runnerland

Runnerland got a rave-up review in the Canadian Review of Materials journal, known more shorthandedly as CM magazine. This is the magazine read by librarians and teachers, as well as parents and kids, on the subject of writing, especially Candian writing (hence the title). A positive review here is a v., v. good thing. And I am most grateful for it…

Here’s the review. Note that - as the site says - “CM: Canadian Review of Materials is copyright © The Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission.” Okay.

Runnerland

John Burns.
Vancouver, BC: Raincoast Books, 2007.
251 pp., pbk., $11.95.
ISBN 978-1-55192-957-6.

Grades 6-9 / Ages 11-14.

Review by Pam Klassen-Dueck.

**** /4

excerpt:

Anger sparked. “Sensible? You want me to be sensible, Mom? My father just died. I don’t feel like being sensible. Plus you lied to me. You’ve lied to me my entire. Life. You and Dad. And now you want me to be sensible? To be civilized and polite and …… and …… I don’t think so.”

“Peter Weir. You listen to me-”

“No! I’m sick of listening.” He slammed down the phone and cut himself off from the only home he’d ever known.

When his dad dies, Peter Weir thinks that his world has fallen apart. However, the death is just the beginning of Peter’s experience with conflicting worlds. As he rummages through his deceased father’s desk, he unearths an unknown piece of his past. As a result, he starts running. Peter runs, at first, to life on the streets in another city. Then, he begins a different kind of escape: he disappears into his own visions of white, named Runnerland, for which he creates a vivid landscape. The edges of reality become blurred, however, as Peter is ensnared in the world of his mind.

Runnerland, the first young adult novel by John Burns, is an edgy tale of a teenaged boy who struggles to locate his identity. However, this is no everyday coming-of-age story: Peter’s sense of self is abruptly shattered by his discovery of his adoption papers. As he experiments with different ways of knowing himself, consequently, he asks probing questions about the nature of self-identity: “What is a person, anyway? The home he comes from and the people he calls parents? Or the clothes he wears, the music he listens to, the games he plays?” In despair at the lack of answers to his uncertainties, he isolates himself in a new city, rather than hunt down his biological parents –– who, incidentally, do not become an issue in this story –– in order to uncover who he, Peter Weir, really is. The reader is encouraged to wonder along with Peter: Are you the sum of the parts of your parents? Or can you create the person you want to be?

Both the well-paced plot and the interesting characters are strengths in Runnerland. The plot hums, as Peter attempts, first, to find his way among a gang of urchins, and then tries to track his consciousness through his visions. Notably, the strength of the character development parallels the strength of the plot. Peter is a finely drawn teenaged boy, with an irreverent voice, who is hooked on girls and art. He changes from a typical adolescent boy to someone permanently changed by his loss of identity. However, the powerful language used to describe his devastation never becomes trite: “Peter didn’t want easier. He didn’t want things to get better or become routine. He wanted chaos, cataclysmic change, dramatic upheavals. He wanted the sky to go black, the seas to boil, blood to rain down from the heavens.” His character, as a result, pulsates with life. The combination of a strong plot and appealing characters provides the reader with a sense of the harshness of life on the streets, and the subsequent appeal of fantasy as a coping mechanism.

Throughout the narrative, in fact, realism blends with fantasy to the extent that the reader may wonder if, interestingly, Peter’s nemesis/caregiver, Dekman, is really a separate entity or if he is a doppelgänger. Their dark showdown in Peter’s Edenic mind is highly charged and unusual. Peter does save himself from Dekman’s clutches and return to the physical world, but he does not become reunited with a loving family. Although he finds his way from his fantasies to reality, he does so in an unconventional way, much to the dismay of his mother - and to the relief of the reader, who may have expected a trite, storybook ending.

This book is the complete package for reluctant readers: it contains well-drawn characters, an interesting plot, smart writing, and attractive cover art. Runnerland’s realism –– despite the curious absence of expletives in such a harsh environment –– and its ironic sense of humour will appeal to a broad cross-section of young adult readers.

Highly Recommended.

Pam Klassen-Dueck is a Middle Years teacher in Altona, MB.

