Book: Heaven Is Paved with Oreos
Author: Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Pages: 208
Age Range: 10-14
I loved, loved, loved Catherine Gilbert Murdock's books about D.J. Schwenk (Dairy Queen, The Off Season, and Front and Center). So when I heard that Murdock had written a book called Heaven is Paved with Oreos, for a slightly younger audience, I scooped it up. I didn't even realize until reading a review at Book Nut last week that this new book is set in the Schwenk universe. What a lovely and unexpected gift!
Heaven is Paved with Oreos is told in journal fashion from the viewpoint of Sarah Zorn, best friend and science partner of D.J.'s younger brother, Curtis. It's the summer before freshman year, and Sarah and Curtis are pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend, so that people will stop asking them if they are boyfriend and girlfriend. But Sarah is a bit concerned about another girl from their class who appears to want to be Curtis' real girlfriend, making Sarah self-conscious about, say, going to Curtis' baseball games. Meanwhile, Sarah's grandmother, who everyone calls Z, invites Sarah to accompany her on a week-long pilgrimage to Rome. The trip turns out to be a bit more than Sarah bargained for, but it certainly contributes to her emotional growth over the course of the summer.
So, basically Heaven is Paved with Oreos is a coming of age story, a book about family, and a book about taking baby steps towards boy-girl relationships. It falls to the upper end of middle grade, I think, given the 14-year-old narrator, and a storyline involving the father of Z's illegitimate child, born some 45 years earlier. But it is absolutely perfect for middle school-age readers, I think.
I fear that some fans of the Dairy Queen books will be a bit disappointed by Heaven is Paved with Oreos, because the content is a bit less mature. But personally, I was happy to be spending time back in D.J.'s universe, however I got there. I found myself reading Heaven is Paved with Oreos slowly, because I was just so happy to be spending time with the characters. D.J. is a character in this book, someone Sarah looks up to and gets advice from. But Murdock is quite clear throughout that this is Sarah's story. It's not necessary to have read the Dairy Queen books to read this one, though it undoubtedly enhances appreciation of the book.
One thing that I especially liked about Heaven is Paved with Oreos is how Murdock handles the journal style storyline. She tells you, briefly and without taking you out of the story, where Sarah is when she's writing each journal entry. There's an entry, then she goes somewhere and writes there, then she goes home and writes there, and so on. This lends an immediacy to the narration that works well. One might think to question whether a fourteen-year-old girl would really sit in a cafe in Rome writing in her journal. But Sarah is a strong enough character to totally pull it off.
I LOVE that Sarah is interested in science. That's the source of the bond between Sarah and Curtis, a mutual fascination with physical science (studying animal skeletons, and so on). She's also just ... secure in who she is. She has things she is working on, sure, but she's happy to eat nothing but vanilla ice cream, for instance, and work on projects that other people think are disgusting. Here are a couple of snippets, to give you a feel for Sarah's voice:
"I wanted to be sympathetic -- Paul looked so upset -- but I could not help being reasonable. Reasonableness is a byproduct of a scientific mind." (Page 11-12)
Oh, I would have been friends with Sarah when I was fourteen. And this:
"Lady Z does not eat anything made with wheat. She says the hardest part was giving up Oreos, but they are made with wheat flour, so even though they are absolutely delicious and perfect, they're out. If I ever stopped eating wheat, I would make a rule that I could only be 99% wheatless. The last 1% I would leave for Oreos." (Page 16).
Curtis is, well, Curtis. For a character who says hardly anything, he still feels completely himself. Like this:
"I nodded. Curtis stared at the floor, but that is not unusual for him." (Page 26).
Lady Z is more complex. I like that though she's larger-than-life (not at all a regular grandma), she's also clearly flawed. Part of Sarah's growing up throughout the book involves coming to terms with the fact that you can love someone even if they aren't perfect. As Z is not.
Fans of Murdock's books about D.J. Schwenk will definitely want to give Heaven is Paved with Oreos a look. I loved it, and plan to keep my copy for when Baby Bookworm is older. There are spoilers for the Dairy Queen books, so even though this newest book is appropriate for a somewhat younger audience, readers unfamiliar with the series may want to wait to read the Dairy Queen books first. I think that the whole series is wonderful.
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers (@HMHBooks)
Publication Date: September 3, 2013
Source of Book: Review copy from the publisher
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© 2013 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook.
[...] Something Strange and Deadly is supposed to be a curvy gal–it concerns me that so many covers fail to portray the characters accurately. Why do you think this is? My only guess is marketing teams think more copies will sell if the girl [...]
Ironically, once you mentioned the piece in Tablet Sunday before last, things about size and covers and fiction have all collided coincidentally in my head. I remember reading Tucker Shaw’s Flavor of the Week, and sort of marveling in my head that it was the first book where the male character was outside of the cultural norm in size, and he was in love… but the cover copped out and showed a chocolate dipped strawberry, even though a great deal of the plot hinged on him being overweight.
