Hello, dearest readers. What follows is an interview with Libba Bray, author of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy. (The third book, The Sweet Far Thing, recently came out. You can see our review of it if you scroll down.) We asked her 13 questions, because 13 is a most excellent number. So, read on, the Dark Lord commands thee! (Warning: VERY LONG POST.)
Interviewingly yours,
1. What made you want to become a writer? Why did you choose to write YA/ historical fiction/ fantasy?
Hmmm, what made me want to be a writer? Could it have been the fabulous Special Writer Platform Shoes? The matching "Writer at Work" cape? The chance to RULE THE WORLD WITH METAPHOR AND SIMILE? Maybe not. After all, I've seen "The Incredibles." I know the cape thing is a bad idea.
I always enjoyed writing, but never took it too seriously, and then two things happened that made me realize writing was it for me. The first was my car accident at eighteen in which I lost my left eye and basically demolished my face and had to have it rebuilt. The only outlet I had for dealing with that was a little yellow journal. I wrote down everything I thought/felt/observed in that thing, and it was really empowering. It saved my life, actually. The other thing that made me realize I wanted to be a writer was writing a monologue for an original play that my friend Ed was putting together. The play, "One to the Sixth," was a collection of monologues written by various people, and I wrote a piece about a girl struggling with the not being beautiful in a world that values beauty. I turned it in to Ed, and he said, "Hey, this isn't bad. Why don't you write five or six more of these and we'll make a show out of it." I said okay, because sometimes I'm very agreeable, and that became my first play, "High Hopes and Heavy Sweatshirts." And that was it. I was hooked.
I don't know if I chose to write YA/historical fiction/fantasy or if it chose me. :-) I'm a sucker for anything Victorian and creepy. I just wanted to write the kind of stuff I enjoy reading and I hoped it wouldn't suck completely. Basically, I wanted to write a Victorian "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I love writing YA. I really do. And I love getting the chance to talk with teens. People underestimate teens and it's really annoying that they do that. I think I've never really stopped being in touch with my fifteen-year-old self. We never really stop coming of age, do we?
2. How do you go about doing research for your books?
In a meandering way. I always think about what Tom Stoppard once said to someone. He said, "I only research what I need to know." That's sort of my policy, too, although along the way, I end up getting sucked into exploring other interesting tidbits. I start by googling subjects: women in Victorian-era England, say. Then I see what pops up. Sometimes that will lead me to books or periodicals that can be ordered. (I have an entire bookshelf dedicated to research books.) The Internet also led me to people who could help: Dr. Sally Mitchell of Temple University, Lee Jackson, a Victorian scholar and novelist in England, and Colin Gale, the archivist for Royal Bethlem Hospitalin London. I relied on the largesse and mad librarian skills of several librarian pals, notably Jen Hubert and Phil Swann. And I took a trip to England early on and went to the British Library to do some research. Below is my bibliography. Some of these sources I used quite a lot; others I used only a bit (or ended up using not at all.)
Daily Life in Victorian England, by Sally Mitchell (Dr. Mitchell is a professor at Temple University; she was very gracious in answering some of my questions.)
The New Girl: Girls' Culture in England 1880-1915, by Sally Mitchell
The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England from 1811-1901, by Kristine Hughes
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England, byDaniel Pool
The Victorians, by A.N. Wilson
The Queen's London : A Pictorial and Descriptive Record of the Streets, Buildings, Parks and Scenery of the Great Metropolis, 1896 (I actually got to handle this book at The British Library in London. I had to wear gloves so as not to ruin it.)
Essential Handbook of Victorian Etiquette, by Thomas E. Hill
Victorian London, by Lee Jackson (When it comes to Victorian England, Lee is the man. He and I struck up a correspondence, and he is as gracious as he is smart. He's also a good novelist.)
Moving Millions: A Pictorial History of London Transport, by Theo Barker (Bought this at the Transport Museum in London after taking a tour.)
Manners for Men, by Mrs. Humphrey
Manners for Women, by Mrs. Humphrey
Dickens Dictionary of London 1888, by Charles Dickens (Always nice when Mr. Dickens can be your tour guide...)
A World of Girls, L.T. Meade (A novel about schoolgirls written during the period. Dr. Mitchell turned me on to L.T. Meade.)
