Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads 'The Long Winter', the Laura Ingalls Wilder classic wherein our heroine Laura twists hay while the sun don't shine.

The mowing machine's whirring sounded cheerfully from the old buffalo wallow south of the claim shanty, where bluestem grass stood thick and tall and Pa was cutting it for hay.

I ask you: have you ever heard a statement of such dread foreboding, of such grave intimations of abject harm, of such pathos and heartache and misery? In the days when your 401-K was booming, I know you would have answered, Um, yes. But unfortunately, now we know quite well what can follow a booming growth season, one in which we busily cut our bluestem for hay in the warm weather, believing in the next season, the sun above will restore it with cheerful regularity.

The Long Winter, for those of you who (shame!) never made it the entire way through the Little House series, picks up with the family when Laura is fourteen, and tells the story of an epic winter that strikes the tiny town of De Smet, South Dakota, nearly starving out all of its inhabitants. When I first picked up the book for a Fine Lines reread, I was quite sure that I'd be interested mostly in the domestic details of the Ingalls family (always a dependable fix for those addicted to frontier porn): the twisting of hay to for makeshift "logs" when the coal runs out, grinding the wheat all day in the coffee grinder because without the constant labor, there wouldn't be enough to make bread; making a green pumpkin pie when the first frost kills the crop; finally getting a Christmas barrel filled with calico scarves and salt pork once the "Chinook" blows, the spring comes and the trains start running. (Let's also not forget that this is the book where Almanzo and Laura first meet cute, when she and sister Carrie stumble upon him, twinkling blue eyes and all, haying before the winter sets in.) However. As dedicated to such joys as ever, I cannot help but at this juncture read the work primarily as a treatise about the perils of globalization, government oversight, concentration of power in the hands of unregulated industries, resource-related market volatility, and oats.

1. The Claim

When we catch up with them, Ma and Pa (and their De Smet neighbors) have just entered their era's version of a Fannie Mae-backed mortgage, a homestead claim — meaning simply that, in exchange for breaking and settling the land, the settlers will own it. Those of us who have been devoting the requisite amount of attention to the Ingalls over the years know that this is a step up from the subsistence level the family has previously enjoyed — first, from the Little House in the Big Woods, a Wisconsin cabin where Pa trapped, hunted and fished out all the family's needs; then to the Banks of Plum Creek, where Pa first broke ground as a farmer; then to the Shores of Silver Lake, where Pa worked on the railroad in order to earn the money to buy the claim in the first place.

By taking the claim, like all settlers, they've now entered into an uneasy relationship with both the market and the government. Whereas before, they depended utterly on themselves, they're now part of the landscape of both the town and the market — their livelihood and labors intextricably linked to what the railroad bringeth and the railroad taketh away.

This is of course, progress of sorts, one in which the Ingalls' world expands immeasurably from the small cabin where it began, where the Ingalls might spend all winter alone with only a bear for company, and no schoolteacher for the girls but Ma. But taking the claim also leaves them exposed in a way they never were in their snug log cabin — literally, since the claim shanty is only a shack covered with tar paper. It's a housing crisis of its own kind, a fact brought home soundly as Pa, worried, examines a muskrat house that's been built thicker than one he's ever seen in his life:

Laura put her hand on the wall of their house. The coarse plaster was hot in the hot wind and sunshine, but inside the thick mud walls, in the dark, the air must be cool. She liked to think of the muskrats sleeping there.

Pa was shaking his head. "We're going to have a hard winter," he said, not liking the prospect.

"Why, how do you know?" Laura asked in surprise.

"The colder the winter will be, the thicker the muskrats build the walls of their houses," Pa told her. "I never saw a heavier-built muskrats' house than that one."

Laura looked at it again. It was very solid and big. But the sun was blazing, burning on her shoulders through the faded, thin calico and the hot wind was blowing, and stronger than the damp mud smell of the slough was the ripening smell of grasses parching in the heat. Laura could hardly think of ice and snow and cruel cold.

"Pa, how can the muskrats know?" she asked.

"I don't know how they know," Pa said. "But they do. God tells them, I suppose."

"Then why doesn't got tell us?" Laura wanted to know.

"Because," said Pa, "we're not animals. We're humans, and, like it says in the Declaration of Independence, God created us free. That means we got to take care of ourselves."

Laura said faintly, "I thought God takes care of us."

"He does," Pa said, "as far as we do what's right. And He gives us a conscience and brains to know what's right. But He leaves it to us to do as we please. That's the difference between us and everything else in creation."

How one manages to successfully trade their independence for a larger interdependence — without regular heads-up from God that a cold season is coming — is the great question of this novel. (Can we get a volunteer for someone to Xerox that and send it to Hank Paulson, please?) Still, that doesn't mean that Pa is caught out completely. He's a smart guy, and, after a cold snap kills all their ground crops, he is disquieted by the fact that geese flying away too high to shoot, then that all the animals have departed: "Every living thing that runs or swims is hidden away somewhere. I never saw country so empty and still." After the first blizzard, he and Laura see oxen standing patiently by haystacks, then realize their heads were frozen over with ice and snow. Pa has to break the ice to free the poor beasts — "Pa! Their own breath! Smothering them!" — and that cements it: "I don't like it," Pa said, slowly shaking his head. "I don't like the feel of this weather. There's something..." He could not say what he meant and he said again, "I don't like it. I don't like it at all."

But again, you don't really know the truth for sure until an Indian confirms it. Here's the one that wanders into the general store to tell the townspeople to batten down — a remarkably nice gesture, considering that many of his brethren have been forcibly marched off the land to clear it for the settlers in the first place:

He was a very old Indian. His brown face was carved in deep wrinkles and shriveled on the bones, but he stood tall and straight. His arms were folded under a gray blanket, holding it wrapped around him. His head was shaved to a scalp-lock and an eagle's feather stood up from it. His eyes were bright and sharp. Behind him the sun was shining on the dustry street and an Indian pony stood their waiting.

"Heap big snow come," this Indian said.

The blanket slid on his shoulder and one naked brown arm came out. It moved in a wide sweep, to north, to west, to east, and gathered them all together and swirled.

"Heap big snow, big wind," he said.

