Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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"I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business."
-- Henry David Thoreau

"And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."
-- Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock"

It's just over half a mile as the crow flies from my goat barn and orchard to the border of what was once Morning Star Ranch. Founded by Lou Gottlieb on thirty hilly acres of redwoods and apple trees he'd purchased outside Graton, California during his peak of success as a member of The Limelighters, the counterculture commune achieved international notoriety when it was featured -- including provocative photographs -- in the cover article, "The Hippies," from the July 7, 1967 issue of Time magazine.

"And we're not the way you used to be when you were very young"
-- Paul Kantner, "Mau-Mau (Amerikon)"

Ever since those Summer of Love headlines of forty years ago, there has existed a division in America between those who perceive hippie ideals to be radical, hedonistic, and irresponsible; and those who believe that sharing freely with others, offering a helping hand to others, and looking past skin colors, body shapes, name brands, and sexual identities to find a child of God in everyone, are good examples of real "traditional values."

Decades later, during my years of working in the bookstore downtown in Sebastopol, it was a trip to get to know and booktalk to the book-loving and idea-loving members of my adopted community, including many who'd arrived in those mythical, magical days whilst I'd still been a youngster back East in middle school and high school. I was forever being awed by the sudden appearance in the store of such local icons as Bill Wheeler and Micky Hart.

"Reach out your hand if your cup be empty
If your cup is full may it be again"
-- Robert Hunter/Jerry Garcia, "Ripple"

Many of the ideals of The Sixties live on today in people living in and around little towns out here like Sebastopol, Graton, Occidental, and Freestone. There is still a place where people like to share. It is a part of the world where there is an abundance of stores and restaurants that cater to those of us who have now spent decades trying to eat vegetarian, unprocessed, and organic. And for all the people I know around here who eschew television sets in their homes, I expect that there are some Third World countries with far more TVs per capita.

"I was thirteen the first time I saw a police officer up close. He was arresting me for driving without a license. At the time, I didn't know what a license was. I wasn't too clear on what being arrested meant either.
"But by then they were loading Rain onto a stretcher to rush her in for X-rays. So I barely noticed the handcuffs the officer slapped on my wrists.
" 'Who's the owner of this pickup?'
" 'It belongs to the community,' I told him.
"He made a note on a ring-bound pad. 'What community? Golf club? Condo deal?'
" 'Garland Farm.'
"He frowned. 'Never heard of that one.'
"Rain would have been pleased. That was the whole point of the community -- to allow us to escape the money-hungry rat race of modern society. If people didn't know us, they couldn't find us, and we could live our lives in peace.
" 'It's an alternative farm commune,' I explained.
"The officer goggled at me. 'Alternative -- you mean like hippies?'
" 'Rain used to be one, back in the sixties. There were fourteen families at Garland then. Now its just Rain and me.' "

Capricorn (Cap) Anderson is a kid who has never watched television nor eaten meat. His parents died of malaria in Namibia years ago, while serving in the Peace Corps. Back when Cap was really young there was still a thriving community at Garland Farm. But that is no longer the case.

When Cap's grandmother, Rain, slips from the branches of a tree while she is picking plums and breaks her hip, thirteen-year-old Cap is suddenly left without the only person in his life and is given over to a social worker for temporary placement. Unbeknownst to most of the story's characters, that social worker, Mrs. Donnelly, had long ago been a child (named Floramundi) at Garland Farm before her parents soured on the hippie trip:

"I was five when my family joined the community -- too young to remember any life before that. For six long years, that place was my universe. I ran around barefoot, wearing peasant dresses, shared my parents with other kids, protested the Vietnam War, did farm chores, and listened to a whole lot of sitar music."

Now decades later, Mrs. Donnelly well remembers Garland's tyrant-of-a-teacher, Rain. Mrs. Donnelly takes Capricorn into her own home and enrolls him in the local middle school.

"Well here's another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul."
--The Beatles, "Glass Onion"

So you have this thirteen-year-old who is academically stellar -- in those curricular and "practical" areas of study that Rain has deemed to be important -- and who is thoroughly clueless about so many "practical" aspects of surviving as a Twenty-first Century middle school student. This clearly makes for a tale of great humor and slapstick when such an innocent and kind kid is fed into the meat-grinder of middle school cliques, social food chains, and bullies.

It is also a total crack-up to see Cap's fascination with Trigonometry and Tears, Mrs. Donnelly's sixteen-year-old daughter's favorite after-school soap opera:

"When I watched it, everything around me seemed to disappear, and the whole world was happening on that little screen. Those people were so real, with true-to-life problems and big decisions that had to be made. I kept wishing that the characters had someone like Rain to turn to in times of trouble, but they didn't. They had their parents, who were even more messed up and confused than the kids were. It was a perfect symbol for life outside Garland -- huge, complicated, and full of hidden traps and pitfalls. Plus, every now and then, the program stops and the TV tells you about all the great things you can buy, like a miracle cream that makes it scientifically impossible to get a pimple."

But, of course, as with any significant piece of social satire -- and SCHOOLED is both an exceptional middle school read and an exceptional piece of social satire -- you have a whole 'nother level of societal issues to be contemplated and debated and even taught.

An underlying issue encountered in SCHOOLED, one that has perplexed me for decades, is this: I understand the desire to remove oneself and one's family from the consumerism, the rat race, the competition, and the corruption that was rampant in the Sixties and has only gotten far worse since then. Many who practice the lifestyle in which Rain has raised Capricorn honestly believe that they are setting an example by modeling the manner by which everyone should live. But others would question whether it is moral to, in effect, ignore oppression, tyranny, intolerance, and war by removing oneself (and one's voice) from society.

Having grown up being affected by the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War on the nightly news, I found myself as a teenager who was in tune with some of the Back-to-the-Land philosophy, but who was unwilling -- back then and still today -- to toss the TV out or to refrain from watching and speaking out about what is happening in the world. But that's just me.

SCHOOLED, told from the points of view of Capricorn Anderson and a cast of adolescent and adult characters who come to know him, will provide readers with a lot of laughs and some serious questions about what in the way we live is really important.

Richie Partington, MLIS
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