By: Jacqueline Briggs Martin
Images used under the creative commons from Amazon. | The book that I want to review in “fantasy” month on our schedule actually has not too much fantasy in it. But it’s such a brave and thoughtful book that I want to write about it. Eventually we’ll get to a fantasy picture book. When I read about _Lily and Dunkin I knew I had to order and read it—immediately. The two main characters are Tim McGrother a transgendered about-to-be eighth grader who is in his mother’s closet at the beginning of the book, planning to put on one of her dresses. With the dress on, Tim goes out to the driveway to help carry groceries. Dad goes ballistic. |
“’Timothy! What the hell are you doing?’…’Go back in the house Tim.’ Dad sounds like the air has leaked out of him, too. I hate that I caused it. ‘What if one of your classmates sees you? Imagine how they’d make fun of you when school starts. Get in now. Go.’”
The boy is Norbert Dorfman, whose name has been a trial to him for years. But it’s not his only trial. He, like his Dad, has bipolar disorder. He and his mother have recently moved to Florida without his Dad. Norbert will be starting eighth grade, too, and has promised his mother he will take his medications without her supervision. |
I wondered, before I read this book, if I would care about these characters. It seemed possible, maybe even likely, that they might be poster thin, just a way to raise questions about being on the margins. But I did like them, both of them. Lily is brave, articulate, and independent. Norbert is struggling, conflicted but knows what’s right. And Gephart has not abandoned these characters to negotiate their difficult paths alone. Lily has a supportive mom, sister Sarah, and friend Dare, and eventually a sympathetic counselor. Only her Dad and her Grandma don’t understand. Norbert has his Mom and his Buppie Berniece. |
Lily and Norbert narrate alternating chapters. Sometimes we see the same scene presented by each of them. The first person narration works well. We readers need to hear Lily’s voice as she talks with her dad, who wants her to continue to wear boy clothes.
“’I’ve dressed like a boy all the way through seventh grade.’
Dad nods. ‘That’s right.’
I test the water. ‘For you.’
‘For me” He shakes his head. ‘You mean for you, Tim.’
I hold my collision of words back and let Dad talk.
‘Did you get beaten up? Attacked?’
I don’t tell Dad how much I’m made fun of, teased, bullied. I don’t tell him it’s a small torture every time I have to dress and act like someone I’m not, like playing a role in a movie I don’t want to be in. A role I wasn’t born to fill. I simply shake my head side to side.”
And we need to hear Norbert as he becomes more and more manic:
And I want to shoot. I want to show off for Phineas.
But I don’t even have the ball. And I don’t know which basket I’m supposed to aim for. I whip around to look for the ball, to figure out which way I’m supposed to go, to find Phineas, to check in at the score table. There are so many things I have to do. But where’s the ball? Where’s Phin? My hands tremble. I’m walking in tight circles. “What am I doing? What am I doing?” (p. 289)
I read this book in one afternoon because I became so enmeshed in the world of these two kids. No doubt all transgendered kids or kids who suffer from mental illness do not have parents and siblings as supportive as Lily’s and Norbert’s. But I think we understand that for Lily and Norbert—even with the support of parents-- the road ahead will not be smooth and they will need the courage we have seen them display in this book. |
I do have one quarrel: Vasquez, the bully and harasser of Lily, is “Vasquez” and not Johnson or Smith. And lives in a trailer park. Bullies don’t always come from trailer parks. Sometimes they come from the houses next to the golf course. Still, this is a brave book (Gephart has a son with bi-polar disorder and promised him she’d write about it) a book that brings marginalized kids right into our neighborhoods. |
Images used under the creative commons from Amazon. | _The Bureau of Misplaced Dads written by Eric Viellé illustrated by Pauline Martin published by Kids Can Press 2015 |
Now the fantasy picture book--The Bureau of Misplaced Dads. I’m including this book because it’s funny and imaginative and shows us a wild diversity of dads. First published in France, the book begins: “I accidentally misplaced my dad this morning. I ran outside to look for him. I asked a man if he had seen my dad. | Images used under the creative commons from Amazon. |
Images used under the creative commons from Amazon. | There are plenty of Dads at the Bureau and that’s the fun of it—dads who cry, dads who chew mint-flavored bubble gum, a clueless dad, a dad who always looks like he’s just gotten out of bed. I love the humor of this book, love meeting all these kinds of dads, love the imagination that came up with this idea, the imagination that urges readers of all ages to break boundaries, turn cartwheels over the usual fences that hold us in. |