"How long?" Pa asked him.

"Many moons," the Indian said. He held up four fingers, then three fingers. Seven fingers, seven months, blizzards for seven months.

They all looked at him and did not say anything.

"You white men," he said. "I tell-um you."

Paul! I know, I know! You TRIED!!!!!! (I think a scalp-lock might suit Krugman, actually.) But that cements it. Pa, and most of the settlers, move into town, where their houses are already completed — a remarkable move, considering that none of them have ever lived in town before, and reject the idea that it offers any protection at all. But, you know, that's where the houses are. The claim houses, where they've moved for progress and stability, have proved absolutely unable to handle trouble coming out of left field.

2. The Gummint

Since most of the settlers think this is a temporary move—one based only on the fact that the houses in town are complete and the houses out on the claim are not—no one is particularly perturbed (though you'd do well to whose regulations made it necessary to build the town houses before the homesteads in the first place). 'Manzo Wilder, who has come out to farm land, and his brother, Royal, who has come to open a store in De Smet, perfectly symbolize the new split. Royal is excited to take advantage of bringing Main Street to prairie, while Almanzo, who has to go through the government now to have a farm, has gone so far as to lie in order to get his claim, saying he's 21 when he's really only 19:

Almanzo looked at this way: the Government wanted this land settled; Uncle Sam would give a farm to any man who had the nerve and muscle to come out here and break the sod and stick to the job till it was done. But the politicians far away in Washington could not know the settlers so they must make rules to regulate them and one rule was that a homesteader must be twenty-one years old.

None of these rules worked as they were intended to.

Taking an even dimmer view of the taxman is our dear Mr. Edwards, who visits the family briefly in the midst of the worst part of the winter and refuses their offer to stay, saying he'll be following the railroad until it stops:

"I'm aiming to go far West this spring," he said. "This here country, it's too settled-up for me. The politicians are swarming in already, and ma'am if there's any worse pest than grasshoppers it surely is politicians. Why, they'll tax the lining out'n a man's pockets to keep up these here county-seat towns! I don't see nary use for a county, nohow. We all got along happy and content without 'em....I don't aim to pay taxes."

Mr. Edwards is the kind of small-government proponent you'd like to believe existed — since he depends not on the market but on his own grit to get him through, and thus has a point about the taxes. (If he dressed a moose, it wouldn't be for a photo op.) He is also an active participant in the trickle-down economics you could get behind, dropping a twenty dollar bill into the blind Mary's lap before departing, so the family can't refuse it. Still, trickle-down economics is no substitution for the real thing. Which brings us to...

3. The Railroads

Of course, as the snows continue coming, the trains cease coming — the owners back East deciding that it's risky, expensive and well-nigh impossible to bring resources to the settlers — who, having swapped their own farms for rinky-dink claims, now actually depend on them. This creates an uneasy tension, as the Ingalls stolidly try to get along as they always have, not quite willing to admit that in their situation, they're not only dependent on the decisions of the railroad monopolies and the government regulators, but on their competence — and, finally, largesse:

"'There's no more salt pork in town," Pa says, bemused. "Getting all our supplies from the East, this way, we run a little short when trains don't get through."' Ma complains of the same: "If only I had some grease I could fix some kind of light," Ma considered. "We didn't lack for light when I was a girl, before this newfangled kerosene was ever heard of." Totally jailed in the house, kept in by endless blizzards and high drifts, Laura raises a lone, plaintive call at the preposterousness of their situation:

"What good is it to be in town?" Laura said. "We're just as much by ourselves as if there wasn't any town."

"I hope you don't expect to depend on anyone else, Laura." Ma was shocked. "A body can't do that."

Unfortunately, that's exactly what they do have to do now. Running out of wheat, potatoes and grain entirely, Pa finally goes over to 'Manzo's place, where — no fool he — he has divined that the young farmer has hidden his seed crop behind a false wall. "Say, that's my seed wheat; and I'm not selling it!" Almanzo yells, and Pa, once a proud, independent farmer, grimly replies, "We're out of wheat at my house and I am buying some."


But Almanzo, who also understands the effect the railroad has on the town's economy, already took the precaution of building the wall because he knew exactly what it would mean if the railroads stopped running:

...this storm'll hold up the train till after Christmas at best."

"Maybe not, but I know you, Roy. You're not a farmer, you're a storekeeper. A fellow comes in here and says, "What's the price of your wheat?" You'll say, "I'm sold out of wheat." He says, "What's that in those sacks? You tell him, "That's not my wheat, it's 'Manzo's. So the fellow says, "What'll you boys sell it for?" And don't try to tell me you'll say, "We won't sell it. No, sirree, Roy, you're storekeeper. You'll say to him, "What'll you give?"

"Well, maybe I would," Royal admitted. "What's the harm in that?"

"The harm is that they'll bid up prices sky-high before a train gets through. I'll be out hauling hay or somewhere and you'll figure that I wouldn't refuse such a price, or you'll think you know better than I do what's for my best interests...I'm nailing up my seed wheat so noboddy'll see it...and it'll be right here when seedtime comes."

Royal's a market man — his view is that the seed is worth what it's worth now, and if he did sell off 'Manzo's seed crop to a demanding public, he would be making a good deal for his little brother. But 'Manzo has faith in the actual worth of its seed and its capacity, literally, for growth. It doesn't matter how much money he could get out of his seed as a commodity — what if he could never buy the seed back? Home isn't about the market's determination of worth — it's about the worth of what the home can actually produce, absent a boom or a bust: "His homestead would depend on his having that seed wheat to sow. He would not sell it for any money. It was seed that made crops. You could not sow silver dollars."

4. The Free Market

I find it the book's greatest irony that 'Manzo, since he doesn't want to sell his own seed wheat, actually sets off, with Cap Garland (who always seemed TOTALLY hot to me with his glittering eyes and temper) on a wild-goose chase to find some settler who may or may not exist out on the prairie (Russia?) to sell him his seed wheat, since he's divined from Mr. Ingalls's act that many townspeople are either starving, or soon will. The lonely homesteader, who, like 'Manzo, also wants to keep the fruits of his labors ("I like to killed myself breaking 40 acres last summer") gets decimated by 'Manzo's devasting blast of fearmongering, self-righteous morality and good common sense:

"There's women and children that haven't had a square meal since before Christmas," Almanzo put it to him. "They got to get something to eat or they'll starve to death before spring."

