13 Days of Halloween: In a Glass Grimmly

by Adam Gidwitz
Dutton 2012

Jack and Jill (and a Frog) went up a beanstalk to fetch a magic mirror. Along the way they outwit Giants, Goblins, a fire-breathing salamander named Eddie, and their parents. A companion to 2010's A Tale Dark and Grimm.

Lately I've been wondering if we do more harm than good by making childhood too safe. I'm not thinking about car seats or non-toxic flame-retardant materials, but a sort of intellectual safety that prevents curiosity and the development of common sense more than it protects. We would prefer to believe it is more important to teach children to fear strangers than to develop an internal sense of knowing when and whom to fear.

The problem (for those who find it a problem) is that without a hard and fast set of rules we have the dual issue of teaching the difficult (intuition) coupled with an unacknowledged root source (adult responsibility, or lack thereof). The sad thing is that there is a solution, its been with us for hundreds of years, and we take it for granted: storytelling. There's a lot that can be learned in a story, and they don't have to be overly moralistic or didactic, and they can occasionally be quite fun. Horrifying, gory, disagreeable and yet unexplainable good fun.

And the best part is that kids really like it.

For those who haven't gleaned it from the title, In A Glass Grimmly, Adam Gidwitz's "companion" to A Tale Dark and Grimm, takes as its source the folk and fairy tales once told to children back when people lived closer to a world full of inexplicable horror. Lacking medicine, much less the concept of hygiene, there were invisible things far scarier than the shadows that dwell in the nearby woods, ah, but what wonderful stories could be constructed from those shadows. As a result, though these tales were as full of the sort of caution we might dole out to our own kids these days it was done with a great deal of adventure, magic, and humorous absurdity as well.

Gidwitz begins with parallel stories about a pair of children, a boy named Jack who is a bit dim and unpopular with other boys, and Jill who is being reared to be as shallow and cruel as her mother. Actually, no, Gidwitz starts with the story of a frog, a hapless amphibian who falls in love with a vain princess, is gifted with ability to speak, and suffers for believing the princess's promises of friendship in exchange for his assistance. These three stories, variants of "The Frog Prince," "The Emperor's New Clothes," and "Jack and the Beanstalk" – all with quite a bit of modification – bind our trio of adventurers out to learn the harsh cruelties the world has to offer in exchange for obtaining the thing each wants most.

The astute reader can find within this tale any frame of reference they bring with them. Even those who might not recognize the original tales Gidwitz creates within his framework will nonetheless recognize the various hero's journeys found in other tales. There's as much Wizard of Oz as there is Lord of the Rings with all the blood and guts and foolishness of the true fairy tales of old. Meant to shock or call attention to the peril, the violence in these stories can be easy to dismiss as "once upon a time" but the cruelty, the psychological terror and abuse adults inflict on these children (and a hapless frog) are still very much real for many readers. If there can be advantage found in stories that reflect contemporary "issues" then I would argue the same for a carefully constructed epic fairy tale like In A Glass Grimmly.

But here's the biggest draw for me: it's fun to read. It's fun and it breezes by, pages flying with unbelievable twists, recognizing old tales and looking for the moments they diverge from their more traditional tellings. Gidwitz likes to break in occasionally (less than in the previous book, which was too bad, because I enjoyed those digressions) and warn the reader of what's to come. There's a wink and a nod because, as much as he's prepared us, the true horrors have nothing to do with the acts of violence about transpire. He's smart enough to trust the reader will know the purpose of these warnings is to break (or increase) tension and playfully knock the reader off balance. It makes the experience interactive, conspiratorial, and, as I said, a kick to read.

Finally, if there is a sense that readers have of "growing out of" fairy tales, as these stories being for more younger children, I'd like to suggest that the real problem comes from a progressive sanitation of these stories over time. It is easy to grow weary of happy endings that come with no larger lesson. The frog isn't turned into a prince by a kiss in the original, he is flung against the wall by the princess in a deliberate attempt to kill him, and when he is revealed to be a prince the princess is so humiliated she spends the rest of her days in his servitude. I daresay things for Frog are much worse here, though in the end he ends up the hero in a way he never was in any fairy tale previously written. If a teen guy were to give this book a chance they might find that they really do still like fairy tales.

