Tag: Middle Grade

When the Universe is ready to speak, it will.

Hello Universe, Erin Entrada Kelly, 2017

Once upon a time, before every single eleven-year-old in a book seemed mandated to face off with magical creatures, wizards, ancient gods, evil governments, and/or a Chosen One Destiny, children in children’s books used to ponder cosmic questions while dealing with neighborhood bullies. Or obnoxious siblings. Or parents who gave them embarrassing nicknames. Hello Universe manages to be a novel in that classic mold, while also allowing its young heroes to ask questions about Life, the Universe, and Fate.

I came to this book already a big fan of Erin Entrada Kelly’s spectacular fantasy Lalani of the Distant Sea, which I will get around to reviewing here one of these days. (It’s SO GOOD, you guys. One of the most beautifully written middle grade fantasies I’ve ever read.) I was curious to see how Kelly writes realistic fiction. Answer: brilliantly.

the story

Hello Universe shifts points of view between four young characters. Valencia: brilliant, dealing with hearing impairment, strong-willed, and secretly lonely. Virgil: shy, awkward, outwardly lonely, best friends with his grandmother and his pet guinea pig. Kaori: confident, compassionate, a self-proclaimed mystic. Chet: an insecure bully whom you’ll want to punch in the face. All four children live in the same neighborhood. Virgil is friends with Kaori (so far he’s the only “client” for the physic business she runs out of her bedroom), he’s one of Chet’s favorite targets for bullying, and he secretly wishes he could be friends with (or maybe even middle-school date?) Valencia. Unfortunately, he’s too shy to approach Valencia.

[FROM HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. YE HAVE BEEN WARNED.]

Valencia decides to contact Kaori for dream advice after a series of recurring nightmares. On a the same day as her psychic appointment, when Virgil is heading toward Kaori’s house for his own appointment, he runs into Chet on the way. Chet, never one to resist a chance to bully Virgil, steals Virgil’s backpack and throws it down an old well — not knowing that Virgil’s beloved guinea pig, Gulliver, is in the backpack. (I hate Chet. Kelly does a great job humanizing him, and I still hate him.) From here, the story takes off: Virgil climbs down into the well to rescue his guinea pig, Valencia unknowingly traps him in the well on her way to Kaori’s house, and the rest of the novel is a race against time as Kaori, Valencia, and Kaori’s little sister Gen try to find Virgil before he runs out of oxygen and hope. Needless to say, Virgil and Valencia finally meet. AND GULLIVER IS OKAY WHICH IS WHAT REALLY MATTERS.

the babble

Just like Lalani, this book is gorgeously written – and much funnier than its immediate predecessor. These kids feel so REAL. This is a neighborhood story, set in a diverse neighborhood that feels lived-in. Kelly creates four (I would argue five, including Gen) distinct character voices, in writing that ranges from irreverent texting exchanges to poetic musings about mythical creatures of darkness.

Valencia and Virgil are well-sketched characters in the traditional middle grade fiction mode: lonely, misunderstood, far from the top of the social food chain at school, and trying to hide their suffering and angst from their respective families. I’m not the right person to pass informed judgement on such things, but it seemed to me that Valencia’s hearing impairment was treated with detailed sensitivity, and it didn’t solely define her character. Kelly establishes these two characters’ similarities enough to create the sense of fate pulling them together as potential friends, while also making them fully distinct as individuals.

It’s the other two characters who really caught my fancy. First, Chet. Like I said, I hate him — but I do sympathize with him a little bit, which means that Kelly has done her job effectively. Not many authors for this age group attempt to write from the bully’s point of view. Chet plays an integral part in this story, and rather than leave him as the common boogeyman, as most children’s novels might, Hello Universe tells at least part of the story looking at the world through Chet’s eyes. I actually wish we had gotten another chapter or two from Chet.

But now let’s talk about Kaori, because I’ve been waiting this whole blog post to talk about Kaori.