"That's not my lookout," said Mr. Anderson. "Nobody's responsible for folks that haven't got enough forethought to take care of themselves."

"Nobody thinks you are," Almanzo retorted. "And nobody's asking you to give them anything. We'll pay you the full elevator price of eight-two cents a bushel, and save you hauling it to town in the bargain."

"I've got no wheat to sell," Mr. Anderson answered, and Almanzo knew he meant what he said.

Cap asked him reasonably, "Well, for that matter, how do you know you'll make a crop?"

"The only thing you're sure of is cash in your pocket," said Almanzo.

And yet, this isn't true either, exactly — since when 'Manzo and Cap return home and hand the wheat over the the man who's paying, the storekeeper Mr. Loftus, he then raises the price to $3 a pound, until the townspeople remind him that if he holds them over a barrel when they have no other options, they'll be sure to remember when the railroad runs in the spring and they have more shopping options.

When I started this column, since this is a book about a long, cold season, I thought I'd be mostly interested in amassing a bunch of Ma and Pa's standard Pollyanna admonishments for use in the days to come, as I slowly put aside my beloved Bluefly buys. ("Salt brings out the flavor of the potato! Don't be ungrateful for what you have, for you'll soon wish you had it! Let's make some delicious preserves from these green tomatoes the frost killed!") While if another bank closes I plan to return to these chapters for these and other enlivening materials immediately, I find I am much more interested in everything that goes on outside that house. I'd never noticed how much this book marks exactly where farmers, government, empire and industry truly did enter their unholy alliance, and the dangers involved therein — especially when you can't depend on small-government agitators to always drop you a twenty when you need it, or for libertarians to go off on a life-threatening goose chase to find someone else willing to sell you wheat if they don't feel like selling their own wheat at any price, and you're starving to death. Also, I don't know how to make green tomato preserves, or to preserve anything. But I do know this: you can't sow complex derivatives.

God, I hope that train gets here soon.

• • • • •

Bad news, my beauties — 'Fine' Lines too has been hit hard by the economic blizzard, and, like all non-essential items (I think of us as a tin of oysters, but butter works too), we are going to have a hard time getting through with all the train lines all snowed in this way. Which is to say, Anna and I are trying to clear the cuts but goddamn. Look out for us, just not necessarily on schedule.

In the meantime, may I suggest you try our archives?

I am pleased to remind you, however, that the book remains on, much like Ma's button lamp sucking up axel grease. If you'd like to be put on the mailing lists for announcements, denouncements and various and sundry informations, please click here or send an email to jezziefinelines@gmail.com with COLD STORAGE in the subject line. You can also use the jezziefinelines@gmail.com email for any communications in the meantime; I love to hear from you!

The Long Winter [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [TheOldHag]

Earlier: Remember Me: After Birth, After Life
•Bridge To Terabithia: Troubling The Waters
•Flowers In The Attic: He Ain't Sexy, He's My Brother
•A Little Princess: A Reversal Of Four Buns
• Tiger Eyes: Cuando Los Lagartijos Corren
•Homecoming: A Dicey Prospect
• Go Ask Alice: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
• The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase: Life's A Bitch And So Is The Governess
•Stranger With My Face: Stop Projecting
•Happy Endings Are All Alike: The Price Of Fault
•The Pigman: A Day No Friends Would Die
•Julie Of The Wolves: The Call Of The Wild
• Deenie: Brace Yourself
•A Wrinkle In Time: Quit Tesseracting Up
•Love Is One Of The Choices: No, Not That 'Sex And The City'
•The Girl With The Silver Eyes: Little Pitchers Have Big Pharma
•Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself: Springtime For Hitler, Part II
•Summer Of My German Soldier: Springtime For Hitler, Part I
•From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: City Of Angels
•A Gift Of Magic: Totally Psyched
•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan
•The Secret Garden: Still No Idea What A Missel Thrush Is
•To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie: No Telephone To Child Services
•The Westing Game: Partners In Crime
• The Moon By Night: Travels With Vicky
•My Sweet Audrina: The Book Of Sister And Forgetting
•The Long Secret: CSI: Puberty
•The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: A Pocket Full Of Orange Pits
•The Witch Of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!
•Are You In The House Alone? One Out Of Four, Maybe More
•Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once A Week
• Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City
•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today
•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn
•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care
•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon
•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads 'Hangin' Out With Cici', Francine Pascal's 1977 story about life before the Wakefield Twins.

Getting to be thirteen turned out to be an absolute and complete bummer. I mean it. What a letdown. You wouldn't believe the years I wasted dreaming about how sensational everything was going to be once I was a teenager.

Spending time socializing with one's mother must rank up there with transcribing Haydn and laying brick as the activities your average 13-year-old is least likely to want to partake in. But Francine Pascal, best known for the Sweet Valley High series—you may have heard of it—manages in this most charming standalone novel to create the one situation wherein which bouncing around town with dear old Mom could reasonably compete with a hot date with Bruce Patman.

Victoria is a private-school student in New York, rebelling as hard as she can against her school's “vomity blue blazer,” and boxy pleated skirt and anything else that attempts to box her in. A humble ringleader, she modestly declines to take credit for the numerous disruptions swirling around her, even when authorities strenuously insist she take credit. Unfortunately, after a disruption involving a theater balcony, a cigarette, and a spitball directed at a teacher's head, the new principal himself declares that present herself at his office, with parental guardian at her side, to receive her just due.

For some time, Victoria and her mother have been locked in the kind of go-rounds that would bedevil a career. A typical one goes something like this:

Now she comes stumping toward my room, saying, “You just listen to me!” She's angry and just pushes the door open without even knocking. “You're behaving like a four-year-old.”

And we start our usual argument. “That's the way you treat me,” I say, and she tells me that's because I act like one and I should realize I was wrong and accept my punishment, and it goes on that way with me saying one thing and her saying another but never really answering me.... I swear I'll never treat my daughter the way they treat me. I'll really be able to understand her because I'll remember how awful it was for me.

