Richie's Picks: JUMPSTART THE WORLD by Catherine Ryan Hyde, Knopf, October
2010, 208p., ISBN: 978-0-375-86665-4; Libr. ISBN: 978-0-375-96665-1
"I'll have a meeting invite everyone you know
I'll pass out buttons for the ones who come to show
Beautiful people,
Never have to be alone
'Cuz there'll always be someone
With the same button on as you
Include him in everything you do
He may be sitting right next to you
He may be beautiful people too
And if you take care of him
Maybe I'll take care of you"
-- Melanie Safka
"'Okay, now please tell me why that one. That cat is so...There is
nothing distinctive or beautiful about that cat. I wish you would look at this
beautiful Persian mix again. Why would you settle for that plain-looking
tabby...'
"'Not that one,' I said. 'The black one. The guy in the back.'
"In the silence that followed, it was all I could do to keep from smiling.
This was the cat that would drive my mother crazy. This was the choice
only I could make.
"First of all, he had only one eye. The other one was closed forever,
like nothing had ever been there. And he had a big chunk bitten out of his
right ear, and patches of him missing fur. He looked like his hair had been
falling out in clumps.
"He was perfect. He was my cat.
"Long, long silence.
"'Okay,' she said. Quietly. Then, measuring every word: 'You're angry
with me. I understand that. I'm not even saying I blame you--'
"'I'm taking that cat. I want the black one. You can't talk me out of
it, so don't even try.' I was already starting to understand him. To feel
for him. Or maybe even to feel with him. He was scared. He was not
cuddly. He was not beautiful. If I didn't take him, he was as good as dead. He
was about to be given the death penalty for not being beautiful. Someone
had to come along and love him just the way he was. I was that someone."
Fifteen year-old Elle certainly has good reason to be furious with her
mother and to identify with a scared, ugly, and unloved cat. This is because
Mom has just rented Elle her own apartment. It is the end product of Mom
having chosen her boyfriend Donald over Elle. Literally. Mom and Donald
will now depart for a cruise just days before Elle's sixteenth birthday.
Elle further reacts to her own abandonment -- and to her mother's horrific
behavior -- by shearing off her hair (which is too much like Mom's).
Arguably, the timing is not stellar. Elle is about to start attending a new
school, and her shorn appearance encourages the school's Neanderthals to
immediately scrawl hate speech across her locker. Thus it is that Elle falls
in with a small group of students who don't fit into the conventional norms
for sexual identification.
And all of this, in turn, becomes a setup for the challenging friendship
that develops between Elle and a gentle man named Frank, her neighbor in the
apartment building. After developing a crush on and friendship with
Frank, Elle comes to learn that he is actually a transgender female to male.
Because of her lack of knowledge, Elle's discomfort with Frank and his
world and her having had a crush on a woman is realistic, and it is quite
likely that lots of readers will readily identify with Elle's ignorance and
resulting discomfort.
And that brings me back around to another cat story that I can easily
argue is one of the most important books I've read this year. It is Mo
Willems' CAT THE CAT: WHO IS THAT?
In CAT THE CAT: WHO IS THAT?, an unseen narrator repeatedly asks that very
question and Cat the Cat responds with delight by identifying each of her
friends (Mouse the Mouse, Duck the Duck, Fish the Fish, etc.). But then we
turn the page and that unseen narrator asks "'Cat the Cat, who is THAT?'"
We are then looking at what one is likely consider the image of some sort
of unidentifiable alien species. And after Cat the Cat wrestles for a
minute with identifying he? she? it?, she concludes, "'It's a NEW friend.'"
The point is, it doesn't really matter whether or not Elle or I can fully
grasp all of the complications involved physically or emotionally with
being transgendered. What matters is that we consider such individuals to be
beautiful people too -- new friends regardless of what we do or don't
understand about their appearances and self-identifications -- and that we be
amongst the enlightened by accepting and welcoming this and all differences in
how people look, speak, dress, eat, and identify themselves.
As Elle seeks to mother that torn-up cat and to heal her own wounds, she
explores how she might deal with her discomfort over Frank and become a real
friend.
"He sighed. 'I guess I mean we all pretty much agree on certain things.
Equality and stuff like that. But whenever it turns up missing, people
just let it slide. That's why there's such a thing as activism. Sometimes
you have to jumpstart the world just to get it to be what even the world
admits it should be.'"
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/)
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator _http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/_
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_http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php_
(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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