History of the Theatre, by Oscar G. Brockett (a former professor of mine at the University of Texas at Austin. Hook 'em Horns!)
The Great Mother, by Erich Neumann and Ralph Manheim
Man and His Symbols, by Carl Jung (I took this to the beach one day and my husband quipped, "A little light beach reading, eh?")
The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell
Paradise Lost, by John Milton ("Oh noes…they be stealin' my heaven bucket!" Sorry. Just a little I Can Has Cheezburger humor for you there...)
The Lady of Shalott, by Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats and Richard J. Finneran
The Bible
The Odyssey, by Homer
Myths of the Norsemen From the Eddas and Sagas, by H.A. Guerber (If you're looking for bloodthirsty, look to the ancient Norse. They can throwdown in the brutality department.)
Lonely Planet: Iceland
Discovery Channel's Insight Guides Iceland (When forming my ideas about the Winterlands, I looked to Iceland. It's so beautiful yet forbidding. And cold. And it comes with a Bjork soundtrack.)
How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood, by Jane H. Hunter
Victorian London Street Life in Historic Photographs, by John Thomson
Presumed Curable: An Illustrated Casebook of Victorian Psychiatric Patients in Bethlem Hospital, by Colin Gale & Robert Howard (Colin Gale is the archivist at Royal Bethlem Hospital, a.k.a. Bedlam, and this book is both a fascinating and poignant look at mental illness in Victorian society. He, too, was enormously helpful to me during the writing of Rebel Angels.)
The Victorian Lady, by B. Rees
The Golden Bough, by Sir James Frazer
The Etiquette of Dress (some little book I picked up in England)
Customs & Etiquette of India, Venika KingslandFodor's Exploring India
Lonely Planet India (I have always longed to go to India; this only made my longing moreintense.)
"Advice and ambition in a girls' public day school: the case of Suton High School, 1884-1924," by Stephanie Spencer, King Alfred's College of Higher Education, Winchester, United Kingdom, Women's History Review, Volume 9, Number 1, 2000 (Periodicals are our friends, and you can order articles online to bedelivered to your own home — huzzah!)
Full Color Victorian Fashions, 1870-1893, edited by JoAnne Olian (Oooh, pretty, pretty... like paper dolls for grown-ups.)
The Temple and the Lodge, by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh
Bulfinch's Mythology The Age of Fable, by Thomas Bulfinch
A Nietzsche Reader, by Friedrich Nietzsche
Siddartha, by Herman Hesse
City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, by Judith R. Walkowitz (Not, it turns out, sorelevant to my books but what a great title, eh?)
London, a Societal History, by Roy Porter
The Templars and the Assassins: The Militia of Heaven, by James Wasserman (I've also had a lifelong fascination with the Knights Templar {blame IVANHOE}, and used aspects of that to shape what I thought the Rakshana would be like. Also, don't mess with the Hassassins, aka, the Assassins. Just sayin'.)
Early Irish Myths and Sagas, Translated with an Introduction by Jeffrey Gantz
3. We noticed that you like Buffy. We love Buffy! In that vein, we were wondering what your favourite episode/season/character is and why. Also, Aislinn wants to know whether you like Spike or Angel better.
Wow, it's been ages since I watched "Buffy." I hope my memory serves. My favorite episodes were probably "Halloween," "Hush" (creepy!), "The Body," which broke my heart, and, of course, "Once More with Feeling."It's difficult to name a favorite character because I think part of what makes the show work so well is the interaction of all the characters, the ensemble nature. They work so beautifully as a whole. But Buffy herself was a fantastic character--flawed and vulnerable and sarcastic and searching. Sometimes you wanted to say, "You are so stupid! Stop that!" and other times you wanted to hug her and say,"You are so bad ass." I also loved Xander. He cracked me up. As for the Spike/Angel question, it's not even a contest with me: I am Team Spike all the way. Oh my. *fans self*
4. Zombies or Unicorns?
Zombies, all the way. Unicorns would only exist so that zombies could feast upon their flesh and fashion their horns into mod zombie breast plates.
