Middle Grade Monday: A Work in Progress by Jarrett Lerner

Image: Simon & Schuster

A Work in Progress by Jarrett Lerner. 368 p. Aladdin/ Simon & Schuster, May, 2023. 9781665905152. (Review of finished purchased copy.)

Sorry for this late posting! Middle Grade Monday features A Work in Progress by Jarrett Lerner. This heartbreaking first-person narrative is difficult to classify. It's notebook design implies a journal, but it's filled with disjointed free verse and sketches depicting Will's fragile mental health since fourth grade, when a cruel classmate fat-shamed him. He withdraws, and tries to make himself invisible by dressing in the baggiest of clothing and, eventually suffers from disordered eating. This honest, unflinching portrayal of what it's like to live as a fat kid in a world that values thinness will make readers reflect on how they might treat others. It's a powerful gut-punch. Highly recommended.

Middle Grade Monday: Jelly by Jo Cotterill

Image: Little Bee Books

Jelly by Jo Cotterill. 272 p. Yellow Jacket/ Little Bee Books, January, 2020. 9781499810066. (Review of finished purchased copy.)

Middle Grade Monday features Jelly by Jo Cotterill. Twelve-year-old Angelica, Jelly for short, does spot-on impressions of her teachers and is quick with a joke. She does so both to keep her classmates laughing; but also to beat them to the punch. Jelly is overweight. When classmates do make hurtful comments about her weight, she's the first to laugh it off. She lives with her single mom who tends to have boyfriends who don't treat her very well. Jelly is also a poet and write poems in her journal, which she shares with no one. 

This first-person narrative is engaging. Jelly is frank and quite funny. Her poems reveal her sensitive side. Readers will root for Jelly as she wrestles with self-confidence and her body image. 

Book to Movie

Of course, the book is (nearly) always better. 

Now that that's out of the way, let me also tell you that I'm not a huge movie-goer or television watcher. Don't get me wrong. I love the movies (not so much t.v., except to watch the occasional movie). I read reviews religiously and always want to go and see many of the latest flicks. Part of the problem is that I'm such a homebody that by the time I get the energy and the time to stay up late and have a movie date, the movies I most want to see are no longer playing. So, I sometimes see them on t.v. Sometimes, I buy them on dvd so I can see them on t.v. when I want to.

Here's part of the problem: when I watch something, I am totally engaged. I am not a talker during a flick. If you try to speak to me, I become unpleasant. My hub and kids are talkers. So, I usually watch things by myself, which hardly ever happens. And now that we have this fancy flat screen with not one, but two dvd players plus a blue ray player, I don't watch dvds or television. I can hardly turn the thing on let alone switch to a component!

My husband happens to be away skiing with #4 son. #3 son happens to be home this weekend and upstairs in the hub's study watching t.v. I did get him to turn on a movie I ordered a month or two back after dinner and before he retreated back into the man-cave.

Fat Kid Rules the World. Starring Jacob Wysocki and Matt O'Leary. Directed by Matthew Lillard. Arc Entertainment, January 22, 2013. 

I found out about the movie because I friend a ton of authors in order to stalk them keep up with what's new with them. Author K.L. Going posted about the movie a while ago and suggested that I "like" the movie page. So I did, which is how I got to see photos and trailers, etc, which was cool. That's also how I learned of it's release in January. I even pre-ordered it. 

You would think that I would've reread the book before watching the movie. I read it way back when it released in 2003. I loved it and have been recommending it ever since. It's a bit edgy for middle school, but there are always readers ready for this one. But, yeah, no. I didn't. I plan on rereading it now, though, with my ears.

My impressions of the movie: Quite a few of the scenes and characters stuck with me these past ten years, and I was happy to see that the movie not only included them, but nailed them. 

