Feeling Sorry for Celia

I guess I’m not the only one who really enjoys novels that unfold through letters and other personal documents, because Jaclyn Moriarty’s Feeling Sorry for Celia (2001) is still flying off the shelves. Told entirely through letters, post-its, memos, anonymous love notes, faxes, and other bits of written communication to & from 15-year-old Elizabeth Carry, Feeling Sorry for Celia is a wonderful, funny coming-of-age story.

The details about Elizabeth’s life jostle for position like unruly puzzle pieces as we read messages from her Mom (always at work), her Dad (gone since she was a baby, now back in town and wanting way too much attention), her new penpal (Christina, a breath of fresh air from the wrong side of the tracks), her almost-boyfriend (and fellow long distance runner, Saxon), her secret admirer (let’s keep it a secret...), and, of course, her best friend, Celia.

Celia is a fairly unusual girl:

So anyway I really only have one friend here, that's Celia, and I promise you she is most DEFINITELY not a nice private school girl. She's kind of weird actually. She's always getting into trouble because she gets bored really really easily So she always wants to try something new, like shaving her head or chopping down a tree or taking apart the kitchen so she can put it back together (she did that to my kitchen actually, and it took us six months to reconnect the dishwasher).

My mum says it's because Celia has an attention span the size of a sesame seed.

Celia's mum says it's because Celia's identity is unfurling itself slowly, like a tulip bud, and it's a breathtakingly beautiful thing to see.

At the start of the book, Celia has run away to join the circus, where she is training to be a tightrope walker. Elizabeth and Saxon “rescue” her, and before we know it, Celia and Saxon are dating.

Uh oh. With her best friend dating the guy she has a crush on, Elizabeth is ready to branch out. Things happen, lives change, secrets are revealed, and, courtesy of Moriarty’s letter-by-letter style, we have a front row seat to what each character is up to.

My favorite letters are the imaginary ones: the earnest, hilarious exhortations to Elizabeth from Elizabeth, written by the likes of The Cold Hard Truth Association, The Best Friends Club, The Association of Teenagers, The Society of High School Runners Who Aren't Very Good at Long-Distance Running but Would Be if They Just Trained, etc.

Dear Ms. Clarry,

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to join our Society.

We have just found out about your holiday. It's so impressive! You had four assignments, an English essay, and a chapter of math to do. And you didn't do one single piece of homework!

Fabulous!

Also, we have a feeling that you have a history test today. And you're trying to study now? On the bus? With the Brookfield boys climbing onto each other's shoulders to get to the emergency roof exit? And with Celia about to get on the bus at any moment? And you think that's going to make a difference!!!

That's really very amusing, Elizabeth. We like you for it.

You're perfect for our Society and we're very excited about having you join.

The Society of People Who Are Definitely Going to Fail High School

Feeling Sorry for Celia is great stuff. Try it, if you haven’t. Tell us about it, if you have.

P.S. There are a lot of novels written in this format (aka epistolary novels), including Dracula, The Screwtape Letters, The Color Purple, The Boy Next Door, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Age 13 3/4, and among my very faves, The Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Parrotfish

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas of her junior year in high school, Angela McNair made some changes. Not just her hairstyle. Not just the sort of clothes she wore. Not just the people she hung around with. And not just her name. Nope, Angie changed way more than that. She changed her outside to match her inside: she changed her sexual identity. Sort of like the parrot fish.

Parrotfish, by Christine Wittlinger, has been on the shelf since last September. Well, not really on the shelf very much; it’s the number one most-taken-out new novel of the 2007/2008 school year -- beating out Bloodline, Life As We Knew It, and The Secret Hour by just 1 circulation. In a story all about family, and self, and coming of age, Wittlinger takes us on a rare journey through the early experiences of a female to male transsexual teen.

Angie tells her family first. Her Dad, with whom she has always done lots of guy stuff, is pretty zen. Her sister, Laurie, is mad and mortified. Her brother, Charlie, hardly looks up from his video games. Her Mom is absolutely stunned, and can’t even really look Angie in the eye. Angela, daughter and sister, is now Grady, son and brother.