5. What was your favorite YA novel of 2007?
Okay, bear in mind that I was in a cone of silence while speed-writing TSFT and that meant not much reading for me, which sucked big time. But I did get to break free for quick gulps of reading. My top four were Holly Black's IRONSIDE, Cassandra Clare's CITY OF BONES, Cecil Castellucci's BEIGE, and M. Sindy Fellin's TOUCHING SNOW. I have so much catching up to do. So, so many books to read.
6. Do you like Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain?
Not nearly as much as a bar called O'Malley's where we'll plan our escape.
7. What was your favorite book when you were a teenager?
Oooh, so tough. I can't name just one. I loved Wuthering Heights, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and The Bell Jar. But there was something about Catcher in the Rye and Salinger in general that just did it for me at the time. I don't know why I identified so strongly with Holden then. I read the book again when I was an adult and went, "Man, this kid is annoying the crap out of me!" But at sixteen, it rocked my world.
8. What do you like most about being an author (other than writing/publishing books)?
Hands down: getting to meet and talk with teens. I love that readers come to my LJ and tell me what they like and don't like, their thoughts and feelings about life, their music/book/movie suggestions. I love that they are so thoroughly willing to be themselves and be honest and that, in turn, has made me brave enough to be more myself, too. Thanks for that.
9. If you could be asked any question, what would it be, and how would you answer? (The Create-Your-Own-Question Question! Hooray!)
That is one of the best questions I have ever been asked. I bow to your awesome powers of interview coolness.
Well, my pal Brenda has a game called, "Which actor & actress would play you in the movie version of your life?" She then likes to answer before you do. (It's her world, we just live in it.) She said the two people who would play me would be Teri Garr and Bill Murray. Actually, I thought that was pretty solid.
10. What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Don't kill off the hot guy. :-)
I would say read everything so you know what's possible, but find your own voice, because no one will write quite like you do, and what is personal in our work is also what is most universal. All those thoughts/weaknesses/insecurities you'd rather not admit to are what make characters who are real and memorable. Remember, super heroes aren't half so interesting for what they *can* do--fly, control the weather, shoot webs, leap small buildings in a single bound, wear bitchin' tights--as for what leaves them most vulnerable: love, pride, self-doubt, anger--all that juicy human stuff. Don't be afraid to go there. In fact, it's your job to go there. My friend Jennifer Jacobson always asks herself, "Is it true yet? Is it true yet? Is it true yet?" I think that's a good question to keep asking yourself. Keep digging until you hit that emotional truth. You'll know when you've found it. Trust me.
11. Who's your favorite Disney princess? Your favorite Sailor Scout?
You're trying to hurt me, aren't you? Admit it. My favorite Disney princess is...wait can I be Maleficent? She's got a kick-ass wardrobe and she can be a dragon! No? I really have to pick a princess? Oh. Okay. I pick Belle. She's got some spunk, and I can't help it--I'm a sucker for the story. As for the other question, I am embarrassed to say that I know next to nothing about Sailor Scouts. But according to the online test I just took, I am Sailor Mercury. Why do I have the sudden urge to rewrite my entire series as Manga?
12. What's your next project (if you are permitted to disclose)?
My next book is called GOING BOVINE. It's an absurdist, dark comedy about Cameron, a sixteen-year-old guy with mad cow disease, who goes on a road trip with his friend, Gonzo, a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf, and a talking yard gnome named Balder who wants to be a Viking hero. They are sometimes joined by a punk rock angel named Dulcie who has a propensity for spray-painting her wings and a love of microwave popcorn. You know, the usual.
13. What's your favorite kind of cookie?
There are no unloved cookies. I want to adopt them all. But oatmeal chocolate chip gets the job done most days.
Today’s interview is with Jordan Sonnenblick, author of Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, Notes from the Midnight Driver and the forthcoming Zen and the Art of Faking It. For plot summaries of Jordan’s novels, see my book reviews.
1. If I had to characterize your writing, I'd say that you write funny books about serious subjects. In the case of Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, I know you set out to write about dealing with a sibling's having cancer. Notes from the Midnight Driver includes coping with parental separation/divorce, underage drinking/drunk driving, healing familial rifts (in several ways) and inter-generational relationships. Did a particular issue come to you first? Or did it start with a particular character?