But her latest infraction changes the stakes entirely. As it happens, the principal is suggesting not only that Victoria needs to be brought into line, but that she might draw the line somewhere else entirely. And as Victoria departs for one last weekend of freedom at her cousin's birthday party—a weekend during which she is busted for, as her aunt says, “smoking a pot,” only adding fuel to the ganja—she realizes her mother isn't only mad. She's about to give up on her.

But somewhere during the train ride home from Philadelphia something strange happens. The lights go off, Victoria bumps her head, and when she wakes up, the little old lady next to her has been replaced by a young, pregnant lady, all the passengers seem to have recently picked up a child or two, and the kindly, elderly conductor is now a kindly young conductor.

You may see what's coming, but Victoria doesn't yet—quite. Walking through a slightly unfamiliar looking Penn Station, trying to find her mother by the information booth that is strangely half the size it used to be, she decides first that they must be filming a movie, then that New York tourism has taken an odd direction:

You can tell they're really squares. All the women are wearing skirts and the men are dressed in baggy suits and most of them are wearing old fashioned felt hats. Not even the kids are wearing jeans. In fact, nobody is but me. It's unreal. This has got to be some kind of convention group from Missouri or someplace. Something real snappy like librarians, funeral directors, and Eagle Scouts.

She's relieved when she sees Cici, a girl her age whom she waves over, mistaking her for a friend. Cici is unperturbed, and then, after hearing her story, waits with Victoria, then finally invites her to come hang out with her Queens until Victoria can reach her mother, who she keeps trying to no avail. Getting on the E train, Victoria tells us, “...I can tell right off I'm really going to like Cici. You know how it is, sometimes you just meet someone and bang, you hit it off. Better than that, you're old friends instantly.”

Cici and I chatter away for the rest of the trip. We seem to have a million things in common. Especially problems. She tells me about how she's always getting into trouble for the littlest, most unimportant things. Just like me. Plus she hates the way she looks, too. I tell her she's crazy because she's really cute-looking, but she says her eyes are too small and close together and she thinks her knuckles are too big.

Victoria and Cici spend the afternoon together, partaking in wholesome activities like shoplifting and thwarting perverts in the movie theatre. But throughout, Victoria is finding it harder and harder to make excuses for why her number, apparently, doesn't exist in the New York area anymore, everyone is dressed like an extra from a black-and-white movie, and in Queens, apparently everything is sold for 1/8th of its usual Manhattan price.

Because the answer is...it's May 19th, 1944! No biggie. Staring incredulously at the day's paper, Victoria is filled with despair at realizing she's truly and irrevocably screwed: “This is definitely the forties and I have no home and no family and I'm going to be stuck here forever.”

But what...there's more! When Cici finally manages to drag the distraught Victoria home, she's shocked to hear a very familiar voice—and then absolutely gobsmacked to see the person that goes with it:

Sure, she's younger and slimmer and all that. But there's no question. I know for absolutely certain that she's my grandma. And this has to mean—no! I won't let the thought come an closer! It can't be!

YES!

Felicia! Cici! My own mother! Holy cow, I am I dumb. Fantastic! I told you she looked familiar. I mean, she didn't really, but there were things about her that reminded me of someone. Not so much the features, but more like the expressions, the way she talked—I don'tknow what, something, maybe the look in her eyes. I just knew I knew her all along, only I thought she was a friend of somebody's or some girl I met someplace. That's what threw me. I thought she was a kid like me.

But she's not. She's a woman. Felicia, Cici, whatever she wants to call herself, there's on thing for sure, this crazy nutty kid who isn't afraid to zonk a pervert in the shin, turn Woolworth's upside down, sneak cigarettes in a garage, and probably do a million other kooky things and maybe even some awful things like buying a science test, isn't my friend at all.

She's my mother!

Hangin' Out With Cici is a wonderful way to learn all about the 40s (where else would I have ever heard the phrase 'Kilroy Was Here'?) but it's also a great book for learning about what makes someone realize it's time to grow up. In Cici's case, it's finally being caught for a crime even she's ashamed of. But in Victoria' case, it's that, by realizing her mother is a person just like she is, she considers that she might want to start persecuting her for every conceivable crime. As she watches the young Cici scramble off a roof on her way to an ill-fated mission, she thinks:

Watching her now reminds me how once, about two years ago, we were on a picnic with two other families in some park on Staten Island, and I don't know why, but everybody (the adults anyway) was kidding around and daring each other to do all sorts of crazy things like swinging from monkey bars and climbing trees I remember that my mother climbed higher than anyone else, so high that I began to get a little worried. Everyone else thought it was hysterical, but it seemed kind of peculiar, even a little embarrassing to me. Now that I consider it, I guess it was kind of unfair of me to be embarrassed. After all, just because you've got children doesn't mean you're nothing but a mother. I'm hopeless when it comes to my mother. Everything about her is either embarrassing, irritating, or just plain confusing. I don't know why I can't just say she's a super climber and let it go at that.

By seeing her mother in her own place—that is, a lovely, charming girl on the verge of becoming a juvenile delinquent—Victoria is suddenly able to put herself in her grown-up mother's place, too. Suddenly, she realizes that it's not her mother that's been giving her a hard time. It's she who's been giving her mother a hard time. As the book ends, Victoria is returned back to the clog-wearing 70s with rock-hard evidence that her mother, however shrewish she seems now, once, really and truly did know how she felt. But Hangin' Out With Cici is isn't only really about getting to know your mother. It's about realizing your mother, that shrew, made a choice to grow up once, for a good reason—and you might want to think about it, too.

• • • • •

Well, well. My clever, clever girls. I guess they weren't wrong to give us the vote after all! Reading through all these correct responses, the first thing I notice is how powerful we are when we all work together! The next thing I notice is that only one person will receive any benefit from it! That's life! So, the answers to the Plotfinders, in order, were, as 987 of you pointed out, first Fade, by Robert Cormier (Nicole W. first by email), second Rabble Starkey by Lois Lowry (first commenter nevacaruso), and the third The Truth Trap by Frances Miller, first winner again Nicole W. The only one to get them all correct was Joan S., but since Nicole W. also had two correct and FIRST on each, she too gets a win, by a tweak to my calculus, which is mine, so I'll tweak it if I want. Go girls!

