Bobby Vs. Girls (Accidentally)

by Lisa Yee
illustrations by Dan Santat
Arthur A. Levine / Scholastic Books 2009

Bobby and Holly are friends and have been for some time, they just aren't friends in front of other kids. Because everyone knows that boys and girls cannot be friends, Bobby and Holly have tried to keep their private friendship separate from their school freinds, but things get complicated (and confusing for Bobby) when Holly aligns herself with queen bee Jillian and begins to actively hate Bobby. Or so she'd have everyone believe.

For Bobby's part, he does what you'd expect a fourth grader to do, which is to bumble his way through misadventures that threaten both his friendship with Holly and his standing as a boy in the gender roles that the kids feed into. The centerpiece of the story is election for student council representative that pits boys against girls, specifically Bobby against Holly. Amid the boy/girl tension Bobby also has his former football star turned stay-at-home dad embarrassing him, he gets himself stuck to a tree on a field trip to a botanical garden, and then there's that run-in with static cling involving underwear stuck to his shirt. Also, Bobby longs for a dog, but he's allergic to fur, so he tries to teach his pet goldfish to do tricks to compensate.

Good stuff for the younger middle grade set, and a good starting point for discussions about boy/girl friendships. It does end with a note of hope that boys and girls can be friends but it won't be an easy road ahead.

Back On the Horse

I've been in a strange funk all this week without reason. I don't know if it's Seasonal Affective Disorder or the lack of snow this winter or just a random case of the blahs. Anyway, late last night I came to the conclusion that I hadn't been blogging enough lately, so here goes a little blog therapy.

I have tired, daily, to post some sort of commentary on the idea of the graphic novel as literature. Part of me feels like I'm trying to reinvent the wheel with my ideas while another part feels like I'm trying to build a hybrid car with Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys. I've gone through several "drafts" of a blog post and I find myself saying "They're just your opinions, it's only a blog!" every time I get bogged down. But I think before I jump back into that I need to read and review some more books. Y'know, to clear the palate.

Meanwhile, over at the Lisa Yee blog they've announced the winners in the Bodacious Book Title Contest and while I neither won nor took honors I was pleased to see that my entry was one of Lisa's favorites. I am the anonymous party responsible for Pop on Hop.

After suffering the back-breaking abuse of his young cubs using him for a trampoline, Papa Bear becomes a heroin addict.

You know, even when I was a kid I wondered about all that abuse poor Pop took. I had younger sibling and we would occasionally pigpile each other (dogpile to some of you) and that was bad enough. If memory serves we also used to follow up our rough-housing with a game of pretending we were feeble and old and needed to go to a hospital. Ah, childhood.