Notes actually came about because of a whole separate issue. In my job as an 8th grade English teacher, I had a class of students who were totally horrible to a substitute teacher one day. I made them write apology notes, which came out as weaselly excuse notes instead. So my starting point for that book was, “What if a basically good person did something stupid, and then refused to take responsibility?” Then, the day I started outlining the plot, my beloved grandfather got really sick and I had to fly to Florida to be with him in the hospital for a few days. So between the main character's refusal to apologize, and my Grampa's colorful personality, I realized I suddenly had a novel to write!
(My pet theory was that this is an homage to your own grandfather, but I'm interested to hear how it came about.)
Yup, there's definitely a tribute to my Grampa Sol going on.
2. Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie is told from the point of view of Steven, a thirteen-year old drummer who must deal with his younger brother's leukemia and the resulting shift in family dynamics that it brings about.
a. Who do you consider to be the “girls” referred to in the title? Renee and Annette, certainly, but is Samantha one of the girls as well? Why or why not?
I never thought about it, but hey, they're all girls, right?
b. Steven spends much of the book in isolation of one kind or another -- the physical isolation of being alone at home or with his drums, the psychological isolation of denial and later, anger and avoidance, until he learns to speak up for himself a bit and “work on the things [he] can change”. Was that isolation a something you conceived from the start, or did it evolve during the writing (or re-writing process)?
The isolation was absolutely integral from the get-go. I was going on my own experience of my parents' getting divorced during my high school years; there was a six-month period when I withdrew completely. Ultimately, secrets are isolating.
c. Partway through the book, when Steven ditches math class to spend time in the band room with Annette, she gives him a CD of “Take Five” by Dave Brubeck and tells him to learn it -- and that she has something planned for it. What was it that she had planned?
Just that they play the piece together -- no big hidden meaning or anything. That's just a hard tune for a drummer.
d. “Take Five” is not the only jazz tune mentioned by name and artist in this book (or, for that matter, in Notes from the Midnight Driver). Was it something you listened to as a teen, or not until later? Are you actually trying to promote interest in jazz among your teen readers, or just adding detail to particular characters?
The music is in there because playing jazz is what I loved when I was a teenager. And I always wished someone would write a teen book that nailed down how I feel when I play the drums.
Is jazz your favorite music genre?
As a listener, my musical tastes are all over the map. But as a player, jazz is just the ultimate challenge.
3. Notes from the Midnight Driver is told from Alex Gregory's point of view. After Alex gets drunk, steals his mom's car and mows down a neighbor's lawn gnome, he is sentenced to community service at a local nursing home, with the irascible Sol Lewis, a crotchety old man who enjoys insulting Alex in Yiddish.
a. In the “Afterwords” found in the paperback edition of Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, you've said that Steven was a lot like the 13-year old you. I know that your basement houses drums and guitars, and Alex is a guitar player. How much of the rest of 16-year-old Alex is based on your own history (or personality)?
Just his parent-divorce situation. Otherwise, I'm much more Steven than Alex.
b. I was pleased to see Steven and Annette, now older, in Notes from the Midnight Driver, and not just because it was nice to follow up with Steven a little bit. As a former jazz band, stage band and marching band member (piano and percussion, thank you), I so enjoy the positive depiction of band nerds in your books. Are most of the readers that you receive fanmail from involved in the arts, or do you hear from a lot of nonmusicians as well? What is the prevailing view of the musical characters you portray so well?
I get lots of fan mail from drummers, which feels great. And whenever I do a school visit, the band teacher seeks me out to thank me for writing a novel about our weird little subculture. However, probably the most disproportionate segment of my fan mail comes from cancer siblings, followed by parents of reluctant readers who are glad their kids found a book to love.
c. Notes opens with Alex sitting watch over a dying person. Why did you decide to open there, rather than just starting with Alex's misconduct?
It's the old Latin writing trick of starting a story in the middle -- or “in medias res”, as Horace would have said. I figured if it worked for Homer's Iliad, it would work for me. I think that beginning is jarring and disturbing enough to make readers want to know how the story gets to that point.
d. In Notes, as in Drums, the main character has a female friend who becomes a potential love interest. However, you avoid going too far down the romantic path. Is that because you'd prefer not to write mushy romance scenes, or because male readers prefer not to read them?