I was – and have been, repeatedly, disappointed…
Oh my! That is good timing. I’m just mad with myself for not reading this before I wrote my own piece.
Check out the evolution of the cover for Paula Danziger’s THE CAT ATE MY GYMSUIT.
My own beloved copy from the 70s had the top cover seen here: http://jezebel.com/359726/the-cat-ate-my-gymsuit-a-pocket-full-of-orange-pits. The current cover, I believe, is a drawing of a cat.
Interestingly, this 2008 article explains that Danziger was opposed to having her MC on the cover: http://www.printmag.com/Article/Cover_Girls.
The really depressing part is that it seems like half the time the representative object in question is going to be food. Even when that food hasn’t got much to do with the story itself. It’s like someone skims through the book’s description and decide between “Oh well, let’s just put a skinny model on the cover anyway” or “Hmm, what can I use as cover art. Obviously since this character is overweight, the ONLY POSSIBLE OPTION is ice cream.” Either way it’s marginalizing.
Interesting topic! I love the cover that my YA novel, VINTAGE VERONICA, received when it came out last year (and which is the same on the about-to-be-released paperback edition), but it is definitely in the inanimate object camp (a drawing of a dress, based on the fact that the plus-sized heroine is obsessed with vintage clothing and draws pictures of her favorite pieces).
With the exception of HUGE by Sasha Paley (which now has a cover featuring the actress from the short-lived TV show), I can’t think of a book that has dared to break this particular taboo. Carolyn Mackler’s THE EARTH, MY BUTT AND OTHER BIG ROUND THINGS had the title embroidered on the back pocket of a decidedly petite pair of jeans (a good book and a cute cover, but still…).
Even Judy Blume’s BLUBBER, I seem to recall, has never featured a truly fat girl on it (feel free to tell me I’m wrong). The one I remember best had a round-faced girl at the blackboard in a loosefitting dress with her classmates laughing at her… the current cover has a tiny whale motif that looks like in belongs on a polo shirt.
HOLES pops to mind, too. Not just because the cover doesn’t show much of Stanley (only his head, on the hardcover), but because they didn’t even attempt to make Shia Labeouf appear heavier at the beginning of the movie! I feel like it’s key to Stanley’s character that digging the holes, and suffering for it, made him fit enough and determined enough to carry Zero up the mountain.
I’m a writer and a teacher, and I once read a draft of a story to a group of fourth and fifth grade girls. The protagonist in the story (which a friendship/mystery story; the character’s weight was not part of the plot) was described as being “a little bit fat and very pretty, with wide green eyes and wavy hair”. Though the girls loved the story, they told me that I should change the description, because nobody would want to read about a fat girl. One of the most outspoken of the readers was herself, “a little bit fat”. I was trying to write about someone who looked like her–but she was emphatic about not wanting to read about a fat girl.
Another time, after reading about about the Japanese pearl divers, I tried to explain that one of the reason why the deep sea divers of Japan were often women was because women had more body fat than men, and the extra fat helped them cope with the extreme cold of deep water. The children were visibly embarrassed, and one child told me I was being sexist, to say that women were fatter than men. It was clear to me that “fat” did not mean, “more flesh” or even “extra flesh” to them. It had powerful negative connotations–it meant ugly or even obscene.
I’m not saying that publishers are right to “correct” or obscure the figures of heavier protagonists. What they are doing is part of the problem. But the prejudice against fat in this country is all pervasive, and has grown much stronger during my lifetime. I have no doubt that publishers sell more books when they don’t put fat characters on the cover.
Nice post, Betsy. I think I told you I recently had an essay on fat kids in kidlit killed. I think whenever you say that anti-chunk bias is harmful to kids, you wind up freaking people out. The “fat is bad” meme is so ingrained that merely pointing out that fat kids experience a ton of bias puts you in perceived advocacy territory.
I’m going to rework it as a reported piece and try again to place it.
Thanks, Anonymous, for your experience from the trenches. I wish I were surprised at your students’ “no one wants to read about a fat girl” feelings. While there are positive portrayals of kids who are fat in YA (tho they’re rare) and cute images of chubby cartoony kids (and badgers, lemurs and infinite other cute visual stand-ins for kids) in picture books, middle grade books seem MUCH more likely to demonize fat kids. And when fat teenagers appear in YA, they DO often — not always, but often — wind up losing weight when they gain control over their lives or get happier. Real life doesn’t tend to work that way.
Erica, as a fat devotee of vintage, I’m very much looking forward to reading Vintage Veronica! I’ve had it for a year but since I always have to prioritize explicitly Jewish books for work, I haven’t gotten around to it. (I did just read When Life Gives You OJ with my kids — no fat, but lots of Jewy — and we all really enjoyed it!)
I’m somewhat torn about this, because I actually really hate covers with pictures of people on them. So I prefer the object covers to the people ones. But if there is going to be a person on my book, I want the person to look like they’re supposed to.
The title of your blog post will most likely be the words written on my tombstone