(This review originally appeared over at Guys Lit Wire on October 10, 2012)

Oh, Rats!

The Story of Rats and People 
by Albert Marrin 
illustrated by C.B. Mordan 
Dutton / Penguin 2006 

Is there any pet more widely considered vermin? The nonfiction picture book examines the facts and myths surrounding the rodent people love to hate.  

Stating with a tale from his own life, Marrin recounts how he was playing in a wood pile as a kid when he first came face-to-face with rats. Out his fear his father offered this wisdom: "Learn about them: you'll feel better."

With that we embark on a journey to learn everything we can about rats. We learn their history and evolution, their ratty ways and how they've interacted with people (and the ways people have interacted with them), we learn how they are pesky and how they are yummy, their eradication and their cause in spreading the plague, and even how they have been used (inadvertently as well as deliberately) in scientific research. It's seemingly very thorough for a book that could serve as a first serious introduction to a child learning about – or how to get over their fear of – rats.  

One of the elements that takes the edge off the book is the fact that it is illustrated with woodcut-like illustrations, similar in style to the work of Barry Moser. This one-step removal from actual photographs makes the rats seem less threatening though the detail on their faces and the red spot color on the mostly black-and-white images gives them a bit of realism that may still make some queasy. I would have preferred a little more interplay between images an texts – as opposed to small inset circles and sidebar illustrations – but as presented the images and text are still handsomely laid out and designed. 

Occasionally the text felt like it drifted between different aged readers. The chapter on rats and the plague seemed to trade on the reader's knowledge of a higher vocabulary and reading sophistication while other chapters contained text that bordered on condescension. Take

Yersina pestis is a bacillus belonging to the family of bacteria shaped like thin rods. Visible only under a microscope, a single plague bacillus is 1/10,000th of an inch in length.

compared with

The famous Larousse cookbook includes one for "Grilled Rat Bordeaux Style. Bordeaux is a famous place. 

Indeed, Bordeaux is a famous place, but a sentence like that has no meaning without context, and even the description of the wine cellars that follows fails to explain the significance of Bordeaux, the cookbook, and what it being famous has to do with rats. Do the rats know Bordeaux is more famous than other wine regions? Does Bordeaux somehow attract more than the usual amount of rats to its cellars? When contrasted with the chapter on the science of the plague and how the rats transmitted the disease, the text in the cooking chapter and elsewhere wavers between reducing facts to their simplest book report factoids and deeper explanations worthy of a kid deeply interested in the subject. 

There are other moments where it feels like information has been simplified or facts generally lumped together for the sake of simplicity. There are, according to this book, only two families of rats, though many types of rats are grouped together on the generic terms "black rats" and "brown rats." Any reader clearly interested in rats would want to know these differences in families, just as they would with subjects like snakes, sharks, bees, and so on.

These points aside, I love this book for not shying away from touchier elements, such as people eating rats and details concerning scientific experimentation. It is reasonably well-rounded and keeps its balance between the earnest, respectful, and gross elements that a subject like rats arouses in readers. 

The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman

by Meg Wolitzer  
Dutton  2011  

Three kids at a Scrabble tournament realize there are more important things in life than winning. Wait. One of these kids has a superpower?  

Life's been tough for Duncan and his mom who have moved back to mom's childhood home in Pennsylvania to regroup at Duncan's Aunt Djuna's house. New kid at school, fish out of water, mom working for a thrift store owned and run by the town eccentric.

Oh, and Duncan can apparently read text by touch. Sounds a little like reading braille but what Duncan can read is ink. Which makes him perfect for cheating at a game like Scrabble where letters have to be picked from a bag, as bully Carl realizes. Yes, a Scrabble-playing bully. Carl and his equally less-than-scrupulous mother connive to get Duncan to be part of Carl's team for the national Youth Scrabble Tournament in Florida, which is where everything will come to a head.

But this apparently isn't enough story. We also need two other parallel narratives; April and her partner Lucy in Oregon and Nate and his partner Maxie from NYC are all down for the adventure and have their own reasons. Lucy comes from a family of jocks who live and breathe sports and don't believe Lucy's Scrabble event is a sport (and they're right, but whose quibbling) and (deep breath) she's also on the hunt for a boy she once met years ago at a pool at some motel, fool-heartedly believing that by teaching him how to play Scrabble he would possibly show up in Florida on this one particular weekend. Nate is the tragic character, the son of a Scrabble tournament loser, who's spent his entire life home schooled and trained for this event, this filial act of redemption. Compared to these twisted narratives Duncan's magic fingers and his hapless milquetoast meanderings hardly stand out.  