(Also related to you readers: my trusty IBM T-42, I trust, is on its last legs. Any recommendations for a nice, light travel computer? Teeny? Not a Mac, please. I know you guys love those Macs! But something even smaller. I don't really need it to do that much more than let me type things, buy things, and email with all of you lovelies. Many thanks for your advice.)

Hangin Out With Cici [Alibris]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

Earlier: Remember Me: After Birth, After Life
•Bridge To Terabithia: Troubling The Waters
•Flowers In The Attic: He Ain't Sexy, He's My Brother
•A Little Princess: A Reversal Of Four Buns
• Tiger Eyes: Cuando Los Lagartijos Corren
•Homecoming: A Dicey Prospect
• Go Ask Alice: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
• The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase: Life's A Bitch And So Is The Governess
•Stranger With My Face: Stop Projecting
•Happy Endings Are All Alike: The Price Of Fault
•The Pigman: A Day No Friends Would Die
•Julie Of The Wolves: The Call Of The Wild
• Deenie: Brace Yourself
•A Wrinkle In Time: Quit Tesseracting Up
•Love Is One Of The Choices: No, Not That 'Sex And The City'
•The Girl With The Silver Eyes: Little Pitchers Have Big Pharma
•Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself: Springtime For Hitler, Part II
•Summer Of My German Soldier: Springtime For Hitler, Part I
•From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: City Of Angels
•A Gift Of Magic: Totally Psyched
•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan
•The Secret Garden: Still No Idea What A Missel Thrush Is
•To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie: No Telephone To Child Services
•The Westing Game: Partners In Crime
• The Moon By Night: Travels With Vicky
•My Sweet Audrina: The Book Of Sister And Forgetting
•The Long Secret: CSI: Puberty
•The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: A Pocket Full Of Orange Pits
•The Witch Of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!
•Are You In The House Alone? One Out Of Four, Maybe More
•Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once A Week
• Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City
•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today
•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn
•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care
•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon
•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads 'Remember Me', the 1989 story of a murdered girl who will not take ghost for an answer.

Most people would probably call me a ghost. I am, after all, dead.

Okay guys — don't get mad at me — but I have to admit: I may not quite share your passion for Remember Me. Wait! Don't yell! I will blame it partly on the fact that I was recently rereading Richard Peck's Ghosts I Have Been, and find that Pike's work suffers in comparison, as his narrator's wry commentary is not delivered in a southern accent.

There is also the fact that the year this book was published, I was frantically filing college applications and too grieved and wraithlike to trifle with the actual undead. There is also the fact that I am very committed to the ambulating-in-the-afterlife scene in Ghost, and reluctant to switch my allegiance over. SO! Take some grain with your salt, if you will, and please do set me right in the comments. Just remember: there is enough afterlife to go around for everyone.

Certain novels seem to come built-in with a cinematic ideal, and I see Remember Me as something in the Lost Boys tradition, with a little Twin Peaks-cum-90210-by-way-of-Heathers perfectly-white-Keds action thrown in. Here we are, among some standard-issue group of teenagers in any post-Reagan-era California suburb, girls in polos with the collars turned up, white shorts, and that ubiquitous pageboy; boys in Members Only jackets and a modified flock-of-seagulls wedge, everyone speeding around the canyon from apartment complex to sprawling Spanish-Style mansion to leafy park. We could all simply settle in and enjoy the advent of compact disks and Kid n' Play if it weren't for one inconvenient detail: a girl has just gone, apparently without cause, flying off of a balcony to her death.

Or...HAS SHE?

Shari is a typical upper-middle-class teenager with typical upper-middle-class problems — how exactly to adjust to her new Ferarri and whether or not her boyfriend, Daniel, truly likes her or her car, how to deal with the fact that all the boys at school DO like Beth, who is obviously just a pair of breasts who's realized if she acts dumb, she'll be seen as an all-over beauty. (She's right.) She loves her colorblind, diabetic brother Jimmy — you're going to want to hold onto that information — and is happy to tolerate her parents, who, obviously, bought her the Ferarri. She's also fond of their housecleaner, Mrs. Parish, and likes Mrs. Parish's daughter Amanda too, despite the fact that she's extraordinarily beautiful, as well as a rival for Jimmy's attentions. And her best friend Jo is not only extremely fond of her, she's also petite, so they can wear each other's clothes.

Okay! Keep track of all those people and the things I said about them, please!

Unfortunately, Shari has been killed—and she has no idea why. The dastardly deed occurred at the house of Beth, at a party during which the well-endowed temptress fools around with Shari's boyfriend in the hot tub, but we don't know if it's related to that or not. But right before Beth dies, the kids have engaged in a seance (orchestrated by Jo — there's always that seance person!) during which Shari is sure she's contacted Peter, the recently deceased brother of Beth's boyfriend Jeff, for whom Shari has always carried a bit of a torch.

Keep track of that all too, please, it is important!

Poor Shari takes a dive shortly after wandering out on the balcony, her emotions in turmoil. She's hugely peeved at Daniel, discomfited by her strange possible channeling during the seance — but not, as she tells us from the hereafter, she's fairly sure, suicidal:

I felt a sensation. It was not one of being pushed; it was, rather, a feeling of rising up. Then of spinning....it was only in this last instant that I realized I had gone over the edge of th balcony. That I was falling headfirst into the ground.

I didn't feel the blow of the impact. But I do remember rolling over and looking up. Now there were millions of stars in the sky. Orange ones and green ones and blue ones. There were also red ones. Big fat red ones, whose number grew as I watched, blotting out all the others in the heavens until soon they were all that remined, part of a colossal wave of smothering hot wax.

I blacked out. I died.

What follows is fairly boilerplate for dramatic accounts of the recently deceased — but just because it's boilerplate doesn't mean it's not fun. Like most of the newly dead, Shari must learn from the response of those around her that she's passed over—or, rather, the lack of response. After waking up in her own house, she's perturbed that her parents don't see her, then mildly alarmed at their abrupt departure for the hospital, her mother choking out that it's important for the "three of them to be together right now." (Three?) Finally sees herself on a slab at the morgue, and she faces the unfaceable — and by that I mean, literally, her face: "It was me lying there. Just me."

