Which in turn reminds me that I never posted this fantastic 50th anniversary interview with Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer in School Library Journal last October.  They were roommates my age when they wrote and illustrated the thing (which turned out to be one of my favorite things of all time) as a way to distract Norton from the book he was supposed to be writing, and are still friends 50 years later. The interview is delightfully crotchety about the publishing industry and book critics:

Feiffer: Even the good reviews, many of them, indicated that, well, this was a book for gifted children, for very bright children… [B]ut in many cases, the most important responses I got were from kids who had some learning disability they had to get past, and they did perfectly well with the story.  So that whole idea that this was a book only for gifted kids was insane.

Juster: …. And to top it all off, of course, this was 1961; critics said that fantasy was bad for children because it disoriented them…. You had to be very careful about what you put in a children’s book, [because they believed] no child should ever run into anything that he didn’t already know about in a book.

And later:

Feiffer: There was another element in all of this back then, and even more so now. That is, most of what people know is based on their own tight little world, and what they think is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable. And then a book breaks through, as it did with Maurice [Sendak’s] Where the Wild Things Are or with Norton and The Phantom Tollbooth, and rather than learn from that, they think these books are just exceptions. If anything, it reinforces their prejudices.

But one of the wonderful things about children’s books is that a kid can read something and find in the book a friendship, an ally, something he doesn’t have at home…. And then he can look back on this book and others, as one of the big changing moments in his life. If you turned all editorial judgment over to the people in charge, those moments would never ever happen.

The whole thing is very much worth reading.

(I should also mention that Post-a-Day technically ended on Monday. I missed 11 out of  35 days. Oops. Still, it got me out of my posting stagnation, so I’ll call it a win.)

For instance, this. Or oh god, this.

Sometimes they’re zombie novels.

Yeesh.

Fortunately, the book doesn’t stop there. Skyla and her creepy boyfriend want Naomi to come live with them, for reasons that may have to do with baby-sitting the boyfriend’s daughter and may have to do with child-support welfare checks. They don’t want Owen, because he has a physical disability which Skyla finds embarrassing. Gram is legitimately terrified that Skyla is going to get custody of Naomi, so what does she do?

She freakin’ picks up the trailer, hitches it to the truck that belongs to Fabiola and her husband Bernardo, and all six of them take off for Mexico in the middle of the night to try to find the children’s Mexican father. Obviously. And that’s when the story really gets going. Ryan’s descriptions of southern Mexico are gorgeous, and she follows my #1 rule of writing realism for children: Pick a Quirk, Any Quirk.

Without the soap carving, Naomi’s story would just be yet another children’s novel about overcoming an alcoholic, absent parent. Her art lends the story specificity. It turns out that Naomi comes from a long line of carvers who compete every year in a Oaxacan festival called Noche de Rabanos (Night of the Radishes). Of course this is where she ultimately finds her father, and herself.

I normally find problem novels eye-roll-inducing, but I loved this one thanks to carving, Mexico, and radishes. (Check out some pictures of carved radishes. They’re stunning!)

Also reviewed at: Inkweaver Review, A Fondness for Reading, and Books and Other Thoughts.

PJ opens with a terrorist bomb going off in Metro City, killing a number of people, and injuring more — including Jane. She’s fine, but the experience makes her decide she has to be “different,” to move away from her popular-crowd friends and embrace her artsy side. When her parents decide they’re too scared to live in the city anymore and move to the ‘burbs, hours away, Jane is “in hell” — there’s no art in Kent Waters! But then she meets the Janes: three very different outsider girls (who happen to be named Jane, Jayne, and Polly Jane), lunchtime seatmates of convenience who are bonded by Jane into an unstoppable force of public art. Meet P.L.A.I.N.: People Loving Art in Neighborhoods!

Unfortunately, it turns out gift-wrapped monuments and bottles hanging from a tree with messages inside — “sing,” “dance” — look like terrorism to the good people of Kent Waters. P.L.A.I.N. is shut down. …Until, in JiL, Jane applies for an arts grant to produce their biggest project yet.

I want to love these books. (And honestly, despite the lit-crit nit-picking to come, I did love them.) Misfit girls find a voice and true friendship through quirky displays of public art: what’s not to love? But so much of it feels off. The post-9/11 theme of overcoming fear is timely and important, but it comes across as forced — the sheriff, in particular, is far too one-dimensional a villain. Maybe I’m naive, but I didn’t buy that the town’s reaction to P.L.A.I.N. would be so universal and vehement.

But then, this is a classic high school movie. The Janes are right out of central casting: Sporty Jane hates shopping; Science Jayne has to design a pheromone to get a boy to like her; Theatre Jane talks in pretentious quotations. (And yes, they refer to themselves by those monikers.) There’s even the school dance scene where the kids save the record store. There are glimmers of originality in each of the characters — the best is Cindy, the blonde queen of the school who ends up invested in P.L.A.I.N. for her own reasons — but they never really shine. The story deserves better.

But here’s the thing: I loved these books anyway, and my issues with them won’t bother most kids, who will love them even more. It never hurts to read a warm ‘n fuzzy about girls who change their corner of the world for the better. After all, we certainly need more creative, beautiful public art — and many, many more bright and committed world-changers!

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Emi goes, of course, and is caught up in the performance art world of the Freaks. As she discovers, “not being noteworthy at the Factory was kind of like not existing.” And Emi wants to exist, to be noticed. So she reinvents herself as a performance artist, using her grandmother’s clothes from her career as a dancer, and Mrs. Cuthebert’s diary of her miserable marriage. Emi’s act is wildly successful, but there’s only so long before her deceptions — and those of all the other characters — unravel.

My favorite thing about Emiko Superstar is the quiet, casual way it breaks down stereotypes. It’s a Manic Pixie Dream Girl story with a female protagonist — Emi doesn’t have romantic feelings for Poppy (the dreadlocked dancer), but she’s in love with her MPDG sparkle all the same. The family Emi baby-sits for is clearly having problems — but it’s the wife who eventually leaves for another woman, not the husband. While it can be hard to tell if characters in comics are fat, Emi is certainly round — and when she makes her grand entrance in her grandmother’s skimpy ’60s dress, she’s also hot. The story and art make that clear, and never make any excuses for her body. And of course, Emi’s biracial, but it’s just one of the things she happens to be; the story is about other things.

I remember all too well being on the fringe of a group that was just a little older, a lot cooler, and a whole lot more flamboyantly weird than I was. Their dramas — the cutting, the girlfriend who threatened suicide, the friend with a drug problem — seemed glamorous from the outside. I wanted the drama, because it appeared inextricably linked with the gloriously free self-expression. They were my Manic Pixie Dream Girls (and Guys). I love that when Emi is accepted by the Factory girls and goes behind the scenes, she sees the drama for the sadness that it is — but that doesn’t mean that she has to give up her artistic side, or even stop being friends with this group. This book is a clear-eyed, unromantic love letter to freaks and the ordinary people trying to find their place among them.

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