Ah, but Duncan has a conscious, and is actually a natural Scrabble whiz without his magic touch. He teaches that bully Carl a lesson in humility and (oh, sorry, this might be a spoiler) wins the tournament fair and square. Lucy concedes that her hopes are wild and baseless, and for a while there's a fear that either Nate or Duncan might be the mystery boy in question, but... what? Ho! Look at that! Next door to the Scrabble tourney is a gymnastics championship and, what's this? Mystery boy is a gymnast? Wow, that's almost a sport as well, and so, Lucy finds her boy. Nate, tragedian of the bunch, just wants to be a normal kid and while he loses the competition, he gets the girl. Yup, he asked Maxie along because he sort of harbored a crush on her and her carefree ways, and in losing he not only teaches his dad a lesson but earns his freedom.

While none of these four plots (the three teams plus Duncan's abilities) would stand on its own as a book, combined they stretch credulity to the point of busting a gut in and odd and empty manner. The characters get a cursory depth, perfectly acceptable for a TV sitcom perhaps but lacking any real backstory or shading. And sadly I am coming to the realization that television is defining the depth of the pool when it comes to literature. The idea is that if you throw enough complication and interconnection into the hopper you create a sense of depth that prevents readers (and viewers) from asking questions because they believe they're getting "real" answers (and "deep" characters) in dribs and drabs. When the story is over we have the feeling we have taken the journey of a thousand miles when all we've been doing is circling the block. If the loose ends are tied up who cares that none of our questions were answered? Add a touch of magical realism as a hook, string the plot along by jumping between threads, and we feel sated despite the nutritional void.

No, not every book needs to aspire to literature. Every story doesn't need to be serious, nor does magic need to be explained scientifically to the satisfaction of character and reader, but in the end I feel that if a story is worth telling it should tell the reader something worthwhile. If not telling us something new at least tell us something old in a unique way.

Cheaters never win, winners never cheat; Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy; There's more to life than winning.


The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman in less than 25 words. Any kid who writes more than that in a book review is padding his assignment.

Mirror Mirror

A Book of Reversible Poems
by Marylin Singer
illustrated by Josee Masse
Dutton / Penguin  2010


Alas,
I do Singer an injustice
with this review
(depending on your point of view).

There are two sides
to every story~

Whether given or received,
an apple can mean life or death
as far as Snow White is concerned.
&
To a hungry Wolf, and Little Red
in the woods,
a treat means different things.

There are always opposing forces.
In these twelve classic tales–
side by side,
two poems apiece,
using identical wording–
lines are reflected
top to bottom,
bottom to top:
This form, called the reverso,
is a clever trick.

Like all heroic tales,
you end
where
you begin.

Effortlessly,
Singer navigates
the impossible
into
the simplest details
and
wisps of plot-
twisting,

twisting
wisps of plot
and
the simplest of details
into
the impossible.

Singer navigates.
Effortlessly,

You begin
where
you end,
like all heroic tales.

A clever trick
this form, called the reverso.

Bottom to top,
top to bottom,
lines are reflected
using identical wording.

Two poems:
Side by side,
in these twelve classic tales
there are always opposing forces.

A treat means different things
in the woods
to a hungry Wolf and Little Red.
&
As far as Snow White is concerned
an apple can mean life or death,
whether given or received.

To every story
there are two sides,
depending on your point of view.

(With this review
I do Singer an injustice.

Alas).

A Tale Dark & Grimm

by Adam Gidwitz  
Dutton / Penguin 2010 

An award-worthy collection of Grimm tales retold as a continuous narrative about the adventures of Hansel and Gretel.  Bloody. Violent. Just the way Grimm's tales ought to be.   

In the Kingdom of Grimm there lived two children named Hansel and Gretel.  What we are told of their story in "classic" editions of the stories is that they found a house made of gingerbread in the woods and were captured by a witch to be eaten, but managed to escape and return home.  Ah, but that's not the "true" or complete version of the story, now, is it?  It's what happened before that makes them run away, and before that it's how their parents are fated to meet.  And after escaping the witch, as they go in search of "better" parents, they continue to drift through familiar Grimm tales, losing fingers and beheading kings and battling dragons...  