Neither. It's because I had lots of those inept friend-romances when I was a teenager, so I feel a special knack for writing those interactions.
4. Your next book, Zen and the Art of Faking It, is due out from Scholastic in October. From what I could scrape up on the book, it's about an eighth-grade boy named San Lee who has moved around. A lot. And when he arrives at his latest school, he concocts a way to be different -- by pretending to be a Zen master. Care to dish a little more about it?
Nope. It's my secret, for now. All I can say is that I read Zen aloud to a classroom of teen “test pilots”, and they unanimously said it was my funniest book.
5. What's next?
I'm just finishing off the last revisions on my fourth book. It's part one of a middle-grade trilogy for the Feiwel & Friends imprint at Holtzbrinck. The working title is Dodger & Me, and it's about a boy who rubs a magic lamp -- but instead of a genie, he gets a hyperactive blue chimpanzee as his invisible companion. I've never had this much fun writing a book, so I think Dodger & Me will really make some pre-teens laugh next spring.
6. Speed round:
Cheese or chocolate? I get instant migraines from chocolate, so it's cheese by default.
Coffee or tea? Coffee and tea. Both rule.
Cats or dogs? I’m allergic to cats & dogs.
Favorite color? Blue.
Favorite snack food? Yogurt.
Favorite ice cream? Dulce de leche -- I'm a snobby ice-cream eater!
Water or soda? Seltzer mixed with fruit juice.
What's in your CD player/on iTunes right now? Oh geez, everything but country. My all-time gurus are the Beatles. But I'll rock anything from emo to African choral music.
What's the last movie you memorized lines from? Because I have two school-age kids, I am a huge expert on Pixar movies. My most shining parental achievement is that I can do all the voices from A BUG'S LIFE.
For more about Jordan Sonnenblick, see Little Willow’s interview from Monday, or check in with Jen Robinson tomorrow.
Other SBBT interviews today:
Mitali Perkins by Vivian at Hip Writer Mama
Svetlana Chmakova by Sarah at Finding Wonderland
Dana Reinhardt by Jackie at interactivereader
Laura Ruby by Liz at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
Holly Black by Gwenda at Shaken & Stirred
Hilary McKay by Leila at Bookshelves of Doom
Kirsten Miller by Erin at Miss Erin
Julia Ann Peters by Betsy at A Fuse #8 Production
Carolyn Mackler by Gayle & Trisha at The YA YA YAs
Oh the joys of funny, funny novels. I recently read two of them, by the same guy even -- Jordan Sonnenblick, (former?) middle school teacher and novelist extraordinaire. (Jordan was on sabbatical lately, and I'm not sure whether he's back to teaching or no.)
Of course my title is a bit misleading, as I can't figure out how to post the book reviews next to one another, so they'll be more like "One After the Other by Sonnenblick". Only you can see how that title's not quite as catchy. Nor does it reference musicals. And with all the music inside Jordan's books, I wanted music up there, even if that coinkydink didn't occur to me until this morning, after I'd already decided on the post's title two days ago.
Both of Jordan's books are extremely funny books about serious topics. His first novel, Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie examines the life of an eight-grader whose entire life is thrown into chaos when his younger brother gets leukemia. The second, Notes from the Midnight Driver, brings us a year in the life of a sophomore whose life is thrown into chaos after he decides to drive while intoxicated -- and underage -- and then lands himself in a probationary stint with an irascible old man who is dying of emphysema.
First up? Jordan's more recent novel, Notes from the Midnight Driver, the cover of which features a mischievous looking garden gnome.
Notes from the Midnight Driver is the story of almost a year in the life sixteen-year old Alex Gregory. The book opens with three paragraphs from May, then flashes back to September, coming forward through May to the end of the school year. Ordinarily, that is a thing I despise, but in the case of this book, I totally understood the decision. Because the three paragraphs from May let you know that the main character is sitting in a hospital near someone who is dying. (Really and truly -- this is not a spoiler. It's the first page of the book.)
If you didn't know that, you might not care about the first real chapter, a hilarious romp through the world of underage drunk driving. And no, I'm not kidding. You get the benefit of living with Alex as he makes disastrous decisions (vodka, swiping his mother's car, plowing down a neighbor's lawn gnome, arrest, vomit, well . . . you get the picture). On the one hand, it's funny, because the MC you're hearing from is drunk and finds it all funny. On the other, it's an excellent cautionary tale about drinking and driving, with possible consequences (killing an actual person) front and center.