When Grady goes back to school after Thanksgiving, he finds out pretty quickly that his spot in the pecking order has changed. He encounters equal opportunity harassment, from male and female alike. Some of his teachers can deal, and some cannot. People he never knew very well treat him better than most of his old friends. “ ‘Angela was my friend, but I don’t know who Grady is! I’m sorry, but I can’t call you that in front of people. I can’t be a part of this whole thing. It’s just too bizarre.’ "

In this novel, we spend a month in Grady’s head, silent observers as he grapples with the realities of his identity change. There are bad times, but nothing unspeakable. There are good times, but nothing ecstatic. There are a lot of uncomfortable, in the middle times. And there are the no-longer-mundane details associated with living a male life in a female body: where to go to the bathroom, changing before and after gym class, etc. Not to mention the complications of falling in love. And parts of Parrotfish are pretty funny. The wildly excessive Christmas prep at the McNair household and Grady’s wry inner monologs (“Does a Hamlet fish carry around a skull and ponder suicide?”) come to mind.

If you haven’t read Parrotfish, I have carefully not told you how everything comes out. If you have, why not take a minute to comment and tell us what you thought of it?

Insatiable - The Compelling Story of Four Teens, Food and Its Power

Samantha, Hannah, Jessica, and Phoebe wrestle with their eating demons in the pages of Eve Eliot’s “self-help novel,” Insatiable. More popular at HHS than its sequel, Ravenous, Insatiable is second only to The Best Little Girl in the World among our eating disorder novels.

Samantha, the blonde, athletic cheerleader, starves, cuts, and vacuums compulsively. We meet her in the first 3 sentences of the book: “Samantha's heart nearly stopped as she realized what Brian was actually telling her. Because there were other students all around them, milling past carrying books and backpacks, she forced herself to breathe evenly, look normal, perfect as always. This is what was expected of her, the blondest cheerleader with the cutest boyfriend, the prettiest girl at Maple Ridge High.”

Phoebe, everybody’s pal and nobody’s girlfriend, is a great student who feels best when she eats. Her fashion photographer Dad has plenty to say about that, and with predictable results.

Jessica is artistic, rebellious, and captivated by style and fashion. She gets along on coffee and Diet Coke, and is now too weak to climb the stairs to English class. Her claim to fame? “I tell myself how special I am,” said Jessica. “I tell myself I’m different because I can be hungry and still not eat.”

And Hannah, another top student, swamped with grief over her Mom’s death, is a beautiful girl who binges and purges to keep herself that way. She is very good at keeping secrets.

Each story has been intertwined, girl by girl, chapter by chapter, to produce a work that is at once gripping, melodramatic, and clinical. Eliot is a practicing psychotherapist, and her novel is based on real case histories. She has also survived an eating disorder, which adds to Insatiable’s authenticity.

While many readers are very enthusiastic about this one, more than a few think Insatiable is too much therapy and not enough plot. What do you think?

Katie.com

Katie.com burst on the reading scene in 2000, just as national concern over child safety on the internet reached critical mass; since then it has remained a popular read here at HHS. In an emotional memoir of her experiences with an internet predator, 17-year-old Katherine Tarbox plunges us into the world of her 14-year-old self: wealthy and talented, lonely and naive.

So how does an 8th grader from upscale New Canaan, CT, an athlete competing at the national level, and a concert pianist, end up in a Dallas hotel room with a middle-aged groper? Easy. She falls in love.

How VALLLEYGUY met ATARBOX, paid attention to her and encouraged her in the face of troubles at home and at school, makes up the first part of the book. In what seems like no time at all, we are in that Dallas hotel, wondering just how badly Katie will be hurt.

More damage is done when Katie resumes her life in New Canaan. Her mother is wildly angry. Her step-father thinks she ruined VALLLEYGUY’s life. The folks in town who don’t think she’s a slut think she’s crazy. There’s a trial. And Katie blames herself: “I needed to say that I was guilty, maybe even as guilty as the man who was going to jail for our relationship.” Relationship.... Yikes.

Katie.com is a cautionary tale on many levels, perhaps the least of which is the threat of internet stalking. I take the “blame the victim” mentality exemplified in the second half of the book to represent the greater danger. Do you?

Peach Girl 1

Poor Peach Girl. As the first volume of Miwa Ueda’s shojo manga series begins, it looks like the book will be going out way more often than the girl. And, in fact, Peach Girl 1 is often out on loan, as reader after reader explores the turbulent world of Peach Girl’s school days.

