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

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"At three o'clock in the morning on Monday, May first, I used five cans of spray paint to decorate George Washington High with words that proclaimed the superiority of the junior class and a couple crude remarks about the manhood of Principal Hughes. "I misspelled 'phenomenal' and 'testicle.' I also forgot one of the cans, the red one. And I was so flustered, trying to finish before the sun came up, that I didn't notice my wallet was missing until the police arrived on our front porch."

George Washington High School senior Tyler Miller's foray into the art world last spring landed him in serious trouble. The consequences have included the sale of his car; his having worked all summer for Pirelli's Landscaping; his having completed community service by toiling with "Dopey, Toothless, and Joe, the brain surgeons in charge of building maintenance" at the high school; and his needing to report monthly to a parole officer.

"It's a good thing they never found out what I really wanted to do. Spray-painting the school was Plan B.
"The Foul Deed: Plan A involved a bomb, an entertaining smoke bomb that would have forced them to close school on a beautiful spring day. It seemed like a surefire way to become a hero.
"Then I found myself dreaming about a real bomb. About blowing up the building. But don't get me wrong. I wasn't going to hurt anybody. I planned on using a timer so that at three o'clock in the morning the entire building would explode into small, standardized pieces.
"I just wanted to make a statement.
"After a week of planning, I started having nightmares about explosions and timers that went bad. All that broken glass was bound to hurt someone. The fire might spread from treetop to treetop until it hit the neighborhoods around the school, then the stores on Grand Boulevard, and the Buckeye Mall would go up in flames and the police would corner me and there'd be a tense standoff with their weapons drawn, and as I raised my hands over my head, one of them would think I was reaching for a weapon, and they'd blast away.
"I'd be the next dead boy on CNN for sure.
"By deciding to spray-paint a few harmless slogans, I actually saved hundreds of lives and countless millions in damages. But when they arrested me, I realized that people might not understand if I explained that part. I never told anyone. I thought about it from time to time, but I never told."

Tyler has been alternately picked on and ignored throughout the years. But he has now begun getting some real attention from classmates, both for having a bad boy reputation thanks to his arrest for The Foul Deed, and because the summer of manual labor has radically transformed his physique.

One of those who is suddenly paying attention to Tyler is his dream crush, Bethany Milbury, "Holy Goddess of Hotness" and "Alpha Female of George Washington High."

Unfortunately, Bethany's father is Tyler's father's rich and powerful corporate boss. And then there is, "Chip Milbury: Bethany's evil twin brother, four-year lacrosse starter, fairly good offensive linebacker, and all-American jerk who majored in beating the crap out of me in middle school."

Perhaps, by this point, your intuition is telling you that any relationship between Tyler and Bethany is not necessarily headed for a Disney-like happily ever-after ending.

"They hired men with their crab-tree sticks
To split him skin from bone,
But the miller did serve him worse than that,
For he ground him between two stones"
--Traffic, "John Barleycorn Must Die"

If Chip Milbury, his fellow cretins, and clueless administrators who have always ignored the caste system and the jocks' abuse, are responsible for one side of the millstone grinding at Tyler, the other unyielding surface in play here is Tyler's father, Mr. Bill Miller:

" 'Was there something else?'
"I wiped my hands on the front of my shorts. 'Yeah, um...I need to change my schedule.'
" 'At school? Why? Is there a conflict?'
" 'Three APs plus Calc is insane. I'm not that smart, Dad.'
" 'Your grades from last year were good enough to get you in.'
" 'Just barely and only because you and Mom made a big stink about it. I'm not asking to drop all of them -- just one of the APs, or let me switch out of Calc.'
" 'No. You're not changing anything.' He sat down and leaned towards the screen. 'I have work to do.'
"That was Dad code for 'go away.' I was supposed to say, 'Okay,' and trudge upstairs, grateful he hadn't yelled at me.
"But desperate times call for desperate measures. I stepped closer. 'I can't do that level of work, sir. Not in every class. I'll flunk.'
"The muscles tightened along his jaw and up the side of his skull. He inhaled deeply through his nose and rolled his neck from side to side.
" 'You want me to take care of your problems again.' His voice was low.
" 'You guys forced me into these classes. I'm just telling you it's not going to work.'
" 'When are you going to grow up, Tyler?' "

Despite the young man's dark plotting, Laurie Halse Anderson succeeds in crafting Tyler Miller as a sympathetic character through the relationships in his life that work well: The building maintenance guys with whom he's worked closely are really fond of him. His best friend Yoda (Calvin) is a nice kid. And Tyler is both lovingly protective of, and true friends with, his little sister Hannah, the high school freshman.

Many high school English teachers will, no doubt, be ecstatic about Tyler's ongoing obsession with a computer game called Tophet, in which one tries to survive through the sixty-six Levels of Torment.

And while I don't know about Laurie being very comfortable doing visits to schools where she'll be seen by students as responsible for their having to deal with Dante, there is no question that TWISTED is bound to be one of the hottest new young adult releases of the spring season.

Richie Partington
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BudNotBuddy@aol.com