Richie's Picks: WILL by Maria Boyd, Knopf, July 2010, 320p., ISBN:
978-0-375-86209-0
"I see a bad moon arising,
I see trouble on the way."
-- John Fogerty
"Moon has been a common shape-metaphor for the buttocks in English since
1743, and the verb to moon has meant 'to expose to (moon)light' since 1601,
long before they were combined in US student slang in the verb(al
expression) mooning 'to flash the buttocks' in 1968."
-- from the Wikipedia article "Mooning"
"On cue I heard the familiar rumble of the Lakeside Girls school bus. It
was sitting at the lights about to begin the daily ritual of passing our
stop. Just like us, the girls had their own bus law and their own code of
behavior. They stared from the buses giggling, giving the finger or rolling
their eyes in bored condescension. All three reactions were dependent on
status and age, and were as predictable as ours.
"and when that moon gets big and bright
it's supernatural delight"
-- Sherman Kelly, "Dancing in the Moonlight"
"Everyone was ready to take their part when the hugest, loudest blowout,
like the farts of thirty giants, came from the back of the bus. The girls
screamed and the boys pissed themselves laughing. This continued until it
dawned on everyone that in fact the bus was stuck and, even worse, that they
would all have to actually look at one another.
"This was a clear breach of bus law, and everyone was a little unsure of
how to act. Never one to let the boys down, I felt it was my opportunity --
no, in fact my duty -- to step in and save the day. I went over to Jock
and whispered to him.
"'No way, Willo!'
"I smiled, extending my hand. Wanna make a bet?'
"Casually I moved to the curb. I strategically placed myself so no other
member of the public could see -- we did have the good name of the college
to keep up. I faced the entrance gates, looking directly into the stony
frown of the school's founder. The back half of my body was in full view of
the stationary bus. Slowly, surreptitiously, I unbuckled my belt and
grabbed the top of my school pants and boxers. I threw my head around ninety
degrees on each side looking for the enemy, winked at the statue, and dropped
my pants. The first moon in full public view and in front of girls in St.
Andrew's history. Or so I was told afterward."
From the scene that soon thereafter follows -- in the office with the
deputy principal and the Year 11 coordinator -- we learn that high school
senior Will Armstrong has been involved in a string of behavior-related
incidents over the past six months and that this latest performance could lead to
his expulsion from the boys' school St. Andrews.
But there are also hints that Will has been having to deal with a
significant problem in his life, and in the disciplinary meeting that follows a
long weekend Will learns that his English teacher has proposed that Will -- a
guitar player -- be saved from expulsion but be required to participate
("as a musician and general dogsbody") in the extracurricular musical ("The
Boy Friend") that is about to be staged jointly between the girls' school
(Lakeside) and the boys' school (St. Andrews).
And, of course, he is destined to fall for the feisty female lead (who has
already seen a memorable side of this troubled young man).
"Now in the moonlight a man could sing it
In the moonlight"
-- Meredith Wilson, "Marian the Librarian" from my all-time favorite
musical
Written by a teacher (meaning that the teachers come off looking pretty
good and the administrator comes off looking not quite as good), and
originally published in Australia (meaning that readers are exposed to those
interesting differences in language, slang, and culture), WILL is a truly lovely
story for middle schoolers about Will Armstrong's evolving relationships
with his mother, his teachers, his friends, the new kid at school (with
issues of his own), the younger boy in band who befriends him, and with the girl
that Will fancies. It is also a tale of his coming to terms with the
tragedy that has so radically altered his life.
I really appreciate how author Maria Boyd chooses not to neatly tie up all
of the loose threads at the conclusion of this story. Readers are left to
wonder and debate whether or how everything in Will's life might fall into
place or into pieces. And we are also left to decide for ourselves how
we might act were we to be in Will's position during the climactic scene
when he (finally) wants to do the right thing for his new guy friend.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/)
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator _http://groups.yahoo.com/middle_school_lit/_
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(http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php)
FTC NOTICE: Richie receives free books from lots of publishers who hope he
will Pick their books. You can figure that any review was written after
reading and dog-earring a free copy received. Richie retains these review
copies for his rereading pleasure and for use in his booktalks at schools
and libraries.
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