Momo (“peach”) is our heroine. Blonde and tanned in a culture that values dark hair and pale skin, she is shy and uncomfortable around her classmates. And no wonder, since her appearance labels her as a “beach bunny” with questionable character and loose morals.

Momo loves Toji, but is afraid to tell him so. Sae, who pretends to be her only friend, is a rumor and gossip specialist who wants Toji for herself. And then there’s Kiley: handsome, older and dangerous. Here we go into a series of romantic cliff-hangers loaded with betrayal and misunderstanding -- the sort of thing that will sound a bit familiar to anyone who has ever struggled to fit in at a new school, learned the hard way that not all friends are true friends, or fallen in love.

There is wit amidst all the typical shojo melodrama. Momo, a swimmer and softball player (which accounts for the bleached hair and deep tan) slathers on the sunscreen to no avail. And in a subplot that has her coincidentally saving the lives of her love interests, Momo remarks “Why does my fate always take me to people who are drowning?” Why, indeed....

Ueda won the Kodansha Manga Award (Shojo) for Peach Girl, and no wonder. Her art is a compelling blend of realistic background scenes and fantastic, emotionally-charged character drawings.

The entire Peach Girl series is coming out on DVD, too.

If you like shojo, give this one a try -- and tell us what you think. I checked out a few collections of Peach Girl reviews, and I have to say that the reviewers either loved it or hated it. No one sat on the fence. Where do you sit?

Big Mouth and Ugly Girl

Wow, all he did was say he could set off a bomb or kill someone, and that was only because he was ticked off about his play and the spring competition. It was just a little artistic frustration, really. But "Big Mouth" Matt spoke a little too loudly in the school cafeteria and someone heard him, and before he knew it, Matt was pulled out of class by the police, no less. Sure doesn't pay to make enemies, does it?

"Ugly Girl" Ursula, of the fiery red moods and superstar athletic status, heard him, too, and tried to explain everything to Mr. Parrish, but he was only the principal. Although Matt was cleared and sent back to school, the whole community knew, and the rumors flew. It was all over for Matt except that Ursula caught him at the ravine edge after those jerks had beaten him up, and, well, they started this thing. You know, first it was just the telephone, and then it was going out. They got coffee, they went hiking, they went to the Museum of Arts and Design. All that was cool, but his parents had already sued the school, and Ursula, pressed for the truth by Matt, admitted to him that the suit was just plain wrong.

Joyce Carol Oates wrote her first young adult novel about some pretty hot topics. Sign on and answer the question truthfully: what would YOU have done?

Speak

Most of us have been to at least one bad party. And I bet all of us have had a crummy day at school. (Remember Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day?) Well, Laurie Halse Anderson’s 1999 novel, Speak, takes the un-fun party and the awful school day to new heights. It’s one of the most-borrowed books in the fiction section. (It’s also a movie.)

Melinda starts off her ninth grade year under the cloud of something that happened at a summertime party. Something so terrible that she called the police, who broke up the party, which outraged the other party-goers. In the space of a phone call, Melinda has become an outsider, shunned and heckled by her peers -- even her best friend, Rachel, dumps her. “I am OUTCAST,” she realizes. Why did Melinda call the cops? She can’t think about it. She can’t talk about it. Soon, she cannot speak at all.

Speak is organized by quarters, like the school year. We see the students, teachers, halls and classrooms from Melinda’s point of view, reading her thoughts. We are outcast with her, and burning to find out what actually happened at that infamous party.

Lest you think that Anderson’s novel is one long, miserable slog, I have to mention how funny it is. Yes, really. Melinda has a wicked wit, and a spot-on take on almost every aspect of high school life. From the cliques (the Future Fascists of America, the Marthas, the Suffering Artists...) to the teachers (good old Mr. Neck!) to the ever-changing school mascots and the way her parents talk in post-it notes, you will find plenty of humor to break up the suspense and sadness.

If you’ve read Speak, we’d love to see your comments. Fire ‘em in!

Twilight

We've hardly seen Twilight: A Novel, by Stephenie Meyer, on the shelf at all this Fall -- someone's always reading it. Not your average vampire story, Twilight blends passion, suspense, and school into a feverish stew that will have you hanging on every word. This, my friends, is a whole new take on what can happen when there's a new girl in a small town high school.

If you've read Twilight, hit the comment button and register your thoughts.