Not the Grimm you know?  Perhaps not Hansel and Gretel, but each of the adventures is based on tales collected by the Brothers Grimm with their gore and horror in tact.  The device of using Hansel and Gretel as stand-ins for other generic characters in the tales is actually quite a brilliant move and it gives the reader some grounding through some pretty bizarre territory.  Readers of the original tales will smile in recognition as stories yield their origins and their outcomes hurl the children further along on their quest.   

In using Grimm's tales it is impossible to ignore the tales source material.  Hansel and Gretel's parents, the way they meet and the destiny foretold by three crows, betrays its Greek roots. Later, as Hansel is forced to trick the devil, echos of the medeavel morality plays can be heard.  Many of the Grimm's tales were drawn from other sources, modified and updated to meet its audience, so they can't help but carry their generational DNA from the past.  What's remarkable is how well all these influences play together with each other.  The hero's journey and the heroes themselves become our constant, our narrative point of reference, through the madness that often lives in the fairy tale realm. Hansel and Gretel leave home innocent children and return home triumphant, having earned right to reign through trial and tribulation and collected wisdom.  

What I love, and what might keep this book from being considered for any children's book awards (and, yes, I do believe it deserves that sort of recognition), is that Gidwitz has retained the gore and violence of the original tales. He plays off of it with interjecting passages that speak directly to the reader, warning them that things are going to get hairy, and perhaps younger children should leave the room. Clearly Gidwitz believes, rightly so, that kids can handle the blood and guts and on some level want it. He trusts young readers – which is more than can be said for a lot of writers these days – and knows that by promising them it will be okay in the end that they can handle anything.  Things go from bad to worse, and Gidwitz clearly alerts readers along the way, but he gains more trust and respect as a storyteller by not pulling his punches and playing with the tension by humorously teasing readers with a promise delivered. 

Having just missed the cutoff date for the recent 2010 Cybils I only hope it doesn't get forgotten come October when the nominations open up again.  I also wouldn't mind seeing some Horn Book love, and maybe an ALA sticker.  Yeah, I know it's early and there are still plenty of books to come.  That doesn't change anything.

Dull Boy

by Sarah Cross
Dutton 2009

Alright, once again: what's the rule regarding words in the title of your book that can be used against you in a review?

Let me back down a bit here, lest the Blog Review Police accuse me of being snarky.

What we have here, in a nutshell, is... could it be a version of the X-Men movie? Avery has these superpowers that manifest themselves as he hits puberty. He's got super strength, he can fly, and he keeps it secret for fear of becoming an even greater outsider than adolescence would already push him toward. He's accidentally broken a friend's arm, and he's out cruising the streets looking for good deeds to do as a way of justifying his existence.

Then he spots some other outsiderish kids... could they be like him? There is talk about some Ice Queen, and just as quick as that he's off to save a granny in distress who turns out to be a lure that introduces him to Cherchette, a mysterious figure who can offer Avery the home, family. and understanding his superpowers require. Sort of like, you know, a school for New Mutants. Only not. But sort of.

But what Cherchette has planned is merely Phase Two of an operation to help the kids realize their full potential. Phase One, it appears, was her meddling with selected polio vaccinations that created these superhero kids in the first place. Some didn't survive, and some didn't develop their full potential, but the strong and favored Cherchette promises to increase their power manifold and bring them under her wing.

For good or for evil? And would the kids rather choose their own destinies rather than be sheltered from the rest of the world? And, in the end, don't they just want to you average dysfunctional teenage Justice League?

There is something appealing about the idea of having superpowers and wondering what you would do with them, but that very human idea is quickly lost in the Evil Mastermind plot that's been so flogged to death in comic book culture. Cross has a nice set of misfits here, each with their own unusual set of powers, but rather than having the kids sort out the world on their own – you know, like real kids, but with superpowers – the only way she can get them together is to find an external force to unify them. It might have been nice to see some otherwise normal kids try and navigate the usual teen anxieties without all the extraneous noise of a villain to do battle with.

