Thursday, September 29, 2011

Book Review: The Past, the Present, and the Loud, Loud Girl

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: The Past, the Present, and the Loud, Loud Girl


Author: Karen McCombie

Author's web page: http://karenmccombie.com/

Date: 2001

Publisher: Scholastic

ISBN: 0-439-99868-9

Length: 200 pages

Quote: "I'm normally very happy to wake up. Except for one particular morning...It was weird--for some reason, my whole head was vibrating."

After two pages of rambling, Alexandra, or Ally, reveals that her head was vibrating because she was "nose to nose with Colin." And after only two more paragraphs, she identifies Colin as a cat who has snuggled around her head and begun to purr.

One of the themes in this series of British novels for middle school readers is that Ally is one of those mildly attention-deficient people who demand more attention from others than they're entitled to expect, only in a quiet way. Her life isn't very suspenseful, so she's cultivated a habit of stretching out any possible suspense as she dithers through unrelated mundane details. After explaining her position relative to this cat, she takes two more pages to build up to the information that her brother is always rescuing injured animals and keeping them in the house. Then after forty-eight more pages she discloses that the thing she'd forgotten, on the morning the cat wrapped itself around her head, was a school project. If you're willing to put up with this literary technique, you might want to collect the complete series of "Ally's World" stories.

But at least Ally is a quiet child. Her whole family are quiet, discreet, and self-contained. On the back of the jacket they're described as "definitely weird," and the wary reader might wonder whether their weirdness consists of being quiet, discreet introverts. Well, not exactly. Because they're so quiet and discreet, the reader might get the impression that the mother of Ally and her three siblings has died. On page 199 Ally finally gets around to explaining that her mother merely moved out.

Meanwhile, on page 56, where we find out about the school project, Ally and her nice, quiet school friend have been ordered to add a new student, Kyra, to their project team. They don't like Kyra because she is loud and pushy. The redeeming social value of this story is that the nice, quiet children have not been bullied into thinking that Kyra is wonderful and they ought to be like her. In fact, Kyra will end up admitting that she acts pushy because she's insecure. (Child readers might be presumed too young for the additiional insight that people like Kyra disrespect other people's boundaries because they don't really respect themselves.)

The rest of the plot is that Ally and her siblings are trying to think of the perfect birthday present for their father. They don't have a lot of money, because they spend most of their pocket money on themselves. Of course, they will find a good cheap present their father will like, and the selection will be inspired partly by Ally's school project.

As an introvert I enjoyed the refreshing novelty of a recent novel where an extrovert is accepted only grudgingly, and only after spending a weekend working all by herself to make up for the damage her obnoxious, impulsive, pushy behavior has done. Nevertheless, these 200 pages seem like a lot of words for a predictable story about a week of mundane wholesome-family-sitcom events. I don't know any real child who spins out stories in this way, and don't know that real children need any encouragement to do so. Although it's selling steadily, the series isn't exactly as popular as Harry Potter, the Baby-Sitters Club, or the Lemony Snicket books.

To find out what loud Kyra contributed to the project and what the children chose for the present, click here:
 

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