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

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" 'Brilliant timing,' she said. 'Tea's just made.'
"But J.J. walked straight past the pot, which steamed on the range in the kitchen, and the plates of fresh scones on the table. Upstairs in his room, his schoolbag lay open on his bed, leaking overdue homework. He glanced at the clock. If he got up half an hour early the next morning he could get a bit of it done.
"He spilled the bag and its contents onto the floor, and as he set the alarm he wondered, as he wondered every day, where on earth all the time went."
--from THE NEW POLICEMAN

"Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then the one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older
And shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time..."
--Pink Floyd, "Time"

Shortly after I finished reading aloud THE NEW POLICEMAN to Shari, we tried to recall the last entire, new book that I had read aloud to her.

Sure, there are plenty of nights when Shari falls asleep to my reading her a taste from the beginning of some newly-arrived advance copy. Many of these books she'll read to herself, before or after I've gotten my own turn to do so. But to find and coordinate the chunks of time necessary to share an entire 400-page book, given each of our incredibly busy schedules apart and together...Well, it has been a long time. And the years go by so fast with all we try to fit into each day.

"It wasn't just the Liddys -- or the Liddy--Byrnes, as some people called them -- who were finding that there wasn't enough time. Everyone was having the same problem. It was understandable, perhaps, in those households where both parents were out at work all day and had to cram all their home and family life into a few short hours. But it wasn't just the parents who complained of the shortage of time. Even children, it seemed, couldn't get enough of it. The old people said it was because they had too many things to do, and perhaps it was true that there were too many opportunities open to them. Apart from the ubiquitous televisions and computers there was, even in a small place like Kinvara, a plethora of afterschool activities open to them, from karate to basketball to drama and back again. Even so, there ought to have been time for mooching along the country lanes, for picking blueberries, for lounging in summer meadows and watching the clouds go by, for climbing trees and making dens. There should have been time for reading books and watching raindrops run down windows, for finding patterns in the damp stains on the ceiling and for dreaming wild daydreams. There wasn't. Apart from the inevitable few who regarded it as their solemn duty, children could scarcely even find time for making mischief. Everybody in the village, in the county -- in the whole country, it seemed -- was chronically short of time
. " 'It never used to be like this,' the old people said.
" 'It wasn't this way when we were young,' said the middle-aged.
" 'Is this really what life's all about?' said the young, on those rare occasions when they had a moment to think about it.
"For a while it was all anyone talked about, once the weather was out of the way. Then they didn't talk about it anymore. What was the point? And besides, where was the time to talk about time? People didn't call to one another's houses anymore; not to sit and chat over a cup of tea, anyway. Everyone was always on their way somewhere, or up to their eyes in something, or racing around trying to find someone, or more often, merely trying to catch up with themselves."

So it was on the Liddy farm where J.J.'s mother, Helen, is approaching another birthday, even though the last one seems as if it was only a month ago. When asked what she would like for her birthday, Helen wishes for some " 'ordinary, run-of-the-mill time. A few more hours in every day.' " And it will be J.J. who, after learning some of the details of their unusual family history, determines that he is going to somehow make his mother's wish come true.

Set in Ireland, each chapter is accompanied by the sheet music for a traditional Irish reel or jig. (I spent some time online, sampling a number of the pieces.) Already the winner of the 2005 Guardian children's fiction prize as well as the 2005 Whitbread children's book of the year, THE NEW POLICEMAN is a fanciful, mysterious, magical, chock-full-of-music tale about where the time is disappearing to so fast.
(And if all that isn't enough, J.J.'s adventures have also caused THE NEW POLICEMAN to become my all-time favorite "boy and his dog" book.)

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com