Crenshaw: A Fascinating Story Grabbed from the Headlines

Imaginary friends are popular among the younger set. I even admit to having had one myself--when I was confined to on the front porch by a gate taller than me. But, Crenshaw by Newbery winner Katherine Applegate is something else. Applegate takes the topic of homelessness and explores its effects on the kids of a working poor family. Crenshaw isn't just a tale torn from the headlines. It's a story of triumph on a small scale.

Jackson, named for his father's guitar, is a practical kid growing up in an artsy family of former muscians. His parents had put their music group aside to join the mainstream economy, but layoffs and MS [musclar dystrophy] knocked them out of the middle class once and is about to make them homeless again. Being working poor in the US isn't a comfortable lifestyle...unless you can develop a side gig that brings in more assets than low-wage jobs.

Jackson can see the signs and fumes that his parents aren't confiding in him. He wants the truth about their situation, not his parents sugar-coatings. Then, Crenshaw, a seven-foot invisable cat who was his imaginary friend the last time his family lived out of the family minivan, returns. It's touch and go whether Crenshaw will be a help or a hinderance. Creshaw's antics, such as surfing and taking bubble baths, supply the humor that leavens the book.

Crenshaw presents a child's perspective on homelessness with insights readers of all ages can appreciate. Suspensefully written, the book doesn't bore the reader, in spite of a long flashback. 

The first person POV seems particularly appropriate for telling Jackson's misery as he fears his family is going homeless again and his parents won't give him a straight answer. In fact, from the way they are characterized, I doubt if the parents are truthful with themselves. Appegate aptly depicts the problem of being practical in an artsy family by making the characters feel real. [Yeah, the opposite would also be a problem, but it's not the subject of this book.]

The book has lots of reviews, some interesting and some saying people liked the book. You can read a sample of some engrossing writing on 

Amazon      Nook

[Incidently, I can't remember the imaginary friend--just the gate and people telling me what I told them about Jerome. Seems like a surprising number of people listened to a three-year-old. Who knows why?]

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Other Interesting Reading

The Passive Voice guy is one of my favorite blogsters. This week's book had me feeling defensive--like why would a self-respecting adult read a kid's book. I'd have argued that the book told an interesting story. Then, my guru came to my rescue. You can read why he reads kid's lit. It all boils down to an interesting, fast moving story that doesn't bore you. Read his whys here. Anyway, I'm not going to apologize for reading a kid's book.

Another topic of interest to readers is bookstores, especially since there are all sorts of doomsday stories about their eminent demise. Kristine Kathryn Rusch begs to differ in her recent blog: Business Musings: Bookstores (2017 in Review) Since I hardly ever read fiction on a computer screen, I found the blog held my attention and good wishes.

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My Writing Rut

On the Run is off to the editor. Added about a thousand words to the book, but it's still shorter than There Be Demons. Wonder what excuse I'll find "not to write" next.

Thought I'd run an experiment. My free short stories about demons and mayhem are available on kobo. Click here to see. You'll have to scroll down and there won't be any reviews but it gives an alternative to Amazon.

Who Reads Your Books and Why? Or, Maybe the Question Should Be, Does Anyone Keep Them?

Events this past weekend sent me thinking about books and who reads them and why. Then my skippy little mind jumped to children's lit and then about books in general. There are men's books and woman's books and, occasionally, people books that everyone reads. Alexander McCall Smith comes to mind here, but there are others, especially in the mystery genre. I'm sure you could add ten or a hundred to a growing list but would anyone keep them?

This whole train of thought came about when I started sorting through my crammed bookshelves on Saturday and gave up. One reason was I discovered Alan Garner's fantasy, The Moon of Comrath, book two in the Alderley Trilogy, shoved in back of the "S"s. 

Second reason, I sat down and re-read the book. [It's only around 150 pages. My copy of the book is an Ace dated 1963.] 

Third reason, the web caught me with amazing tid-bits of author information, like there was such a thing as an Alderley Trilogy when I went to search if Garner was still alive. Someone's even posted pictures of the location where the story happens. I told myself I wasn't wasting my time since I was gathering background material for my blog.

You can *snigger* if you wish.

Then I looked in a book store yesterday, it seemed like children's lit is getting short shrift. Oh, there's loads of YA sitting around, but new books for 10-12 year-olds seem to be scarce on the bookshelves, especially an assortment of stand alones. Many of the titles even were in existence when my kids were of the age or, worse, when I was a kid. [Yeah, it nice that classics remain in print, but new writers need distribution among the general public, too, besides Scholastic and the library.]

My other impression was the preponderance of runs of single series, mostly appealing to either boys or girls and few that appealed to both, like Harry Potter. Seems to me that there used to be a lot more books that sported a team of boy and girls caught in an adventure. Often this came as a brother and sister or a group of siblings teaming together to solve a problem, each adding their own insights and strengths. Alan Garner's The Moon of Comrath is one of the classic examples of this kind of kid's book, even though it's the middle of a trilogy now.

In my opinion, The Moon of Conrath -- when the Wild Hunt takes to the skies because two kids light a fire in the wrong place at the wrong time -- is one of the better diggings into British folklore to create an absorbing children's story. Yeah I have Cooper and Alexander and others. What's significant: I still have them. Not many authors can be so lucky to have fans who keep their books for years. I give the book 5*****.

I'm stopping here even though I can think of more than a few qualifications and exceptions to my generalizations. But I'm going to keep thinking about the issue. Why? Because I'm thinking of turning the three middle grade novels fermenting in my computer into young adult ... provided I can get the backlog of new stuff written up. The frightening part is I'm not even thinking about the Far Isles Half-Elven stuff which I'm currently revising.

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So what did I accomplish last week. Precious little.