The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Warning: this review might make me sound like an old person.

I couldn’t help but read The Cat Ate My Gymsuit with a bit of wistfulness. Though the characters, voice, and situations likely still remain true to life, I suspect that there just isn’t a place for books like Danziger’s in the current world of children’s and young adult writing.

It’s the story of Marcy, a fat middle schooler whose horizons are opened up by her new hippie teacher, Ms. Finney. Ms. Finney encourages her students to be in touch with their feelings–a radical concept for many of these small town kids who grew up in a world without Mister Rogers. When the teacher’s radical politics and teaching style get her fired, Marcy and her friends decide to try some “radical” (for the time) tactics of their own.

But what’s notable about this book isn’t necessarily the central driving plot, which is undeniably dated and is unlikely to resonate with modern teenagers. What’s notable is Marcy, and her family. The misunderstood oldest child of a cowed house wife and verbally abusive father, Marcy relates her home life in a way that feels incredibly true-to-life. Interchanges between Marcy and her younger brother, and Marcy and her mother (particularly conversations about her mother’s budding feminism) are really truly touching.

Unfortunately, I just think that the niche for this sort of book has been supplanted. Marcy and her friends are undeniably teenagers, and deal tangentially with teen issues (peer pressure around drinking, first dates), but the voice–while well-rendered–is incredibly simplistic, as is the plot. The length and development are more akin to a modern low middle grade book than something that teenagers would want to read. For all its strengths, I couldn’t help but close the cover and think “Who would read this?” Sadly, the only answer I could conjure was “nostalgic adults.”

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A Night without Stars by James Howe

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I was a kid, I absolutely loved James Howe’s Bunnicula series. So when I found A Night Without Stars, a 1983 children’s hospital story, by the same author, I was naturally pretty curious.

It’s clear from the cover that this is meant to be a Serious Book, in the manner of all those After School Specials and Degrassi episodes from the 80s. Maria has a hole in her heart and has to go to the hospital for surgery. There’s she meets a young boy, Donald, who suffers from terrible burns. Because he is an experienced patient, Donald is able to help her through her fears–once she overcomes her prejudices against him.

Though this is a fairly well-realized book, it’s also almost completely joyless and didactic. The adults here are both useless and clueless; Donald (sensitive, gifted, and pretty much perfect despite his burns) is the only one able to treat Maria’s concerns with empathy and respect. The message is simple: don’t judge people; be honest with children. I guess that’s okay.

Unfortunately, the characterization of the young patients is a bit flat and overly simplistic. The only characters who really breathe, who really seem to have any complexity, are Maria’s family, whom we hardly see. This was an okay book, one that I could see giving to a child before a hospital visit for a “teaching moment”, but not one that I’d recommend for recreation.

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Farseed by Pamela Sargent

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

In this terrific and long awaited sequel to Pamela Sargent’s Earthseed, Sargent presents teen readers with an exciting survival story lightly laced with science fiction elements. Characters from the less cohesive first volume appear, but the real focus is on the teenaged protagonists Leila and Nuy, children from warring factions of a Terran colony on a distant planet they’ve come to call “Home.”

These heroines are very well developed and quite strong. Although they are still nominally children in their societies, they are intelligent, bright characters who easily take on leadership roles. Although some of the sexual violence that darkened the first volume is still present, it’s less of a centerpiece here, and both female protagonists spend the majority of the book happily unpaired. Their focus isn’t on romance, but rather on survival–both survival as individuals and the survival of their community.

The science fiction aspects of the story also take a backseat; there’s some slightly troublesome hand-waving in terms of the genetic development of the colonists, but this hardly detracts from the strongly paced, action-filled plot. Sargent sets readers up for another volume, so maybe some of these unresolved elements will be addressed, but hopefully readers won’t have to wait another twenty years for a resolution.

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When the Tripods Came by John Christopher

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love it when a book exceeds my expectations.

And they were very low after finishing the core Tripods trilogy. John Christopher’s well-crafted prequel, however, more than made up for my disappointment in those first three dry, poorly paced books. By shifting the action to the near-future, Christopher gives us both a more realistically palpable setting and a much more sympathetic narrator. Although Laurie, hero of When the Tripods Came shares some personality traits with Will (protagonist of the first three books who I eventually came to loathe, not love), he is much more redeemably human, and shows much more growth over the course of 150 pages than Will does over three whole novels.

What’s more, the invasion of the Tripods–gradual, but nonetheless terrifying–gives the novel an urgency that the others lacked. Their indoctrination of mankind via television is really scary and manages to be pleasantly undidactic (and I speak as a lover of the boob tube). Rather than giving us a lecture on the dangers of TV, Christopher shows television watching for what it is–a universal, but almost certainly exploitable–weakness. Even the characters that are seduced by the aliens are sympathetic.

All in all, a worthwhile read–and since it could easily stand on its own, I’d recommend it in a heartbeat, even if I can’t say the same for the rest of the series.

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