It's also long, too long. I kept wanting to physically push the story along, literally try to find a way to shove the words forward. This book could have been half its 310 pages and not feel like it was missing anything. Perhaps that breakneck pacing would have prevented me from constantly feeling like I'd seen and heard it all before.

So, not exactly dull. But I really think securing the lid on superhero kid stories is overdue.

Off Go Their Engines, Off Go Their Lights

by Janice Milusich
illustrated by David Gordon
Dutton 2008

Future generations (or species, should we not survive) will marvel at a society that would complain about gas prices while at the same time feeding their children books like this that replace warm and fuzzy animals with warm and fuzzy service vehicles as a bedtime story.

I recognize that boys like cars and trucks and things that go. I also see frantic parents looking for a book that features various books on vehicles because otherwise they cannot get them to sit still for a book. I find this combination particularly odious.

Hiding behind "friendly" service vehicles (each with its own little face across the grill) doesn't disguise the message that these anthropomorphic cars don't also represent a good deal of what's wrong with our culture. As the humans drive around town in their double-wide taxi on clean, unclutterd streets (a nostalgia for an America that never existed) the occupants watch as fire engines and delivery vehicles go about their daily duties only to be put to bed with the sing-song title refrain. "Here we go, little car, it's time for bed!" it says.

Okay, little fossil fuel guzzling, planet destroying society, time for the big sleep.

Where's the book that features the electric trolley putting in a day's work powering down? Where are all the pedicabs parked for the night, the mag-lev trains running the commuter lines?

How do you break a cultural dependence on a petroleum-based economy when you raise children to see nothing else from their earliest bedtime books?

All politics is local. Start here. Find another bedtime book.

/rant.

Dream Factory

by Brad Barkley and Heather Kepler
Dutton 2007

The "fur" characters (including those not wearing fur, like princesses) have gone on strike at Disney World in Florida at the beginning of the summer. This forces the Disney folks to hire scab labor to fill in so that vacationers can continue to enjoy "The Happiest Place on Earth" without the ugly bits of the outside world creeping in. But this book isn't about any of that.

Instead, the story follows the recent high school graduates who have answered the call to replace the striking workers, kids with little conscience about being scabs with loftier problems like what to major in at college and what to do with the rest of their lives. And even then this book isn't really much about that.

This book is could easily be called Summer at Camp Disney with a good dose of typical high school shenanigans and petty teen behavior and, naturally, mismatched lovers. While the contract negotiations continue these kids are housed dorm-style in a commandeered hotel and are quickly thrown into a prelude of what college is like while dipping into all the experiences corporate life has to offer. There are morning meetings and rules and regulations and even some team-building exercises designed to bring the couldn't-care-less rabble in with the party line in the House of the Mouse.

And at it's core, it's a teen romantic comedy stacking a heartbroken Cinder Ella and her second generation Disney geek Prince Mark Charming against Chip-n-Dale mates, the Uber-Achieving triple-major snob Cassie and her killing-time-before-inheriting-the-corner-office flounder Luke.

If you need help drawing a line between points A and B on a map explaining what Luke's Star Wars geek parents gave him as a middle name (beginning with the letter S) then perhaps you will find the narrative full of surprises. That could be said about much of the book, where so much information is parceled out over long stretches in ways that might insult quicker readers. Do we really need the protracted mating dance that takes place between all these characters? In a word, yes, because that's the way the book is structured.

Told in alternating viewpoints, chapters narrated by Luke and Ella, the plot chugs along more or less linearly and yet each time we switch viewpoints there is the strange sensation we've read it all before. It's as if in one character's telling of event we can guess what the other would think/feel/do so that when it happens there's a sense of deja vu. The device of giving Ella and Luke their own voice essentially doubles the time it would take to tell the same information from an omniscient viewpoint. Sad, really, because there's still a fun little story trapped inside this ping pong plot.

Ella's lost her brother in an accident and she's still processing that information when she gets word that her parents are pulling up roots to go work on a mission overseas. Ella is shuttled off to live with an aunt in Florida until the fall when she's supposed to start college in Vermont. Adrift and on her own she jumps at the opportunity to work at Disney World just to keep herself busy.