And, like all newly dead, she also gets granted a spirit guide whose job it is to convince her to get the hell out of there. (Apparently the world runs like the kind of teeny overbooked restaurant that sticks the check on the table before you've even had time to order coffee.) She first sees him at her own funeral, in a casual ensemble that cracks her up: "His clothes made me laugh. He was wearing baggy white shorts and a red t-shirt and sandals. To my funeral?"

It is, of course, Peter, who, after schooling her on her need to go to the light, warily acknowledges that he hasn't himself because he's chosen to help others do so, though he's not completely forthcoming as to why. One thing he's certain about though is that Shari has to drop this notion of finding out why she's been killed and get on with her post-dive activities, pronto. He does this through a series of long, unqualified dialogues written in the style that I associate only with teen fiction of this era and Cormac McCarthy, and his perfectly flat responses are either highly ironic or deathly serious, depending on how much personality you want to ascribe to Peter:

Peter looked uncomfortable. "Shari, you're dead. You had a nice go of it on earth, but now it's time to move on."

..."But what about my family? They think I'm dead."

"You are dead," he said.

"Yes, I know. But they don't know what death means."

"That's not unusual."

"But it is unusual to have your family think you killed yourself when you didn't." I paused. "They must all think I was crazy."

"They don't," he said.

"They do. Did you see how many kids from school came to my funeral?" I sighed. "I bet you had ten times as many."

"Neither of us is running for student office."

"If I go into the light, can I still come—"

BEEZATCH, CAN STOP ASKING ME QUESTIONS AND COME TO THE AFTERLIFE, PLEASE!!!!!!!!! But, after accepting that Shari is not going to go before at least making a stab at figuring out why she's been consigned to enternity, Peter worms his way into my heart by training Shari to do all those after life-y things like floating and moving around with your mind — "Let's fly, Shari Poppins" — and also tells to watch out for the Shadow, a dark wraith that pops up and terrifies her when she's not paying attention. Peter also doesn't know what it is, but Shari's description is as good as any: "...perhaps, I thought, it was a scar on the world. It was painful to behold."

Throughout all this, Shari is fond of making jaunty asides to us that are, in fact, funny — although as I said above, I still think they could benefit from a southern accent. Wondering if she was considered superficial before her death, she finally dismisses the query: "I've discovered once you're dead, the only opinion that matters is your own." (See? Wouldn't you just want some Alabama in that?) After the second day she awakens, still dead, she sighs, "Apparently, dying was a condition one good night's sleep couldn't remedy."

Shari investigations, which she pursues both by merely settling down in rooms, invisible, and then invading dreams when she can, yield a bunch of information, but she's not able to shake it out to see who killed her. It's still interesting, though, to know that the Mrs. Parish, Amanda's mother, had an affair with Jo's father, her brother in law; that the detective on the case, Mr. Garrett, is a drunk and his daughter is a junkie; that Daniel lusted after and took a shower with his cousin Marsha; that Jo truly does love her; and that Amanda really does love her brother. But it's not until she's drawn to the site of her death and retakes her leap into the afterlife that she comes upon a crucial piece of information, picked up as her life passes before her eyes:

The baby was crying. The huge person was pulling on the poor thing's ankle band, too. I began to cry in sympathy. And then I cried in pain as the huge person began to put the other baby's ankle tape around my leg. It didn't quite fit; I must have had fatter ankles..When I awoke, another huge white person was carrying me through the air to see my mother....Then something very scary happened. The huge person gave me to another huge person not dressed in white and said she was my mother. But this huge person did not smell like my mother.

Thank god, a SWITCHED AT BIRTH. Now, if we could just get some—incest, you say?—why, yes, I think we can manage—

"Mr. Foulton is my father. Jo is my half-sister." I had to put a hand to my head. "Amanda is Jimmy's sister."

"That's insane," Peter said.

"No, it's logical," I said. "Mr. Foulton had an affair with Mrs. Parish, and she got pregnant with me. But Mrs. Foulton found out about it. Maybe they told her, I don't know. Mrs. Foulton was working as a nurse at the hospital where I was born. Imagine how she must have felt when she looked at her sister's child and knew it was her husband's child."

If I could follow that, I would feel bad too — but I did get it after a few minutes, although I must confess Detective Garrett's diagram of the apartment and the ways in which various people could have killed various other persons at various times stumped me completely, as it seems like some teen-based speed-round of clue. (DANIEL did it in the LIVING ROOM with the INAPPROPRIATE FONDLING.)

But Shari is smarter than I, and not only does she solve the crime, she saves her brother's life and finally decides she'll go the afterlife. But not before she brings Peter with her. As it happens, the Shadow, we learn, is all the bad thoughts and fears one has accumulated over one's lifetime, and Peter has a whopper: that he DID actually commit suicide. He's under the impression that means he never gets to go to the light, but Shari dismisses that with alacrity:

"You told you you have to stay?"

"Other guests in my predicament."

"Oh, yeah, go to the man on death row for advice about your trial."

I will try your patience yet a bit more with just a few mystery-stickler questions. I mean, would any diabetic eat cake, insulin or no insulin, end, period? Would a detective actually spend 10 minutes establishing the whereabouts of 6 people in a three-room apartment during a five-minute interval? Would he then ask one of those teenagers in private for a beer? Does Pike know those baby bracelets are made so that they cannot BE removed, except in the case of that neat TV movie where the nurse did it by mistake because they were, if I recall correctly, "So gol-danged slippery! I swear!" Could we think of a better name for the evil thing than "The Shadow," since only Madeleine L'Engle allowed to use that and yes-I-said-so? Isn't someone around there going to start channeling an artist or mathematician and go screaming down the dark hall before the whole place burns to the ground, for God's sake, ANYONE?

That said, I must return to my Lost Boys vibe. I admit it, ladies, and string me up if you must — I think the law firm of Duncan, Peck, Cormier and L'Engle has stolen my shelf for teen thrillers forever. HOWEVER. Whenever whatever person who is optioning every single movie from the 80s for a remake decides that it's time to get some Keds and Spanish-style mansions on the big screen, I have my $13.95 ready.

