Throwback: The Great Gilly Hopkins

I found The Great Gilly Hopkins amongst my pile of books I own but have yet to read.  It's shiny Newbery Honor gleamed up at me, guilting me into finally reading it.  I'm glad I did.

Gilly's the stereotypical "I don't care about anyone but myself" foster child, moved from house to house and just wanting to go back to her mother in California because she's convinced herself that her mother wants her back.  Spoiler alert, she doesn't.  Gilly is brought to Ms. Trotter, a woman who makes it her mission to right the lives of poor foster children.  Yes, it seems like it's setting itself up to be a modern Little Orphan Annie, but then Katherine Paterson jerks the rug out from beneath you.

First, Gilly doesn't go through the formulaic routine of acting like a brat, encountering a magical moment where someone believes in her, and then becoming an angelic figure.  She still acts like a rotten brat, but Paterson fleshes out her leading lady. Despite maintaining her tough exterior, Gilly internalizes the expectations she assumes others have of her and does the opposite. Simple example: Trotter doesn't tell her to brush her hair and Gilly interprets this as Trotter thinking Gilly incapable of looking presentable.  To combat this, Gilly brushes her hair and goes to school to show that she can be presentable.  This pattern occurs throughout the novel, turning Gilly into more than a grouchy foster child despite her every intention to remain one.

Secondly, and spoiler alert, there's no happy ending. Gilly doesn't have a happy reunion with her mother, nor does she get to stay with Trotter and the makeshift family she could finally define as home.  Gilly is forced to live with her grandmother (due to Gilly's previous actions) and despite her vociferous protesting, she can't beat the system.  Despite this unhappy ending, Trotter reassures Gilly, and by proxy, the reader, that it's just how life works.  There are ups and downs, but you have to make the most of everything.

Apparently, a movie is in the works with Kathy Bates and Danny Glover, presumably playing the parts of Trotter and Mr. Randolph (the blind neighbor) respectively.

Halloween Throwback! Sweet Valley Twins and Friends

The Haunted Burial Ground is a "Super Chiller" edition of the seemingly endless Sweet Valley series.  I read (or reread, I honestly can't remember because there are so many of these books) this book last night and I am having mixed feelings about the experience.

On the one hand, it was a great book to feed my current 90s nostalgia mood (I was a Tamagotchi for Halloween and I've been watching Frasier every night lately).  The distinctly opposite personalities of the twins, Elizabeth and Jessica, were fun to relive.  But with the twins came the flood of awful memories of "The Unicorns" and the annoying members who make up that group.  Ugh.

The book also reminded me of some of the cringe-inducing dialogue.  Take, for instance, Elizabeth's meeting of the plot-important new Native American student, Kala:

"That's a pretty name," Elizabeth commented.
 "Thanks. It was my grandmother's name. She was Native American."
"Wow. That means you're part Native American."

Yeesh. Nothing like spelling out the obvious.  Then there's this quote from when the twins' mother scolds The Unicorns for being too loud during their sleepover:

"We want you girls to have fun, but it's late and Mr. Wakefield and I are trying to sleep."

Okay, maybe this one irks me because I'm from Boston, where we come prepackaged with a different set of manners; manners that include excessive swearing (both celebratory and anger-induced) and punching as a form of greeting loved ones.  But I've never heard any of my friends' parents refer to their spouse as Mr. or Mrs.  Asshole, yes, but never Mr. or Mrs. 

The text doesn't get much better than that and the story itself is a little meh.  Jessica wants to throw a Halloween party so a cute boy will come, she decides to hold it in an abandoned shack that her friends promise to clean up (abandoned meaning structurally unsound and trashed), and they ultimately discover it's on a burial ground - which is the major twist and also the title of the book.  Remember how Kala is part Native American? In case you've forgotten, Elizabeth performed scholarly work to figure it out (see above).  Well thanks to her heritage, she receives messages from "the old ones" full of warnings not to disturb their peace.  Yikes.

Do I still love the memory of Sweet Valley series? Yes. It was one of the series I would read by moonlight when I was supposed to be asleep.  I used to get in trouble for that until my parents realized they should just let me leave the lights on and pass out while reading.  But I don't think I would ever outright recommend this to a child to read, unless they were specifically looking for an easy, cheesy book to pass the time.  OR if they wanted to look at the ridiculous trends of the 90s. 

I snagged Christmas and Valentine's Day themed Sweet Valley books as well, so I'll revisit the cheesiness for those holidays!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Throwback: The President's Daughter

It being an election year and all, coupled with the fact that I love to reread books I loved when I was a youngin', I decided it was a great opportunity to reread Ellen Emerson White's The President's Daughter.

It's a world where the first female president of the US is elected and the story examines the impact it has on her family, not on the country.  I like that.  The arc about the sometimes strained relationship between Madame President and her teenage daughter Meg can sometimes get a little tired, causing you to sometimes want to scream at the book "WOULD YOU NOT BE UPSET IF YOUR DAD WAS PRESIDENT AND AWAY ALL THE TIME?!" but it's still a fun, quick read when it delves into her relationship with the rest of her family and her friends.

I learned recently that it's the first in a series of four...the first written in 1984 and the fourth written in 2007.  I cannot wait to read the rest of the series to see just how different the first and last are. Why? Because The President's Daughter is incredibly dated. That's not a bad thing.  It's fascinating really. 

1984

2008

Here's what I really love about the book:

-There are about 100 references to Tab.  TAB.  Teens today don't know what Tab is.  I didn't even know what it was when I first read this book in the 90s.

-There's obviously no mention of social media. The campaign managers constantly remind Meg and her brothers to be on their best behavior because their every move will be scrutinized. That is completely false.  Well, for the time the book was written, it's true.  But compared to the live-tweeting that takes place these days, hese kids practically live in the middle of nowhere.  There's a scene where the opposition's children decide to throw a tantrum and knock things out of Meg's hands and threaten them in public. That would NEVER happen today and if it did, it would be all over Twitter in a matter of seconds.  It would probably be Instagrammed too, because that's a thing.

-The way the campaign works is also completely different.  In real life,not a day goes by that my in-box isn't flooded with e-mails from the Obama campaign, that I don't read a bunch of articles about what Obama's family is doing, that I don't look at memes that compare Mitt Romney with Lucille Bluth, etc etc (my personal beliefs, although it's pretty clear that I'm a crazy liberal).  In this book, there's a more obvious separation between the candidates and the public.  That is unheard of today. 

-The last part that made me love this throwback experience was that the first half of the book takes place in Boston, something I either glossed over years ago or just plain forgot.  The references to landmarks that I pass daily made it a pleasant reading experience.  It also resulted in a lot of laughter.  Case in point: On the T, Meg takes the Newton line from Government Center to Chestnut Hill and it takes 20 MINUTES.  I actually laughed out loud on the T when I read that.  It's more like a 20 minute wait for that T to show up and then you spend 20 minutes at the Fenway stop while pushy Red Sox fans figure out how to board. 

All in all, this throwback made me happy.  I think it's definitely worth reading, not because it's a work of art, but because it's fascinating to compare a pretend 80s presidential campaign to what's going on around us now.