Luke's problem is that he's got the corner office at his father's company all sewn up, but he doesn't want it. In fact, he doesn't know what he wants because all his life he's been seen as the prodigal son destined for the corner office. While everyone else would kill to have that kind of security (like his fellow fur crush Cassie, who has her eyes on being the wife of the guy in the corner office) all Luke wonders is what it would be like to be free.

Luke and Cassie are already an item when Ella waltzes into the picture. What attracts Luke to Ella is her ability to question and seek out answers about life's larger questions, a natural effect in the wake of becoming unmoored from her family. When Mark does a last minute fill-in for an injured Prince Charming it becomes obvious to all her friends that perhaps Ella has finally landed her prince.

A team-building scavenger hunt designed to make the scab employees more knowledgeable about the park pairs competitive Cassie with Mark, whose father worked the park as a young man himself and is by virtue the person to beat when it comes to Disney trivia. Luke and Ella make a go of it as teammates but the awkwardness of their feelings for one another, the fact that they are otherwise engaged in relationships, and an undertow of petty jealousies pushes and pulls against them.

Everyone can see that Luke and Ella are destined for one another and all that remains is whether or not they can muster the effort to make it happen before the end of the book.

I could take or leave this book -- the formula is strictly Disney Channel Original Movie. That said the thing that truly irks me about this book is the cover. Why go through the trouble of telling a book from two viewpoints and then deliberately cut the potential readership in half by making the cover pink. Yeah, technically this is Chick Lit, but it doesn't have to be and there's no reason to automatically assume a male reader wouldn't want to pick this up because it happened to partly deal with relationships. I'll grant you, using Disney by name throughout the book could render some problems with the art department being able to use copyrighted material on the cover, but is this really the way to go, is this really the best you could do, Dutton?

Let me answer that: No. Sell the story, don't sell genre.

Little Moon Dog

by Helen Ward
illustrated by Wayne Anderson
Dutton 2007
(originally Templar Books 2005 in Great Britain)

When the tourists come for their annual visit to the moon the Man in the Moon and his Little Moon Dog shutter themselves in their home and hunker down for some quiet time. The tourists (later referred to as fairies, which they resemble) make faces at the Little Moon Dog while his master dozes in a chair. The boredom is too much for him and the Little Moon Dog escapes out the back door to play with his new friends.

The fairies are little demons, fixing the Little Moon Dog with wings and teaching him how to steal plums and drop them down chimneys. When it comes time for the tourists to leave they have so captivated Little Moon Dog that he finds himself spirited away with nary a care for his master.

Once in the shady wood (of a nearby planet?) the tourist fairies soon tire of Little Moon Dog. As the fairies taunt and tease him Little Moon Dog realizes they aren't his real friends and he is lonely. Waking to find his companion gone, the Man in the Moon sets about to retrieve his lost friend, bringing him home in a makeshift ballooncraft where they vow that the next time the tourists come they will escape on vacation together as well. The whole things wraps up with a little moral, which I will soon enough share.

First, I have to say I was a bit confused about how there is a hermit on the moon who gets visited by fairies that live on another nearby planet. I mean, does it need to be the moon, simply so it can be a Moon Doggie? Can't it just be set in an enchanted place? Everything about this book screams fairy-forest and the imposition of the interplanetary setting give the whole a sterile feel. The faux ugly-naive artwork doesn't help either.

I'm also not a big fan of books that utilize a delicate, arty font meant to highlight the fairy-like quality of the story but does little more than make it seem all the more precious. It's as if to say to the reader, in the most patronizing of tones, Now THIS is a SPECIAL story. I find it equally distasteful when some words are highlighted in BOLD to add EMPHASIS even in moments where it doesn't seem WARRANTED. Just as capital letters in email and text messaging have the effect of shouting, so to goes the feeling in children's books where the story suddenly feels as if certain words are being SPOKEN in a loud, CONDESCENDING voice from an old lady who smells like FLOWERS, LOTS and LOTS of FLOWERS.

As if that weren't enough, the story ends on this charming little note:

For the Man in the Moon AND Little Moon Dog know...
There is nothing quite so NASTY as a fickle FAIRY and nothing quite so NICE as a faithful FRIEND.

And nothing quite so dreadful as a book that needs to club the innocent over the head to make its point.