• • • • •

Quelle deluge, mes belles! Anyway — you ALL knew this Plotfinder! Thank God. However, the knowingest of all of you was Kate T., who came in with "Silver" by Norma Fox Mazer like ZERO seconds after the column posted. Congrats, Kate! You can write me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com for your CHOIX of ONE COLUMN. If I know it, I will do it.

Now, for this week's Plotfinders, which comes from readers Amanda G. and Aury W. I am doing three, because these are all so disturbing I literally want them OUT OF MY INBOX, so here goes:

Double whammy for you here. I did a lot of classroom-library miscellaneous-leftovers reading in my youth, so a lot of the books, bereft of famous author or recognizable genre, have slipped through the cracks in my mind. I'm thinking, first, of a book about a boy who is friends with a wealthy boy. The rich boy has a twin sister that the hero is attracted to, and he somehow becomes invisible and uses this power (with requisite guilt, of course) to spy on the girl. In doing so he discovers that the twins (surprise) are lovers. Apparently this was as much as my ten-year-old mind could handle, because I can't remember a thing after that. It might be Lois Duncan or her ilk—Christopher Pike?

Second is a book where a poor girl befriends a wealthy girl (Veronica? Victoria?)—maybe her mother is the rich girl's maid? The wealthy girl has a habit of biting her nails and her parents bribe her to stop by promising her nail polish. Somehow it evolves that the poor girl's mother is crazy in some way, which culminates in her being found naked at the river on Halloween, where some boys throw rocks at her—the ringleader being V.'s love interest. Also the boys have an incredibly mean nickname for the heroine, which may be the title, and has been on the tip of my tongue for at least the last five years. It's been torture, really—please help me get some closure!

After his parents die, a kid (maybe named Matt) and his deaf little sister run away from home. The little sister carries around a stuffed Snoopy. While Matt is out looking for work, the little sister gets murdered. The police suspect Matt. He lies and says he's 18, so he gets thrown into jail where he's raped. The next day, he admits he's only 15 or 16, so the head cop takes Matt home to stay with him until the trial. The cop is married to an artist.

At some point, Matt breaks his leg. The cop's baby daughter falls into the pool, so Matt jumps in to save her and ruins his cast.

Also, he asks if the artist is a witch, and the cop gets mad and threatens to send him back to prison.

And I think there's one point where the cop calls the sheriff of Matt's hometown, and the sheriff says Matt was once arrested for beating up a kid who was abusing a horse.

Gah!!!!!!!!! Let us get these shadows out of the way and enter the AFTERLIFE where we receive all the ANSWERS. Winner gets choice of free column. As always, you can send me the answers to jezziefinelines@gmail.com. To cut down on paperwork, this week's win will be chosen in a calculus calculated to make my life easier: if no one knows all three, I'll give THREE individual winners wins as if each were one separate discrete thinger. But if ANY READER knows TWO, that person takes THE WHOLE SHEBANG, irrespective of the time the answer is submitted. If there's more than one reader who knows two, then the first one to submit wins. Anyone who knows all three obviously trumps everybody. Good luck!

As I do EVERY WEEK, I now must take a moment to remind all thinking persons that a) Fine Lines is being transmogrified into a book of some sort and b) you can KNOW SOME THINGS ABOUT IT if you take two seconds and send me an email to get on the mailing list. To do so, either click HERE or send an email to jezziefinelines@gmail.com with WHERE IS THIS PURPORTED EMAIL YOU'RE SENDING, ALREADY? in the subject line. Don't worry, many are coming.

Interns, I am still reading applications and will be back to you soon!

Readers, next week's column is a surprise — I haven't yet decided, but I'll give you the month's roster then too.

As always, I am reachable for any reason by email at jezziefinelines@gmail.com. Some people use it to ask for books. Some people use it to share memories. NO ONE USES IT to push anyone off a balcony. Let's keep it that way, shall we?

Remember Me [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

Earlier: Bridge To Terabithia: Troubling The Waters
•Flowers In The Attic: He Ain't Sexy, He's My Brother
•A Little Princess: A Reversal Of Four Buns
• Tiger Eyes: Cuando Los Lagartijos Corren
•Homecoming: A Dicey Prospect
• Go Ask Alice: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
• The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase: Life's A Bitch And So Is The Governess
•Stranger With My Face: Stop Projecting
•Happy Endings Are All Alike: The Price Of Fault
•The Pigman: A Day No Friends Would Die
•Julie Of The Wolves: The Call Of The Wild
• Deenie: Brace Yourself
•A Wrinkle In Time: Quit Tesseracting Up
•Love Is One Of The Choices: No, Not That 'Sex And The City'
•The Girl With The Silver Eyes: Little Pitchers Have Big Pharma
•Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself: Springtime For Hitler, Part II
•Summer Of My German Soldier: Springtime For Hitler, Part I
•From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: City Of Angels
•A Gift Of Magic: Totally Psyched
•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan
•The Secret Garden: Still No Idea What A Missel Thrush Is
•To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie: No Telephone To Child Services
•The Westing Game: Partners In Crime
• The Moon By Night: Travels With Vicky
•My Sweet Audrina: The Book Of Sister And Forgetting
•The Long Secret: CSI: Puberty
•The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: A Pocket Full Of Orange Pits
•The Witch Of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!
•Are You In The House Alone? One Out Of Four, Maybe More
•Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once A Week
• Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City
•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today
•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn
•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care
•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon
•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads 'A Ring of Endless Light', the 1980 Madeleine L'Engle novel about Vicky Austin, who needs a good (dolphin) slap on the ass.

Dolphins. Do I even need to write another word? Oh, I know I do, but...dolphins, I had to write it again! That's the whole reason I started this column—to write about dolphins! You dog/horse/wolf/rabbit/mouse/Cave Lion/alley cat girls, keep your creatures. I am sticking with the one that can race to the horizon and back in an instant, symbolizes the great timeless mystery and wisdom of the universe, and is psychic. Try that with a rabbit sometime.

