Children least favorite narratives are slice of life. They are bored by these conflict-deficient stories that shows ordinary events in the ordinary life of an ordinary person. Curiously, both winners of the most prestigious 2006 ALACaldecott winner, The Hello, Goodbye Window (Hyperion, $15.95, ages 4-7) and the Newbery, Criss Cross (Greenwillow, $16.99, ages 11-14) are slice of life stories. My prediction is that the award that will most please children this year is the young adult Printz award given to John Green's Looking for Alaska (Penguin, $15.99, ages 13 and up) Unlike the others, this book has the strong conflict and plot children love.
Norton Juster is the author of The Phantom Tollbooth (Yearling, $6.50, ages 8 to adult), one of the most inventive novel ever written. This is not the case in his recent picture book, The Hello, Goodbye Window. His bio in the back of the book tells us he's a retired architect, retired teacher and a "just warming up" grandfather. That explains the lack of imagination in this small story praising the everyday magic that happens when a grandchild spends time with doting grandparents.
The story's focus is the kitchen window is a window on the world, showing happenings outside in the garden and mirroring the joys that take place in the cozy kitchen. There is little more than that to this slice of life story. Illustrations by Chris Raschka, the true recipient of the Caldecott, are filled with sunny yellows and tranquil blues that represent the happy, calm home. Raschka's looseness of line well-represents the freewheeling fun of the relationship. Illustration and story work well to convey mood and affection, but though warm, this is far from a classic picture book children will read again and again.
Lynne Rae Perkins' Criss Cross is not one, but four coming-of-age stories. Coming of age novels are generally guaranteed vehicles of the dramatic. Not so in this book which shows us the ennui and longing of teens waiting to for life to start. Minutia fills the empty moments life in the small town Seldem as four teenagers seek romance and better sense of what their lives might become. Their lives are a series of missed connections that somehow connect them and illustrate the title.
In Seldem, time and small events go on forever. The characters rotate sides in the sun, or learn to play a guitar, or gather in a parked truck to listen to a wacky radio show called "Criss Cross". The author's writing reflects the tedium. In one instance, there's an almost paragraph-length sentence describing two cups of spilling coffee. "The hot coffee tended, because of the principle of inertia, to remain where it was even when the cups moved on, so that with each thrust, splats of hot, homeless coffee fell (gravity) onto Hector's shoulder, his head, his other shoulder."
The writing is poetic, philosophical, Zen-like, but far from gripping. The unnamed narrator begins the book by telling us that one heroine, Debbie, "wished something would happen" and readers may share that desire before many pages turn. Plot-seeking readers may miss the artistic genius of this novel which changes form often to compensate for lack of action. One whole chapter is written in dialogue, a string of character-descriptive haikus pop up in another chapter. There's a chapter divided into columns that tells two parallel stories.
Readers will likewise be unmoved by the thoughtful teen characters who are captured by thoughts of molecular movement, Siddartha, or find spectacular imagery when absorbed in wondering about the way the world works. Meandering vignettes often star quirky characters and plant little seeds of wisdom. Or Perkins offers sneak-peeks into a character's inner reality that could lead her audience to examine life's truths. My guess is most young adult readers won't be tempted.
Perkins' book is full of surprises and some of the best ones are visual. Perkins, who began her career in picture books, liberally sprinkles pen and ink drawings and black and white photographs throughout Criss Cross. One character tells another about a newspaper article about mentally ill patients painting cats, their portraits becoming wilder and wilder with deepening madness. This might have been lost in text, but will be remembered forever with Perkins' representation of the mild to extreme pictures. Images like these will be far more successful with young adult audiences than Perkins' equally beautiful word images.
John Green's Looking for Alaska is an amazing first novel by a writer who is young enough to vividly remember his poignant years of high school and skillful enough to turn his memories into story. His sixteen-year-old hero is Miles Halter (or Pudge as he's latter dubbed by friends). Miles is a friendless geek, who is determined to reinvent himself when he leaves home for an Alabama boarding school. Green quickly establishes the reality of his unique character and immediately hooks teen audiences by describing his desire to fit in, his passion for collecting the last words of the famous, and his desire for sex and fun. The other characters are equally appealing and young adult readers will understand why it takes no time at all for Miles to become a smoking, drinking prankster who cavorts around with his zany roommate, "the Colonel" and the wild, beautiful, eccentric, sexually-liberated Alaska Young.
Believable, often-humorous dialogue and strong feelings fill the story of a young boy who is far greater than a collection of adolescent impulses. Miles is driven to understand what Rabelais calls "Great Perhaps" as well as what motivates the unfathomable Alaska. His urges for sex are balanced by his need to grasp life's mystery, especially when tragedy interrupts what looked like a romp of a first year away from home.
The story is rough, realistic and compelling. Unlike the other award-winning books, Looking for Alaska has characterizations that connect, conversations that ring true, references to inspire further reading, theological and philosophical truths that speak to young adults and leave them with questions that haunt them. It's got the intensity you'll never find in a slice of life book.
Want to read a few books that deserved their awards? Try these past winners:
Caldecott-winners
Newbery-winners: