Book Review #1 -- Tangerine by Edward Bloor

My first ever real life book review! Is it natural to be this nervous to have to put your opinion into print for the whole world to see, never to be able to change it again? Well, I might as well pick now to, um, 'grow a pair' and decide what I think. Here goes...


Tangerine, by Edward Bloor

First off, it's a good thing I picked up this particular edition, with the kid in the glasses. I'd heard the book title floating around lately, and found it at my local used book store. I know you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but I was looking forward to the read as soon as I picked up the kid in glasses. A nothing special, nothing cool, nothing remarkable kid in coke-bottle glasses with..wait.. is that lightening reflecting in the lenses? Cool...

Had I picked up this cover it would have been all over. Back on shelf. Not gonna happen.

Sorry. I'm not a soccer fan. I know every self-respecting human being is supposed to be drooling over the sport right now, with the World Cup just finishing, and I tried to care...really, I did...

Tangerine is the story of Paul Fisher, a middle-school average futbol-loving kid with a super star big brother with a nasty (albeit mysterious) history and a football scholarship. Their family moves to a place called Tangerine, where citrus lives and breathes in the community as much as muck fires (???) and lightening storms that strike the same place...um dozens of times (double ???). Of course, nothing is quite as it seems and you never get the whole story until the end, which is what I guess makes a good story.

I have a one serious issue with this book, as a writer. Who is the audience?

Kids read up a bit, so a story about a middle grader would be generally geared towards an early middle grader. However, the story involves a kid being beaten to death, another kid being struck by lightening and dying in the middle of football practice, and a big brother spray painting his little brother's eyes open while mom pretends it never happened. Not what I would generally call early middle grade content, even for the more mature ones.

The book is written as a journal, which I love as a reader, because you really get to get inside the protagonist's head and you don't know anything until they know it. It makes identifying with the main character either easier or more difficult, depending on how the author handles the internal dialogue. Paul (the MC) is a sophisticated kid who is dang smart, good enough at soccer to get onto the team of much older and bigger kids on his first try, and gets in with the super cool kids on pretty much his first day at school. The only difficulties this kid faces are his glasses (from an unknown source, as he obviously didn't get them from staring into an eclipse, as we are told) and parents who would rather watch high school varsity football than middle school soccer. So, as an adult I was able to connect with his wit and humor (which flowed abundantly, thank you Mr. Bloor), but I wasn't sure how kids would feel about this too-good-to-be-true kid.

So I went to the rating charts on Amazon...I know, I totally cheated.

Surprisingly (or maybe it shouldn't have been) kids either loved or HATED it, and teachers, parents, and writers loved it. Why? Probably because it was beautifully written, with wit and humor, expertly crafted scenes, and secondary characters that jumped off the page. But it was hard to connect with Paul for the kids who were 'forced' to read it for class or read it because they thought it would be about soccer, thanks to the cover art.

So, Amazon verified my suspicions about my first critical review. Though, in the future, I will never critique with "I hated it" or "it sucked" without solid, founded reasons. "This book should eat pig poop" doesn't help me decide if I should read it or not.

Skillz

Driving home from piano lessons today, I was especially impressed with my oldest daughter, age 8. I told her so.

"And do you know why you did so well?" I asked, trying my best to insert important life lesson #273, Practice makes perfect, or at least probably pretty great.

"Yeah. I've got skillz."

I'm pretty sure it was with a 'z.'

"I'm sorry?" Skilz? "I was going to say it was because you practiced so hard this week, every day."

"Yeah," she replies, staring out the window. "But it doesn't hurt that I just plain have talent."

I have absolutely nothing to say to her. Because she is absolutely right. Not about being musically talented--she is--but about how much easier something is if you're actually good at it.

I just spent 11 days learning about the craft of writing. How to create a solid Point of View, how to cut 'lardass prose' (Jane Resh Thomas, left), and how Theme is the 'aboutness' of your story (Anne Ursu, below).

But how much do learning these things actually help my writing process? What if I am actually quite horrible and no amount of study or practice will help me get from rough manuscript to celebrated best-seller?

Or, the much more frightening flip side...What if I actually have some talent, and forget to practice? If I take for granted the ability to put pen to paper and thought to page? What if I don't study the pieces that paved the way, the Fugues of Louis Sachar, the Symphonies of Rowling and Tolkien, and the Folk Songs of Aesop?

My daughter's wisdom, again, reminds me to take what I have and do what I can with it. I certainly need lots of practice, and my study habits are rusty. But it also reminds me that some seem to be blessed with gifts beyond anyone's control. Don't hate on them. Just hope, for their sakes, that they don't forget to practice.

Eleven Days Older, Eleven Days Newer

I just finished my first residency at Hamline's MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Think of it as writer's bootcamp: 11 days of reading, writing, listening, learning, absorbing, forgetting, panic, and awe. Awesome awe.

I watched students lead lectures on critical elements of writing. I heard successful authors (Wendy Orr, Deborah Wiles, T. A. Barron) speak about their journeys. I oogled unashamedly at a faculty of 14 established authors who graciously signed their books for my collection. I listened to graduates read from their final creative works, who are now Masters in every sense of the word.

The experience left me overwhelmed, inspired, terrified, nostalgic, nauseated, exhausted, etc. Most of all, it left me feeling ready. Ready to take on my writing. Ready to read more carefully, from a writer's perspective. Ready to take real steps toward becoming a real author. So I sit, butt in chair, waiting for my muse...

Now what? Read? Write? Start a blog?