Kaori Tanaka might be one of my favorite middle grade characters of all time, and I would gladly read an entire book just about her relationship with Gen, who is also fantastic. Kelly has created such a confident point of view for this character: Kaori is the rare twelve-year-old who knows exactly who she is, feels comfortable in her skin, and can reach out to others in a sensitive way. Every single Kaori chapter is a priceless, often hilarious internal monologue. But – and this is important – Kelly never makes fun of Kaori. She celebrates her confidence and her interests. Maybe it’s Kelly’s prowess as a writer, maybe it’s because I was also obsessed with occult and psychic stuff when I was in middle school, but I adored Kaori and her pesky assistant sister from the start. I could use some advice from her “spirit room” myself, but alas, “NO ADULTS” allowed.

Basically, this novel has everything: it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you incredibly nervous for poor Virgil even as you realize this is a children’s book so of course he’s probably going to be fine. Highly recommend.

rating

**** out of 4

RANDOM BABBLE

• Like most bullies with backstory, Chet seems to have daddy issues. But I appreciate that Kelly paints the father as a powerful business man, someone who enjoys using his privilege to punch down then invites Chet in on the joke. We get to see Chet grapple with his discomfort in these situations, while imitating it later.
• I love the various characters’ personal treasures — Kaori’s spirit stones, Valenica’s wildlife journal, Gen’s jump rope.
• Kelly uses third person past tense for chapters from Virgil’s, Kaori’s, and Chet’s points of view, while using first person present tense for Valencia chapters. That’s so fascinating. I have some guesses why, but haven’t fully puzzled it out yet. What do you think?

I grew up in the Deep South, about a ten minute drive from the North Carolina/South Carolina border. I later lived in Atlanta for almost ten years. I know the places in this novel. My childhood home sits on the state highway mentioned in Chapter 26.

And holy shit, I really, REALLY wish this novel had been part of the Language Arts curriculum when I was in middle school. I’m pretty sure no middle grade novels quite like this existed in the 90’s.

I’d planned to write my first book post through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in the time it’s taken me to sit down and write again, a terrifying deadly virus sweeping the globe has stopped dominating current event headlines. So in light of the long-overdue revolution happening across America (and the globe), and because I just finished The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson before reading it for a storytime, I’ll write about this one first instead.

Mostly, what I want to write is this: READ THIS BOOK. JUST READ IT, NO MATTER YOUR AGE. Go buy it (preferably from an indie bookstore, even more preferably from a black-owned indie bookstore) and read it right now. If you’re looking for new middle grade fiction by authors of color, featuring fantastic lead characters of color, I can’t think of a better place to start.

The story

Twelve-year old Candice Miller is not at all pleased to be living with her mother in her late grandmother’s house for the summer, stuck in a small town in South Carolina called Lambert. She misses her friends, her house, and her father, all of them back in Atlanta. Things start to look up a little, however, when she befriends Brandon–the shy boy across the street who devours library books as quickly as she does–and when she stumbles across a letter in the attic addressed to her grandmother. The letter is a challenge and a quest: full of puzzles and riddles about Lambert’s racist history. The person who solves the puzzles will earn the town of Lambert millions of dollars from a mysterious benefactor. It turns out that Candice’s grandmother, Abigail, the first black City Manager of Lambert, ruined her career by trying to solve the puzzle ten years before and was forced to leave town in disgrace.

From here the story takes off: Candice and Brandon work feverishly to solve the puzzle, trying to find the money and clear Abigail’s name. Hopping through the decades and told from multiple character perspectives, the novel slowly unfolds a story about racist oppression and violence in this small Southern town, and the ways that racism continues to threaten people of color in Lambert in the current day.

the babble

Varian Johnson has pulled off a marvel with this book. The publisher recommends The Parker Inheritance for ages 8-12, and while some eight year olds might struggle with the acts of the racist Lambert citizens detailed in flashbacks, the book feels age-appropriate to me.

[FROM HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. YE HAVE BEEN WARNED.]

