Thursday, April 30, 2009

The Perfect Punk Rock Band Name, Thanks to G. K. Chesterton

Penny dreadful.  If I played an instrument and knew anything about punk rock and decided to start a band, that's what I'd call it, and I'd owe the inspiration to Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton.  Granted, Chesterton didn't invent the phrase, but he did immortalize it by writing the essay "A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls" about the adolescent pulp fiction of his day.  

Penny dreadfuls were cheap adventure novels devoured by the young and deplored by scholarly adults who wanted to see teenagers reading "real literature."  Now admit it, folks.  How many of us have turned our noses up at Anthony Horowitz or Lisi Harrison and pined for the days when children read Mark Twain and Charlotte Bronte?  (When were those days, by the way?  Are we sure they happened?)  I'm guilty of it, too.  Especially as a brand-new teacher six years ago, I was full of concern about how we were going to get the kids reading, but not just reading: reading good books.  Chesterton, bless his heart, reminds readers of his essay that "literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity." 

I love good literature.  I love good stories more.  When they go together, bliss.  When they don't, I'll choose the good story.  I wouldn't have said that six years ago, fresh out of college with the brilliant conclusions in my senior thesis on James Joyce still keeping me warm at night, but one of the blessings of my teaching career was that it reintroduced me to YA lit. and managed to loosen me up enough that I can enjoy it again.  Heck, maybe Twilight is the Hannah Montana of fiction.  So what?  It's fun.  That's what's so great about reading kids' books.  Kids read for fun, and any book that isn't fun doesn't last.  

That's why I always took my seventh grade students' suggestions on what to read, and that's why I miss their input now.  That's why, even though I've been ravenous for fiction ever since I finished Ann Brashares' new novel last week, and even though the likes of The Faerie Queen and Sons and Lovers and Cousin Bette are sitting on my shelf unopened, I'm not in the middle of a novel right now.  But I hope to be by the end of the week.  That's when the local children's librarian should be calling me to pick up the new Penderwicks book I put on hold.



Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Pants? Who Needs Pants?

C. S. Lewis said, "You can't make a book long enough or a cup of tea big enough to suit me."  I know what he's talking about: that bittersweet moment of savoring the last drop, the satisfaction of bathing your tongue and teeth before you swallow, and the wistful regret when you realize the experience is finally over.  Yes, there will be others--and without finishing the first, one would miss out on the second and third and fourth and so on--but the moment of mourning is nonetheless real, an important part of the enjoyment.

I felt that regret when I finished Forever in Blue (Random House 2007), the fourth of Ann Brashares' Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Random House 2003) books.  I loved those books, and when Forever in Blue ended, I allowed myself to mourn, for it seemed that Brashares really had drawn the final curtain: The Pants, after all, were gone.

But wait!  Hope springs eternal, as they say, and I was delighted recently to find that Brashares had decided to resurrect the series with 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (Random House 2009), a new novel about three new girls--Jo, Polly, and Ama--who are destined to pick up the torch dropped by Bridget, Tibby, Carmen, and Lena.  

The circumstances are different.  The three have not been lifelong bosom buddies like the original Sisters.  Jo, Polly, and Ama were best friends for a few years in elementary school, when they planted willows together in the woods and visited them every day, but in middle school they abandoned the trees and one another.  The summer between eighth and ninth grades, however, gives them a chance to remember why they need each other.  (Brashares, like so many writers and readers of YA lit., loves the promise and potential of summers, and she fulfills them beautifully.)

Jo, Polly, and Ama live in Bethesda and are about to enter the same high school the Septembers attended, and indeed, the Septembers do brush against the edges of the story.  The Pants have made them local legends, and our three new heroines remember how they and other girls tried to copy the magic without success.  

Now, Polly babysits for Tibby's younger siblings, and poor Jo's summer job at the beach turns disastrous when Lena's sister Effie shows up.  But this is the story of the Willows, not the Pants; of friendship reignited, not uninterrupted; of ties strengthened through growth alone, not magic.

Maybe Ann Brashares really had planned to lay this series to rest after Forever in Blue.  Perhaps the muse or her fans or her publisher just wouldn't let her.  Whatever happened, I am so grateful for it.  And I am also excited, because those final dregs of story left an aftertaste that hints, subtly but unmistakably, of more to come. 

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Speaking of Avonlea...

My in-laws visited from Kansas last week (hence the long gap between this post and the last).  My mother-in-law, Betsy, volunteers at the Habitat for Humanity thrift store, where she is in charge of books.  That means that she handles all incoming used books, sorts them, and often pulls some out that she will buy as gifts.  (Yesss...)  One of my Easter gifts from her was an old hardcover copy of Anne's House of Dreams, the fifth book in the eight-volume series by L.M. Montgomery.  I was so excited when she handed it to me that I think I have to hang my head and use that tired cliche, "squealed with delight," to describe my response.  Betsy was apologetic about the age of the copy, but I love it more for that.  I don't know what happened to my copies of the Anne books, but thanks to Betsy my collection is slowly regenerating.  This particular volume has a brown cover, brown pages, and a lovely illustration--just one--on the first page, all in color.  It shows Anne in a pink dress, standing on a hill with Green Gables in the background.  She's bidding farewell to her old home before her marriage to Gilbert (which, not coincidentally, is the name of my cat, the one I lived with during my brief time as an independent single woman with her own apartment).

I flipped through the book and saw names of characters I had forgotten.  Some of them jogged my memory; others did not.  It made me realize how lazy I've become in my relationship with these dear old stories.  I've seen the Kevin Sullivan film versions several times (the first two, anyway; the third I couldn't finish even once...blech), and I guess I thought that counted as staying in touch with Avonlea, but there is too much left out: Polly's Place, Gog and Magog, Ruby Gillis' death, Paul Irving, and several others whose names I can't even recall but who I know are important (the twins Marilla and Anne adopt, the first two men who propose to Anne, and so on).

I really feel toward Anne as I do those friends whom I have never stopped loving but with whom I've allowed myself to lose contact over the years.  In my busyness and self-absorption I've convinced myself, perhaps, that they know I love them and that I'm here and I think of them.  But that's just a pleasant little self-deception, after all.  True friends may always be together in spirit, as Anne says to Diana (in the film; I don't know whether that line is in the book or not, further evidence of my sloppy fanhood), but kindred spirits know that while the two-disc movie version may be all right some of the time, once in a while we have to be willing to sit down with all eight volumes and dive back in again.