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What is there to say? Jacqueline Woodson manages to make each of her books uniquely beautiful. This one hit surprisingly close to home for me.
I’ll have a more thoughtful review in the future, probably. For now: When you get the chance, read this book.
I’ll have a more thoughtful review in the future, probably. For now: When you get the chance, read this book.
The author's note of this book made me laugh. It's that funny, start to finish.
If you're worried that this book won't capture the spirit of the first three, or that it will feel outdated, rest assured on both counts. Wayside School has not been "updated" for 2020 - there's not a smartphone in sight, for instance - yet it still feels fresh. The kids are instantly recognizable and the jokes stick the landing.
Each of the books in the series has some sort of plot that loosely ties all its stories together. This one's villain is not an evil teacher but a sort of existential dread, the titular, ominously-named storm heading steadily toward the school, blotting out the sunlight, inducing bouts of anxiety and grumpiness. Vague as it is - no one seems to know exactly what the Cloud of Doom will do, just that the possibilities are endless and they're all bad - it's hard not to read it as a reflection of today's (figurative) climate. The kids may not understand exactly what this storm is, but they know enough to feel apprehensive. But at the end of the day they're okay, not because the storm never comes but because, like all kids, Mrs. Jewls' students are surprisingly resilient, innovative, and often maddeningly stubborn.
The master of of the Grade School Gothic subgenre has returned. Long live Wayside. Two dead rats way up.
If you're worried that this book won't capture the spirit of the first three, or that it will feel outdated, rest assured on both counts. Wayside School has not been "updated" for 2020 - there's not a smartphone in sight, for instance - yet it still feels fresh. The kids are instantly recognizable and the jokes stick the landing.
Each of the books in the series has some sort of plot that loosely ties all its stories together. This one's villain is not an evil teacher but a sort of existential dread, the titular, ominously-named storm heading steadily toward the school, blotting out the sunlight, inducing bouts of anxiety and grumpiness. Vague as it is - no one seems to know exactly what the Cloud of Doom will do, just that the possibilities are endless and they're all bad - it's hard not to read it as a reflection of today's (figurative) climate. The kids may not understand exactly what this storm is, but they know enough to feel apprehensive. But at the end of the day they're okay, not because the storm never comes but because, like all kids, Mrs. Jewls' students are surprisingly resilient, innovative, and often maddeningly stubborn.
The master of of the Grade School Gothic subgenre has returned. Long live Wayside. Two dead rats way up.
What a nice thing to see in the year of our lord 2020: a Nazi getting punched in the nose on the cover of a young adult book.
If Nazis getting their asses handed to them appeals to you (it should), rest assured that this book delivers. Gaddy clearly admires the young people she writes about; she goes to bat for them again and again. They caused trouble, they broke the law – so what? The law was unjust, so trouble was necessary. As she notes, these teens were too young and too scattered to have developed a single coherent political ideology, but they maintained a sense of empathy and humanity that was political in itself. History has ignored and even maligned them because they were largely leftist – many of them were socialists, communists, or had family members jailed or killed for being socialists or communists – but Gaddy reveals them for what they are: kids who should not have had to be heroes but who stepped up anyway, because it was the right thing to do.
Does this review come off as more about the pirates than about the book itself? I can’t help it. Gaddy has me convinced. She’s clearly done a tremendous amount of research; this is both an in-depth look at the motivations and actions of a collection of young individuals and an attempt to place those actions within a broader context: not just World War II but the study of history as a whole, the way dominant society chooses who’s a hero and who’s a villain or a nobody. And even as she argues that the Edelweiss pirates were the former, she refuses to flatten them into two-dimensional demigods. A whole section of the back matter is about the teens’ cultural blindspots, particularly when it came to perpetuating stereotypes of Native people (one of the pirate groups was called the Navajos). Gaddy notes that those blindspots still exist today, and that they’re worth acknowledging even and especially in the people and media we admire.
I’m really, really glad this book exists. I’m glad people will get to read it. I’m glad there will always be people who punch Nazis, because punching Nazis is the right thing to do.
If Nazis getting their asses handed to them appeals to you (it should), rest assured that this book delivers. Gaddy clearly admires the young people she writes about; she goes to bat for them again and again. They caused trouble, they broke the law – so what? The law was unjust, so trouble was necessary. As she notes, these teens were too young and too scattered to have developed a single coherent political ideology, but they maintained a sense of empathy and humanity that was political in itself. History has ignored and even maligned them because they were largely leftist – many of them were socialists, communists, or had family members jailed or killed for being socialists or communists – but Gaddy reveals them for what they are: kids who should not have had to be heroes but who stepped up anyway, because it was the right thing to do.
Does this review come off as more about the pirates than about the book itself? I can’t help it. Gaddy has me convinced. She’s clearly done a tremendous amount of research; this is both an in-depth look at the motivations and actions of a collection of young individuals and an attempt to place those actions within a broader context: not just World War II but the study of history as a whole, the way dominant society chooses who’s a hero and who’s a villain or a nobody. And even as she argues that the Edelweiss pirates were the former, she refuses to flatten them into two-dimensional demigods. A whole section of the back matter is about the teens’ cultural blindspots, particularly when it came to perpetuating stereotypes of Native people (one of the pirate groups was called the Navajos). Gaddy notes that those blindspots still exist today, and that they’re worth acknowledging even and especially in the people and media we admire.
I’m really, really glad this book exists. I’m glad people will get to read it. I’m glad there will always be people who punch Nazis, because punching Nazis is the right thing to do.