Fat Men From Space

by Daniel Pinkwater
Dodd Mead 1977; Yearling Revised edition 1980

On the perpetual eve of my pending holiday abroad I find myself a little too distracted to maintain my blogging duties. To be honest, I tend to spaz out a bit before trips which, my wife can attest, makes me a bit of a pain.

But amid my chaos an old reading journal has come to the rescue! A re-purposed page-a-day diary served as my notebook of choice for recording my kidlit reading a few years back, inaugurated with this title which was a re-read from fifteen years earlier. What follows is my original "review" to myself from 2002.

A boy's newly installed tooth filling is a radio that can pick up the frequency of alien spaceships poised to attack the Earth. The fat men from space have come to eat all the Earth's fattening junk food and intend to enslave Earthlings to constantly feed them. Held captive aboard the alien's "spaceburger" the boy is only a witness, but all ends well as the alien's attention is diverted to a giant potato pancake in space, leaving Earth with nothing but healthy food to eat and the warning that junk food will attract sinister aliens.

Funny, reading that now, how much I seemed to be aware of summarizing for an audience and not so much writing openly about what I think. Sure, there's the note at the bottom that read "badly, charmingly illustrated by the author" but where's the surliness, where are my teeth?

Ah, but that's just it you see. I can't bite this book because it was Fat Men From Space that brought my adult self back to children's books. This book cracked open a door (that was later blown wide by Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat) that brought me to where I am today. Sort of. It's a long story and not worth delving into right now. The point is that in a way it was my first kid-book-as-an-adult and you always remember your firsts with a certain nostalgic glow. even in the rereading I don't remember feeling any less enchanted.

Naturally I stalked the wild Pinkwater after this and discovered what may turn out to be a Rosetta Stone for setting my gears to grind, which was Young Adult Novel. Pinkwater the writer (as opposed to Pinkwater the dog breeder or Pinkwater the NPR commentator) has a very sly way of dishing up simple morality plays with a healthy mix of Zen and Dada-ist art influences. I do not believe for a moment that this combination is glibly applied because when you look at the careful way he turns his stories onto their sides you can see the ribbons of oft-told stories of outsiders and conformity that he's woven into a whole new cloth. He's not a genius, he's a Zen master. If you are open to it he'll whack upside the back of your head, but even if you are closed to the lessons in his temple you can still enjoy them for what they appear to be on the surface: silly stories with strange characters and unusual lessons.

Operation: Dump the Chump

by Barbara Park
Random House / Yearling 1982
(Knopf 1979)

This is probably the middle grade reader best used as an example for how to outline a middle grade reader. It's right there in the third chapter, written as a list of things Oliver has planned out in order to get rid of his annoying younger brother, Robert, involving an elderly couple who live down the street:

1. Tell Hensons that Robert needs a home.
2. Tell parents that Hensons need a boy.
3. Put fake ad in the paper from Hensons.
4. Show ad to parents.
5. Put fake ad in paper from parents.
6. Show ad to Hensons.
7. Write fake letter to Hensons.
8. Write fake letter to parents.

A couple chapters up front to set the scene and show what Oscar hates about his brother, a chapter where the plan goes awry and another to wrap things up and that's it. The idea is to convince his parents to send his brother away to live with the Hensons down the street, and to convince the Hensons that they want to take Robert in. There's all kinds of cover stories involved about Oliver's father losing his job (he doesn't) or old man Henson being unable to get around his garden (untrue) and every other little fib along the way to make the plan work.

The twist should be obvious, as any boy's plan is bound to bite back in a middle grade reader, and you know what? That's why kids read through to the end, because they want to know how it's going to go bad, how bad it's going to go, and what the fallout looks like.

My co-worker Anna (who really should do a blog of her own, because she'd rock) reread this recently and said her teacher read it to her back in elementary school. It still held up and it's easy to see the appeal. The story is solid, everything moves along at a clip, and the anticipation that builds from knowing that everything Oscar attempts somehow goes askew (despite his "perfect planning") is exactly what keeps kids coming back to books like this.

Having the chapter outline practically spelled out in Oscar's to-do list is interesting because it really does open itself up for classroom lessons on plotting and on how to avoid the predictable. How many ways can this outline go wrong, and how long can things go right before they have to start falling apart at the seams? I've read some truly dreadful galleys lately that could have used this lesson, from adults who ought to know better. Or at least their editors should. I'm not saying new ground is being broken here, only that there's a reason this book has lasted more than two decades.

Take a look at that cover. You look at that and you think "Huh, the older brother's going to have his kid brother taken away by movers. How's that going to work?" It doesn't. There are no movers involved. This cover is part of a recent redesign of all the Barbara Park books, one of those things publishers do to keep older titles that still have some life in them "fresh." I can't fault them for the practice although it would be nice if the cover image actually made sense.

This was Barbara Park's first book for kids and she's had quite a run. I'm just going to pretend that I've never heard of Junie B. Jones and check out a few more of her earlier books.