Big hoorahs to Sarah Ellis, who won the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize for her novel Odd Man Out. This prize was handed out yesterday in Victoria, British Columbia, as one of seven BC Book Prizes.

I read Sarah’s book a couple of weeks ago, and I loved it. I can’t help but feel a small amount of envy - there’s the book that Runnerland will lose to when the Hollywood agents come knocking - but Sarah’s such a nice person, and the novel is so accomplished, that I can rise above my jealousy and just enjoy her success. Way to go!

Here’s the review I wrote:

Odd Man Out
(By Sarah Ellis. Groundwood Books, 162 pp, $9.95)
Congratulations to Sarah Ellis. The long-time Vancouver author and librarian has written a tween novel of great compassion and cheer. Kip, at loose ends while his mother honeymoons with her new (and nice) husband, spends the summer with his grandmother and cousins on the West Coast. Kip’s straitlaced upbringing collides with the anarchic spirit of his grandma’s island house, which, slated for demolition, is the scene of wild graffiti and moderate destruction. Kip confronts his dead father’s true nature during this unforgettable summer, and lays fears of his own inadequacy to rest. All this unfolds with grace through Ellis’s storytelling, which is surefooted and wise.

Just back from a day visiting Whistler Secondary. It was their literacy day, and they’d invited me and another author to talk books, after students from Whister Secondary and Pemberton Secondary gave public speeches. (I’m supposed to give props to Devine, BC, too, I think.)

The speeches were awesome - the kids were so prepared and courageous. They were very persuasive, too, though a lot of the subjects they chose to talk about were pretty depressing. Why do girls dress like skanks? (Student’s word, not mine.) How can we save the planet from global warming? How do you reach out to a suicidal friend? The kids had great answers to the questions, so there was a ray of hope, but it was a relief when one boy did his talk on his invisible, deadly machine - give him world control or we all bite the dust!

The other author was Victoria Miles, a terrific writer. You should definitely check out her novel Magnifico, if you’re intested in history, school, or the accordion. Here’s a review I wrote ages ago, long before I met her. (Handy that I’d liked the book; panning it then meeting her at the event would have been v. awkward.)

The kids did a writing exercise with me after lunch (tough gig: between lunch and going home on a Friday!) They were in Grades 8 and 9 and there were 90 of them! Yes, 90! Tough to keep that many people interested and on track for 1.5 hours, but they were super-dedicated. And even the ones who weren’t so dedicated kept pretty quiet. Still, for the 90% who did the assignment, they created some amazing work - writing a whole scene that introduces a character who undergoes a magical transformation - in that short amount of time.

I’ve asked any of the kids who want to, to post their story. I hope some of them will.

The only downside of the trip was the drive. I’m not a big Olympics booster. The danger of debt, like in Sydney and Barcelona, seems so huge. And I can think of a lot of other ways to spend the money. But whatever. It’s too late to change 2010 now. However, if we’re expecting the world to drive the Sea to Sky Highway, they’ve got some work ahead of them! SCARY! It was pouring rain, foggy and dark. There were construction crews everywhere. Slowdowns from Vancouver to Squamish. And trucks on both sides spraying torrents of water while idiots hung off my back bumper. I sound like a 90-year-old here, but I can feel my shoulders up by my ears even now.

If I weren’t squandering all my time over at Facebook. Where does all the time go?!

Updated!

This just came over from Google Alerts. (I love Google Alerts!)

It’s a review by Melissa, who’s 14, and it was published in KidsWWwrite, an e-zine published by the Kalamalka Institute for Working Writers, out of the Okanagan. (That’s in British Columbia, Canada.) She kindly gave me permission to reprint it here:

What is a person, anyway? The home he comes from and the people he calls parents? Or the clothes he wears, the music he listens to, the games he plays? Maybe it was as easy to change one as the other. Life is unstable, and that felt just about right.

Peter is still young; he has his whole life ahead of him. What would make him throw it all away? Why would he run away from home, and jump on a bus to some destination that even he isn’t sure of? Why, on earth, would he take such uncalled for actions? Well…things change after your father dies. A lot of things change.