Yet Johnson doesn’t pull any punches or sugar coat his topic: his novel tackles the ugliness and violence and mania of white supremacy head on, especially in the harrowing account of Lambert’s infamous 1957 tennis game and its violent aftermath. Readers will be terrified for Reggie and Big Dub and Siobhan — and they should be. What I love is that the novel doesn’t paint racism as a comfortably cut-and-dry topic, dividing the world into white supremacists of the 1950’s and everybody else. Chip, trying to be a progressive ally in the 1950’s, screws up big time and makes life harder for the very people he’s trying to help. (Oh, Chip. More on him below.) The high school vice principal adopts a racist attitude when he suspects and verbally attacks Candice and Brandon, simply for existing on school property after hours. Brandon’s older sister drives extra slowly because she is terrified of giving a cop any excuse to pull her over. The book points out that Lambert still has a very clear line between the black and white neighborhoods in town. The Parker Inheritance even addresses intraracial prejudice through the arcs for Reggie, Big Dub, and Adam Douglas.

And all this makes it sound like I’m describing a super dour novel, or an “issue” novel, but I’m not! It is sad and horrifying and suspenseful, but it is also fun, and funny, and immensely hopeful. We get to hang out with Candice and Brandon at the library while they talk about books. We get to watch Candice and Brandon counter homophobia with acceptance. We get to see these two amazing protagonists triumph. We get to solve the puzzle along with them. And — most unusually for a middle grade book full of suspense — we also grow to care for the adults in the protagonists’ world as well.

Literary legacy is a funny thing. The only book I remember reading during my K-12 years that addressed racism head-on was that stalwart classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Which, don’t get me wrong, is an excellent book. It’s a classic for a reason. And it’s also the subject of plenty of controversy these days when used as a classroom title.

I don’t believe in censoring books, or removing them from the public sphere. If you want your kid to read Huck Finn, go for it. Buy it or check it out from your local library. But great as it is, that novel about racism was written by a [brilliant] white guy in 1886. For so long, we didn’t have many other options.

The Parker Inheritance was written NOW, by an immensely talented author of color, and it doesn’t banish American racism to a comfortable past. It talks about slavery AND racism in the 1950’s AND racism now. It also talks about kids who love to read, and what it feels like to be a middle schooler navigating bullies and the social structure, and what it feels like to have your parents go through a divorce, and what it feels like to miss your beloved dead grandparent, and what it feels like to find a clever solution that the adults around you missed. It is beautifully and cleverly written, it is fun and unflinching at the same time. It will be an education for just about any middle schooler (or high schooler, honestly) who reads it.

Basically, there’s no real need to teach Huck Finn anymore, when we can teach books like The Parker Inheritance instead. In this case, it might be time to retire the classic and work on establishing a new classic.

rating

**** out of 4

random babble

• Oh man, Chip’s mistake with Reggie and the Cokes is SO UNCOMFORTABLE, folks. I cringed so hard I dropped the book. And that’s exactly how I should feel. That’s exactly the type of discomfort this book makes people like me sit with. Allies screw up, too. All the time.
• Honestly, I love the way that Chip’s arc is handled. He doesn’t get the girl. He accepts that. He helps the way he is needed. He may be clueless, but when everything is on the line, he does the work. And it sounds like he keeps doing the work for the rest of his life.
• I love the way that Reggie’s arc plays out as well, mostly. Definitely didn’t see that big twist coming. And I love that Siobhan calls him out on his shit when he finds her again. I’m not sure how I feel about how forgiving she is toward Lambert, but then again, I’m not the right person to pass any sort of judgement on that arc.
• Good lord, this book just packs in SO MUCH, all of it deftly handled. The many facets of racism. Bullying. Divorce. Coming out. Grief. And did I mention it also manages to be fun and enjoyable?
• For younger readers in that 8-12 category: don’t be fooled by Scholastic’s printing. They’ve tried to disguise how dense this book is by making it look the normal size as other middle grade novels, but I noticed that the font size and the line spacing are both smaller than usual.

Oh, and in case I didn’t make it clear how I feel about the topic: