tale of a whaling disaster averted begins in late spring 1871, when 1,219 men, women and children sailed in 39 whaling ships to the Arctic in pursuit of the bowhead whale. Later, when Eskimos warned them that winter was already settling in, only seven ships left to avoid being trapped in the ice. […]
YA FictionYA

An American teen in Poland

Review by Dean Schneider

It’s 1978, and life is good for high school senior Eva Lott. She is on the varsity swim team, she’s dating the best-looking guy in the class, and she’s comfortable in her daily existence as a cute, popular girl about to graduate. Life in her Chicago suburb is comfortable, and since her mother’s death from cancer, Eva has learned to play it safe, living in the here and now. But when her father, Professor Lott, tells her they are moving to Poland to be part of the underground movement there, Eva is stunned. How can he do this to her? You can finish high school through correspondence and still make Northwestern next fall, he says, but that’s awfully far into the future for Eva.

The novel then alternates between the stories of Eva and her new friend, Tomek. Eva wants the security of her comfortable life in America. She is horrified not to have seen meat, popcorn or ice cream in any stores during her first days in Poland. She is trapped in this place with no friends, no phone, no TV, and nothing to eat. Eva understands little in Poland; in fact, she thinks Polish words sound more like sneezes than real words.

Tomek, a tall, handsome Polish boy, is impatient to study poetry and pass his exams at the university, but he is involved with the underground and now has to baby-sit this spoiled American girl with too many possessions. Between the two stands Professor Lott, with his determination to do something worthwhile with his life, to make a difference. One day you’ll be proud to say you played a part in Polish independence, he tells Eva. The alternating chapters format is effective in differentiating the points of view and showing the developing relationship between Eva and Tomek. Readers get to watch as a teenaged American girl is yanked out of her comfort zone and put in an utterly foreign place where she must learn to survive; they will be cheered to see her come into her own and thrive. Eva Underground is a fine coming-of-age novel. Dean Schneider is an English teacher in Nashville.

It’s 1978, and life is good for high school senior Eva Lott. She is on the varsity swim team, she’s dating the best-looking guy in the class, and she’s comfortable in her daily existence as a cute, popular girl about to graduate. Life in her Chicago suburb is comfortable, and since her mother’s death from […]
YA FictionYA

No easy answers

Review by Dean Schneider

Mark Warren has what seems to be an enviable life. He has a good family, he’s the star pitcher of his high school baseball team, and he has a new girlfriend named Diane. But then Dad gets a phone call: He sits to tell us/words tossed out like fly balls/ tumor cancer spread. Mark’s world changes at that moment when his father finds out that his pancreatic cancer has spread. And yet, so much doesn’t seem to be any different. I think there’s some-/thing wrong with my/eyes everything looks/the same …/Don’t they know/everything is changed?/That I’ll never be the same? Mark comes to understand there’s no road map for death and says, I am terrified/of the time/when I touch him/and he won’t touch me/back. Like most novels in verse, Ann Turner’s Hard Hit is best read in one big gulp to absorb the rhythms of the verse and the subtleties of Mark’s coming to terms with the impending loss of a beloved father. The images are fresh and immediate. Mark and his friend Eddie go out for target practice, shooting at cans: click the trigger, gun kicks/each one/high /Sick!/Tumor!Growing! The simple, elemental lines of Turner’s free verse novel are the perfect match for the stark subject matter the questioning, the wonder, the loneliness. There are no easy answers, no comfortable philosophizing, just a teenaged boy living his life as his father is losing his. If there is any help for Mark, it is in the web of his life that goes on: his sister and mother, Diane, Eddie, school, baseball, memories of his Dad in the garden working the earth, Dad with the telescope saying, We’re made from stars. And the wrenching scene: Dad?/I pitched a no-hitter! /The damnedest thing, he opened/his eyes and said, Good boy,/Marky, you always were a good boy! As in her Learning to Swim, Turner has fashioned a gem of a novel about a tough subject. Her transcendent poetry deals with matters of life and death, family and friends, the earth and the stars.

Mark Warren has what seems to be an enviable life. He has a good family, he’s the star pitcher of his high school baseball team, and he has a new girlfriend named Diane. But then Dad gets a phone call: He sits to tell us/words tossed out like fly balls/ tumor cancer spread. Mark’s world […]
YA FictionYA

More than monkey business

Review by Dean Schneider

Drugstore owner Frank Robinson wants to bring Dayton, Tennessee, back to life. Since Cumberland Coal and Iron shut down its blast furnace, business is hurting and the population is declining. Robinson’s solution? Publicity! Let the outside world know the town’s charms. So, when the ACLU seeks a teacher willing to test a law that bans the teaching of evolution, Robinson thinks of John Scopes, a young football and basketball coach who taught the chapter on evolution when he was a substitute teacher in science class. Complicating matters is 15-year-old Frances Robinson, who has a crush on Scopes and finds herself torn between loyalty to her father and her love for Johnny. She is forced to grow up and see the world in new ways that summer.