But if you just launched into the first chapter, in which Alex is already impaired and making patently bad decisions, you might think he lacked substance and moral fiber. But the flashback from May makes it seem like perhaps he's got a little bit of depth to him, and is worth sticking with. And you'd be right.
Alex is a typical teenage kid, willing to make excuses for any and all behavior. Lots of excuses. It's not his fault he decapitated the lawn gnome -- it's his parents' fault for getting a divorce; it's his mother's fault for leaving the house, which contained both vodka and car keys; it's his father's fault because Alex was off to yell at his dad when he damaged the neighbor's lawn; it's his friend's fault for not being available to hang out with him. (Sonnenblick has said that this particular idea -- of a person set on making excuses -- came to him after he asked a class to write letters of apology and almost every kid turned in a letter full of excuses.)
Early on in the book, Alex is sentenced to quite a bit of community service, for which he is to be paid, but all the pay has to go to compensate the neighbor for her expensive garden gnome. Alex's mother assigns Alex to hang out with Sol Lewis, an elderly Jewish man dying of emphysema. Sol's gruffness and use of mildly abusive Yiddish bothers Alex for quite a while, but eventually they establish a rapport. And when Alex brings his jazz guitar along, things get interesting, and we begin to learn more about the difficult Mr. Lewis, and his own guitar-playing past. And, like Alex, we learn to care about him. Which is (again) why that opening page was so important. Because it doesn't take long to figure out who's going to die, and that knowledge shades the reading of the entire book -- even the funniest passages are seen through that prism.
And there are a lot of funny passages, because Sol is a funny alte kacker (we'll go with the more polite "old fart" as its meaning), and a truly colorful character. Also, Alex's relationship with his friend Laurie is good and funny, because Alex has started to notice that she's, well, y'know, a girl, but isn't sure that she's noticed he's a boy. In that way. And really? The letters between Alex and the judge who sentenced him to community service are pretty entertaining as well.
Also good about this book? We get to see two characters from Sonnenblick's first book, Steven and Annette, whom Alex calls "the ka-CHINGS" because of how in sync they are. And it's nice to know that Steven and Annette are doing alright, to say nothing of the update on the health of Steven's brother, Jeffrey.
Which brings me to the next book, Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie. Since I own the paperback, that's the cover I'm showing you:
Steven, a drum-obsessed eighth-grader, has a much-coveted (among music kinds) spot in the All-City Jazz Band, a crush on the hot girl in school, and an annoying six year-old brother named Jeffrey who idolizes Steven. When Jeffrey falls off the kitchen stool one morning and gets a bloody nose that requires medical attention, the family learns that Jeffrey has a particularly insidious type of leukemia.
Within what seems like only minutes, Steven's schoolteacher mother has taken a leave of absence and taken Jeffrey to a Children's Hospital hours away, while Steven and his dad are left home alone to cope. Only Steven's dad's method of coping involves spending more time at his accounting job, and so, in the end, Steven is basically left home alone, and is kept out of the loop, unaware of the medical horrors his younger brother is facing.
Steven copes with his stress by spending more and more time drumming, and less and less time doing homework or anything else. The story really truly takes flight when the school counselor intervenes with a useful piece of advice: "Instead of agonizing about the things you can't change, why don't you try working on the things you can change?" From then on, Steven starts to make decisions . . . he becomes active instead of passive, just the way that Alex (the Midnight Driver), does. Which includes him making up his homework, looking for ways to save money in order to help the family afford the devastating medical bills Jeffrey incurs, standing by Jeffrey, and making new friends at school.
And even though the topics are serious, and even though there are parts that will make you cry, overall this is still a funny book -- one where you'll find yourself rooting for Steven and for Jeffrey. One of those great books where all the characters are nice and round, even the hot cheerleader. No wonder Frank McCourt gave it such an excellent blurb. (And yes, McCourt was Sonnenblick's high school English teacher -- which explains HOW Sonnenblick got the blurb, but not the wonderful content of that blurb.)