An Abundance of Katherines

by John Green
Dutton 2006

So I finally caved and read it. My reasons for not reading it for so long were irrational. It's the math. I wasn't born with the math gene and anything even remotely smacking of math kindles rocket fuel in my stomach and makes my adenoids itch.

Yes, I know the math isn't relevant to appreciating the story, no matter how accurate.

I'm going to be up front about this and admit it's going to take some easing into in order to find the groove for this review. And, honestly, what's holding me down is that in thinking about this book, as a reader and a writer and as someone who occasionally writes reviews, I can't help feeling that books like this require an entirely different approach to discussion. I'm in the shower thinking What this book really needs is a new kind of criticism, the likes of which we haven't seen since Lester Bangs was pounding down NyQuil and frothing about the carpet.

As a further prefatory note there were moments when I wasn't sure about the audience for this book. Is it home schooled prodigies looking for a window into (or out of) their self-torment? Are there sixteen year olds out there who aren't addicted to social websites on the internet, who are intelligent and not at all nerdy, who not only still read but can enjoy the plight of the prodigy and his best friend on a road trip to nowheresville so they can do a little navel gazing before heading off to college? And can they laugh at all the right places without malice? I'd like to think they're out there, I really would, but just how big is that army?

The mind drifts, images of hyper-literate Ronin holed up in boho coffeehouses reading An Abundance of Katherines at a single sitting fills my head. I see seniors, their personal essays nailed, their college apps already in the mail, pausing to reminisce lightly over foolish pranks and late summer nights in local make-out sanctuaries, the burn of long-since renounced fast food burning the back of their throat, coughing and chuckling at the same time.

No, wait, those aren't teens, those are twenty- and thirtysomething hipsters and artsters, the incommunicognoscenti that drift among the sudoku-mad salarymen and women on public transit, peering into the windows of their youth with grins as wry as their martinis. And in the corner, standing alone with closed eyes and humming to himself is Colin Singleton, child prodigy, anagramming the title of his book:

Ken refuted a cabana nosh-in

Unfreshen a cabana to kin, Ed

Ed frees a cabana to inn hunk

Why can't he get away from the cabana? Could a cabana hold the key to happiness? And who, exactly are Ed and Ken, and so on.

Trolling the barren vistas of Tennessee, Colin and his best bud Hassan (introducing himself by saying "I am not a terrorist", and the people laugh) are out on that great post-high school metaphor, the road trip in a vehicle called the Hearse. The roadside lure of the final resting place of Franz Ferdinand leads Colin and Not-a-Terrorist like a divining rod to Gutshot, a company town that manufactures tampon strings.

Yeah, the book's funny like that.

Improbably fun they hit it off well with the backwoods locals, in particular a reluctant likely-prodigy-in-hiding named Lindsey. They pick up a job locally recording oral histories in advance of the town's demise and crash with Lindsey while they sort through their issues. Colin in particular is haunted with understanding why he keeps getting dumped by all the Katherine's he's dated going so far as to develop a mathematical theorem dedicated to determining the length of a relationship. Silly boy! The reason they don't work out is because he keeps dating women named Katherine! Ah, but that's too easy, and would make for a much shorter book.

I tied that once. Or twice. Dating Katherine's, that is. They didn't have much in common beside their name. And the fact that they both dumped me for other guys. And they lied to me about their ages (like I cared). It only took me two, but I got off the ride before I hurled. Totally true.

Meanwhile, back in the sticks, Hassan-the-Not-a-Terrorist consumes Hardee's Monsterthick Burgers by the gross (1420 calories each) and serves as another of literature's great fat sidekicks, part Hotei, part Pulcinella. When he isn't eating or mooning over Judge Judy on television Hass (I like to think of him shaped like the avocado, but with man tits) continues to put off his college education in the mistaken belief that by not doing something with his life he is doing something quite profound. And he gets the local hottie! That is until she relinquishes her opportunity at his Monsterthick-fed Thunderstick over a tryst in the cemetery.

Over my dead body! Franz Ferdinand might call out from the great beyond. And he'd be right.

In the end, as the smog of Gutshot sinks heavily into the rear view mirror, Colin finally breaks the cycle, forsakes his Katherine Wheel, and picks up a extra passenger on his way out of Gutshot and into Whatever is Next.

It's a crappy summary, but accurate where it counts. If it counts at all.