As the 1925 trial of the century shapes up, Dayton does, indeed, attract publicity. It becomes the laughingstock of the entire nation. Readers who know the story through Inherit the Wind will enjoy Ronald Kidd’s retelling in Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial. Kidd does a fabulous job of recreating the sense of a small Tennessee town taking on more than it can handle. When William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow hash out evolution versus science, with H.L. Mencken reporting for the national papers, Judge Raulston decides to limit the case to a simple matter of whether Scopes did indeed teach evolution. All of the fiery rhetoric comes to naught when Scopes is found guilty after nine minutes of jury deliberation and fined $100.

In the chaos of a little town inundated by the outside world and a young girl in love with a man on trial, all lives are changed.

Readers will find inevitable similarities to To Kill A Mockingbird in this superb historical novel, which has a strong sense of place, well-developed characters and clearly related ideas. Dean Schneider is a teacher in Nashville.

Drugstore owner Frank Robinson wants to bring Dayton, Tennessee, back to life. Since Cumberland Coal and Iron shut down its blast furnace, business is hurting and the population is declining. Robinson’s solution? Publicity! Let the outside world know the town’s charms. So, when the ACLU seeks a teacher willing to test a law that bans […]
YA FictionYA

Facing an upspoken challenge

Review by Dean Schneider

In Valerie Hobbs’ new novel, Defiance, we are introduced to two people from different worlds. Pearl is 94, born before television or computers or cell phones. She milks cows, grows tomatoes and writes poetry. She grew up in a time when reading was a pleasure and reading together could be romantic. But now she is going blind, though her milky blue eyes still see much in her new friend. Toby is 11, a skinny, bald boy with eyes too big for his face. He watches television, surfs the Web and gets scanned by magnetic resonance imaging. Toby has cancer. Yet, Toby muses, None of these differences mattered, they were friends just the same. Toby meets Pearl while spending time at a cabin in the country with his mom. Out riding his bike one day, he sees a crazy, witchy woman screaming at the crows threatening her garden. Toby ends up helping her around the house learning to milk Blossom the cow, tend her garden and read poetry. Both have given up on life in some way, and the friendship they share affects them deeply. Toby has noticed that a lump has recurred, but so horrifying were his treatments that he vows not to go through them again, knowing his life is at stake. Pearl’s life got too dark, not because of her incipient blindness, but because her husband was shot and killed coming out of a florist shop, carrying yellow tulips. A senseless thing, and so she stopped writing. Yet other poets’ words are still important to her and she shares them with Toby.

When Blossom dies and the fact of death is before them, Pearl and Toby come up with an unspoken challenge, to be warriors and do what must be done: it’s not Toby’s time to die, and Pearl must write her poetry. As Pearl says when teaching Toby how to read a poem, Poetry is all about stopping at the right places. Just because you come to the end of a line doesn’t mean you have to stop there. Stop at the periods, just like you do anywhere else. Now begin again. And so they begin again, realizing their lives are not at the proper stopping places yet.

This brief, poetic novel an ode to life, friendship and the power of words will linger for a long time in the minds of its readers.

In Valerie Hobbs’ new novel, Defiance, we are introduced to two people from different worlds. Pearl is 94, born before television or computers or cell phones. She milks cows, grows tomatoes and writes poetry. She grew up in a time when reading was a pleasure and reading together could be romantic. But now she is […]
YA FictionYA

Planning the big night

Review by Dean Schneider

Once upon a time there was a girl who served pizza in a rat costume. That was me. So begins the fairy tale of Ashley Hannigan, keen observer of her kingdom. No, it’s not Cinderella and her stepsisters, and it’s not wretched work doing chores while stepsisters go to the ball. Ashley’s real-world torments include a lousy job at EZ-CHEEZ-E, a home life where noise tied the house together like duct tape around a busted water heater, and the road to the ball the prom is paved with a series of unfortunate events, related with such humor and good spirits that readers will attend her all the way to her fateful appearance.

Not that Ashley ever wanted to go to the prom, and not that she could go even if she wanted to; she has too many detentions, and the principal is on her case. But her best friend Natalia Shulmensky wants to go; she’s been waiting for this all of her life. And Ashley’s organizing abilities and expertise at bossing people around pull her into helping Nat plan the big night. Stolen prom money, a broken leg, an injured foot, a ruined dress, a missing grandmother and police at the castle gates make the best laid plans a challenge for the most earnest of planners. But Nat’s pink notebook contains a vision of grandeur brought to life, and Ashley is determined to pull it off.

Perhaps the girls puking in the bathroom or performing oral sex behind the bleachers detract from the aura, but overall it is a magical night for Ashley. Even if the underwear model is lured away by a girl whose dress was cut so low she was showing nipple, it is a night to remember, a celebration of the normal kids. As Anderson says in her acknowledgments, this books serves as a rowdy shout-out to all the Ônormal’ kids . . . nobody ever writes about. Laurie Halse Anderson’s Prom is laugh-out-loud funny, and older teenagers will find themselves passing this book around and reading the funniest scenes to each other. This novel is sure to be a big hit, though language and subject matter aim it at older readers.

Once upon a time there was a girl who served pizza in a rat costume. That was me. So begins the fairy tale of Ashley Hannigan, keen observer of her kingdom. No, it’s not Cinderella and her stepsisters, and it’s not wretched work doing chores while stepsisters go to the ball. Ashley’s real-world torments include […]

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