Shhh! I'm Reading.

A lot of reviews of YA and children’s novels begin in the confessional mode. Something like “I admit it, I too indulge in the guilty pleasures of novels intending for people much younger than myself.” Scandalous! Such statements seem driven by a desire to be seen as a very serious reader (or at least a very serious critic). And I always think, well, if you really are a serious reader then you are necessarily a broad and deep reader who could not possibly ignore a whole swath of literature just because it was written for young people. You’re going to tell me you’re a serious reader or critic if you haven’t read Roald Dahl and Judy Blume, Astrid Lindgren or Louis Sachar? Or Shel Silverstein and Rowling, Lemony Snickett and L.M. Montgomery? Of course it’s as valuable as any other writing. Those are the books that seed in us a love of reading that, hopefully, lasts a lifetime. 

Speaking of which. When I was in grade 2 I read Fantastic Mr. Fox and loved it so much I stole it from my school library. I stowed it in the pocket of my uniform and ran out the front door. I coveted that book like a squirrel covets nuts it’s storing up for winter. I hid it in my fort (which, awesomely, was a small decrepit boat that my mother had purchased for me and placed in the back garden for the expressed purpose of having a secret place to read. Eventually we had to get rid of it because the spiders liked it just as much. At which point my mother also discovered my Roald Dahl contraband and made me return it.) and I read it over and over and over again. In a way, I still cleave to books the way I did to Mr. Fox and Farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean (rest easy school librarians, I’ve since curbed my bibliokleptomanic tendencies). Roald Dahl set the course for my reading life. Calling it a YA or kid’s book is convenient for retailers but doesn’t serve much purpose beyond that to my thinking. 

Having read Nick Hornby’s review of David Almond’s Skellig in The Believer, I suspect he feels the same way. I was equally charmed by his resistence to justifying his reading choices as I was by his discussion of Almond’s book. I ran out and bought a copy of Skellig at the time but it’s taken me until now to read it. It blew my mind. 

It’s the story of young Michael and his family; stuck in a painful limbo and waiting to exhale as Michael’s newborn sister totters between life and death. There is the marvelously strange and precocious Mina, Michael’s young neighbor, who’s tender affection and empathy for Michael prove to be a saving grace. And there is Skellig whose purpose and origins are left blessedly unresolved at the book’s conclusion but who, be he angel, bird, man or some combination of the above, is both deliciously cantankerous and profound. He’s also really into Chinese takeout. Almond never stoops to sentimentalism but neither does he shy from emotional turmoil. He gets the agony of going through something very adult before you’re really mature enough to make sense of it and the burden that comes with arriving to emotional awareness. 

I adore this book. It is philosophical but doesn’t suffer under its own pretensions. He writes the silliness and fraternal social jockeying of young boys very well and the exasperating experience of putting up with that as a young girl equally so. I especially enjoyed how integral Michael’s relationship to his father was to the book’s arc. So often in children’s literature, parents are kind of rough hewn sketches, ancillary to the kids. Like the parent’s legs in the Muppet Babies. Here, Almond explores the ways in which a child’s burgeoning identity develops in concert with their shifting relationship their parents.

Skellig is gorgeous and poetic and a lot better than half the adult fiction I’ve read lately…almost good enough to steal.

(photo via)