Sorry I’m late. I slept in this morning. Man, I love summer.
Actually, it’s quite appropriate that I’d be on the late end of posting since I was late to the One Shot World Tour itself. I saw that Chasing Ray was covering Australian authors and I had recently read an awesome book that came to my library from Down Under. I asked if pretty please I might be included in the blogging extravaganza, and here I am. Many of the blogs are posting the whole list of participants with the links, but (1) since so many are doing it, you probably don’t need it here, and (2) frankly, I don’t know how to capture the text with all the links intact. Instead, I will link back to the originator of the tour, and the full list of participating bloggers, at
Chasing Ray.
On to
Am I Right or Am I Right? by Barry Jonsberg.
If you like your teen angst with a little humor, or a lot of humor, have I got the book for you. This may be one of my new favorites, and I’m only two years late in finding it. Though granted, since it’s an Australian import, those books take time to reach my library. You’d think we were making the author swim them to us.
Calma Harrison has an uncalm life. Her absent father turns up after five years, her mother is keeping a secret from her, and her new best friend is hiding something terrible. Calma tries to solve everything, but it doesn’t always work the way she plans or thinks. The book has hilarious situations and great lines throughout, but it’s not all madcap romp. There are serious undertones of trust and friendship and relationships. But the funny sections are super-sharp funny. Like going to get her hair done fancy for her date, and then... well you should read it, but I’ll give you a quote:
After much screwing up of the eyes and facial contortions, I managed to end up looking relatively normal — a considerable improvement on my usual efforts, where I wouldn’t be out of place in a Picasso painting.
When Calma goes to get a job, I cracked up at the long description of the slow-moving, couldn’t-care-less employee at the wrongly-named customer service desk. Boy, did that strike a chord. Or when Calma gets the job...
I nearly choked when he told me the pay rate. I was under the impression that child slavery had been abolished. A sudden vision came to me — a muscled manager in a loincloth whipping cowering employees for not keeping up with the rhythm of beating drums. I didn’t say anything, though. I even tried to manufacture an expression of unbridled joy at the prospect of working for an hourly sum you’d expect to find down the back of a sofa.
I love how she calls her mom The Fridge, since they primarily exchange notes on the refrigerator due to her mom’s busy work schedule. I love that she invents a Fast Forward and Rewind button for within her book so she can move the story along. I love that she writes poems — after trying to get away with writing poetry badly — for different parts of her life. Really, I love everything about this book, and I can’t recommend it strongly enough.
Am I Right or Am I Right? is actually the second book about Calma Harrison. I read the first book,
The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne, yesterday morning when I woke up ridiculously early and couldn’t get back to sleep (now I’ve explained a bit of today’s sleeping in, so you won’t think I’m lazy). The center of this book is the horrible teacher assigned to Calma’s English class. The kids call her the Pitbull, and while she is mean to everyone, she has a particular vengeance for Calma’s mate Kiffo. Though Kiffo and Calma seem to have nothing in common, they have a special bond that is explained in a small side story throughout the book. Trying to bring down Miss Payne, the two of them get in over their heads, with consequences that are sometimes hysterical and sometimes tragic.
While I personally prefer the teen angst in the second book,
The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne is a great read with wonderful descriptions — some of them with a true Australian flavor. Take the first paragraph of the book, in which Calma is writing an assignment to use similes:
Kiffo’s hair is like a glowing sunset. However, unlike a sunset, it lasts for a long time and doesn’t suddenly turn black and become studded with stars. It is as wild as a dingo on drugs and sticks up like ears of corn after a cyclone. Maybe like a field of corn that is the color of sunset and has been trampled by a whole load of drug-crazed dingoes during a cyclone.
In describing Calma’s overabundant chest, the author uses the imagery of her having a “couple of wombats tucked down there.” The writing is clever, and again sharp-funny. One caveat: Both books are recommended for home reading only, unless you like laughing out loud in public and having to explain yourself. I’ve done that too many times myself, and it never feels less awkward.
Now go take a virtual walkabout of the One Shot World Tour via the full list of participants at
Chasing Ray. Until next time,
ooroo.
Looking over this region would be woefully incomplete without including books by Carolyn Marsden. She’s written about girls from and in Thailand, China, and Vietnam. When Heaven Fell is set in present-day Vietnam with a girl, Binh, who sells fruit and sodas from a cart instead of going to school. Her family can’t afford the cost of the uniform and books, and her tiny earnings make a difference in how much the family can eat that day. She looks enviously at the girls heading to school and longingly at her older cousin’s dress — which she’ll receive as a hand-me-down. Her family lives life on the edge, dependent on the smallest amount of money. 
Posts