Something about this book hooks you right away. It isn’t the strange graffiti-style writing on the front cover. It is the actual story itself. The author’s approach to this particular plot was great! He kept me reading, despite its weird nature. I thought this book was a little odd, slightly confusing…or surreal at times, but that’s what makes the novel so interesting. Although the weirdness was getting sort of creepy, I still enjoyed the book. Another reason I liked this story so much was the gripping way the author portrayed emotion. It was captivating and very real. I would recommend this novel for people thirteen years and up.

This reviewer gives Runnerland four dreamlike stars. John Burns creates an awesome setting in his first book for teen readers. RATING: ♦♦♦♦ 

Coming from an actual, real-live teenager makes this better for me than if it was in the New York Times. Plus, she’s a girl after my own heart: three book reviews in this issue alone! That’s the kind of overworking I like to do. Thanks, Melissa!

PS: Melissa replies to my request for a reprint…

OMG YES! Please, please please please tell him I say yes! I feel faint in the presence of a real author…wow. *gasps* Tell him thank you! And that the pleasure was all mine ^^ Mel

…when Mr. Doyle got an idea for a novel, it wasn’t a stretch for him to write about being a teenager. His book “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” which will be published May 8 by News Corp.’s Ecco imprint, opens with a nerdy high-school senior giving a graduation speech. He then veers from his prepared text and declares his love for the school’s prettiest cheerleader. The 24 hours that follow are either the best or the worst of his life.

“Most of my dreams involve high school or college, along the lines of, ‘I forgot to take the midterm,’” Mr. Doyle says. “In this case, I dreamt the opening scene.”

But when it came to turning this into a book, Mr. Doyle found that his teenage theme brought with it some difficult choices…

The story goes on to say that kids’ publishers wanted to “YA” the novel: “Tell it in the first person, increase the female quotient and write chapters in which male and female narrators alternate. This carefully manicured approach, he was told by one publishing house, was ‘what we usually do.’ “

In the end, he found an adult publisher, even though his main character is only 15. Was that good? Bad? Hard to say. But the cover shows they were maybe a little ambivalent even after they made their decision; does that look like an adult novel?

It’s not all roses in the adult world. As the WSJ points out: it’s a good time to be publishing books for teenagers: “Although there aren’t any hard numbers, publishers say young adult is a hot category at a time when bookstore sales declined about 3% last year. However, determining whether a book should get a young-adult label is more art than science, and brings with it an array of complicated issues for authors, publishers and retailers.”

Personally, I think it’s weird not to know who you want to read your book. I’ve had lots of adult friends say they’ve enjoyed Runnerland, which I’m grateful to hear. (Thank you, all.) And I’m not gonna give back any grown-up’s money, if they want to buy a copy.

But it’s a book for teenagers. That’s who it’s about. That’s who I had in my mind for all those months and months I was writing. And that’s who I hope will read it.

Nuff said.

Reading this terrific book called Where’s My Jetpack, which is all about the great promises that the golden age of science fiction made - like jetpacks, robots cooking breakfast, moving sidewalks, personal space ships, etc. - that never came true. The book is great because the author has a really funny-snarky tone, and because he points out how in fact there are prototypes out there - usually thanks to the American government (hello, DARPA!) - but the general public doesn’t have acess to them.

Interesting dilemma: the book is published by Bloomsbury (publisher of Harry Potter), which is distributed in Canada by Raincoast, which is the publisher of my book. So, I feel that I can’t review this great book (did I mention I really like it?) for the newspapers because of conflict of interest. Like, people might believe I only like this book because if I say I like it, it will do well in stores (huh?), and then Bloomsbury will make lots of money (huh?) and Raincoast too (double huh?), and then a successful and grateful Raincoast will come back to me with more lucrative book deals (huh to the power of huh?).

Obviously none of that is true. I like Where’s My Jetpack because it points out that during zeppelin travel you’re low enough to see the reaction on the faces of the people you spit on (the windows open). But that’s not a thought I can share in traditional media because of this selfsame conflict of interest. Somehow, though, when it’s my blog, I feel I have the right to express my opinion.

So express it I have.