But there were  a few changes, most notably the setting - New York to Seattle. That opening scene from the book of Troy imagining headlines in the New York dailies while contemplating jumping in front of a subway was just priceless. Um, that doesn't sound right. You have to read the book to know what I mean. Perhaps the NY dailies was too much of an in joke and wouldn't translate out of the area. I also wondered how all that rich interior dialogue that Troy had with himself would be dealt with on film.

When I realized that the setting was Seattle and the method of suicide was walking in front of a bus, I will admit to a moment of disappointment, especially since the day was beautifully sunny, which, I suppose, was meant to be ironic. I don't know if the ingeniousness of this setting change would've dawned on me had I not travelled to Seattle for ALA Midwinter. I did get to see a bit of the city and was struck by several things: how clean the city is; how many homeless folks there were; and how many talented buskers spent their days on the streets. 

Jacob Wysocki was brilliant. I swear I could stare at his face forever. Matt O'Leary as Marcus was also brilliantly twitchy and charismatic. The chemistry between the two felt real to me. Billy Campbell as the dad, whom I really cared about in the book was also quite good.

I loved the cinematography too, even though Seattle seemed too sunny. 

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I've been up since 4AM and have to get up early tomorrow and need to walk the dogs.
Do look this one up if you have a couple of free hours. 

Butter by Erin Jade Lange

296 p. Bloomsbury USA, September, 2012. 9781599907802. (Purchased)

Butter, is the morbidly obese, sixteen-year-old narrator of this painful, yet riveting debut novel. The reader not only learns quite quickly that he tips the scales at over 400 pounds, but also the humiliating way he earned his moniker. My heart broke for Butter as he matter-of-factly recounts his school day from parking his BMW in the Handicapped spot, through the special desks and the solitary bench seat in the cafeteria, through tension-fraught meals with an indulging mother and distant father. 

Butter's voice is compelling - at turns desolate and snarky, brave and frightfully alone. He's not completely sympathetic, he lies to the people who reach out to him, a teacher, his diabetes doctor, his mother, his friend from fat camp. He's also lying to Anna, the hot, popular girl who has unwittingly befriended his online persona.  

I picked this up on a date night at my local Barnes and Noble. On date nights, I head to the Children's/ YA section and the hub heads to the mystery section. We each grab a pile of books and head to the café where, the first one there snags a table, some lattés and a calor-ific snack to share while we sift through our pile to decide what will be bought. On this particular night, the café was quite crowded. I snagged the last table, which was around the corner and had only one chair. I sat down, texted the hub to say I had a table and to take his time, plucked Butter off the pile and started reading. It was so-o busy that I didn't get on line to grab a drink and snacks. 

A while later, I realized that I hadn't heard from hub, checked my phone, texted him again, saw an empty chair, snagged it for him to sit in, and got back to my reading. Still later, tore myself away, looked around through the blur and realized that it was totally unlike him not to text a reply, so I called and got voice mail. Turns out, he left his phone at home. He had come to the café, bought two coffees, looked around, DIDN'T SEE ME and wandered around the store looking for me. This is the man who looks in the fridge and can't find the butter sitting right in front of him.

Anyway, had I not been totally sucked in, I would've realized much sooner that our wires were crossed. As it was, he returned to the mystery section and drank both coffees. Though I was grumbly over not having coffee and a snack, I do believe I was more grumbling over having to interrupt my reading to look for him. The following day, I had an all-day event to drive to and attend, so my reading was done with my ears to and fro in the car. When I finally returned to it a day later, it was with the rabid curiosity of one engaged in savage gossip. Really. I felt like a voyeur.

And I felt guilty about my interest. Was it prurient? Was he actually going to go through with it? Would everyone who viewed the web page actually watch on New Year's Eve? Would no one alert a responsible adult? No one comes off clean here, including the reader. This is raw and real. I would love to have a group of eighth graders (it's a bit mature for most middle school readers) read and discuss it. 

Click here to view the trailer and stay to check out other pages on the author's web site.

Others have reviewed this more eloquently than I:
Stacked
Literary Meanderings
Novel Thoughts
The Write Path