In A Ring of Endless Light, Vicky Austin, seemingly the most ordinary of the triptych of L'Engle heroines that includes Meg Murray O'Keefe and, in later installations, Meg's daughter Poly, yet again reveals herself to have a tiger in the tank. Having left her the previous summer, camping across the country on her way to a year in New York (see The Young Unicorns for that story), we return to an older Vicky under sadder circumstances. Not only has her family gathered on Seven Bay Island because her grandfather dying of cancer, a dear family friend, Commander Rodney, has just been killed trying to rescue a drowning boy. What has always been a happy summer on the water has become, in true Virginia Woolf style, a slow march into the sea.

Luckily—it is summer, after all—L'Engle has seen fit to break up all this agony with a passel of love interests for Vicky, though all three boys are wrestling with their own boatmen as well. First up is the familiar Zachary Gray, Vicky's pale, raven-haired suitor from The Moon By Night, his ordinary old death wish now transmuted into a veritable buffet of funeral baked meats. He's still got his bum ticker and loves to race cars and fly prop planes too close to jetliners—but now, his mother has died and been cryogenically frozen, and, oh, yeah—he's just (unsuccessfully) tried to commit suicide, which is the real reason Commander Rodney, who managed to save Zach, but not himself, is dead.

No wonder, after he pull up in his hearse-like black station wagon, he wastes no time telling Vicky she's all that stands between him and chaos. ("You're reason where there isn't any reason. Reason to live—") Stick a pin in that for one second, Zach—because, in addition to this matter of your being responsible for the death of Commander Rodney, Leo Rodney, his son, is very much interested in Vicky!

Without realizing what I was doing, I put my arms around him. "Cry, Leo, don't hold it back, you need to cry—" I broke up because I was crying, too, for Commander Rodney, for my grandfather, who was dying slowly and gently, for a thousand porpoises who had been clubbed to death...

I held Leo and he held me and we rocked back and forth on the old elm trunk, weeping, and the salt wind brushed against the salt of our tears. And I discovered that there is something almost more intimate about crying that way with someone than there is about kissing...

The French may have figured out how sex can evoke death, but it took an American to realize that death can also evoke sex. Luckily for Zach, however, Vicky doesn't feels the same amount of wild chemistry with gentle Leo. Speaking of which, we come now to the figure of Adam Eddington, who's studying dolphins at the lab with Vicky's older brother, John.

Those of you who've read The Arm of the Starfish know well that Adam is currently grieving over the death of his former mentor and friend, Joshua Archer, and the role he may have played in that death—but in this novel Adam is also, for L'Engle, the lifeline between science and God, his experiments with dolphins leading him less down a rational path than one towards greater mysteries. When he asks Vicky for help, thinking, as a child (he thinks), she may communicate better with the wild dolphin, Basil, he's made friends with out at sea, he realizes that she's not a child—and that her poetical brain runs rings around his when it comes to communicating with them:

"Tell me what he feels like to you," Adam urged.

How can anybody describe the feel of a dolphin? "Something strange, alien," I murmured, "like touching a creature from a different planet—and yet completely familiar, too, as though I've always known what a dolphin feels like....."

Again I lifted my hand from the water, but I couldn't see anything, and this time when I stoped scratching, Basil dove down, his great fluke flicking so that again I was drenched in spray, and appeared far beyond us, leaping up in great and glorious arc before diving down again...

I was still treading water and feeling more exhilarated than I have ever felt in my life.

Yes, that's right, she gets to swim with dolphins. Contain your jealousy. (Actually, just save it for when she has psychic conversations with them.) But Vicky's summer is one of absurd juxtapositions and extremes—one moment quietly spent reading philosophy with her Grandfather by his bed, the next being taken to a spa and a classical music concert with Zachary, the next eating spaghetti with her family and discussing the nature of death and cellular regeneration, the next skinny-dipping with Leo. It's an overwhelming deluge of physical, philosophical and psychological stimulae, sex and death, Eros and Thanatos, one in which the dolphins prove a crucial link for Adam—and for her:

"It's just—it's just—there's death everywhere—Commander Rodney—and watching Grandfather, and now Ynid's baby for no reason—it's just everywhere..."

..."Are you afraid?" he asked softly..."Of what, Vicky?" He picked up another handful of sand, and started trickling it through his fingers. "Dying?" his voice wasn't loud, but the word seemed to explode into the night.

Unlike Zach, who is far too dangerous, and Leo, who is far too tame, Adam is capable of making Vicky feel strongly without maker her feel entirely out of control—or making her feel entirely unlike herself:

...I heard every word he said. And I think I understood. At the same time my entire body was conscious of the feel of his fingers stroking my hair. I wondered if he felt as strongly as I did.

At that moment there was a rip in the clouds and an island of star-sparkled sky appeared, its light so brilliant it seemed to reach down beyond the horizon and encircle the earth, a ring of pure and endless light.

I wasn't sure that Adam's words were very comforting. But his arm about me was. He made me feel very real, not replete with me at all, only real, and hopeful....And I knew that if Adam kissed me it was going to be different from Zachary, with all his experience, or Leo, with all his naivete.

Adam did not kiss me.

Yet I felt as close to him as though he had.

This is a far cry from Leo, whom she can grieve with but not kiss, or Zach, whom she can kiss, but not grieve with. But here again, we find that the dolphins have the answer for her. After the baby of the dolphins at the lab dies, she asks the wild dolphins (wouldn't you?) to explain the nature of death to her:

I thought of Ynid and her grief at her dead baby, and I asked Basil, Is Ynid's baby all right? (Is Commander Rodney all right? Is my grandfather all right? Am I? Is it all right?)

Basil pulled himself out of the water and a series of sounds came from him, singing sounds.

And what it reminded me of was Grandfather standing by Commander Rodney's open grave and saying those terrible words and then crying out, full of joy, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

Like Vicky's minister grandfather, the dolphins advocate a unified theory of everything, one in which not only life and death are intertwined, but evil and good. But when Vicky, on the cusp of womanhood, tries to assert her new psychic powers with the dolphins with Adam to form their own unified theory, she is slapped back:

Without consciously realizing what I was doing, I turned my mind toward Adam. Do a cartwheel in the water, like Basil.

I held my breath.

Adam dove down. Up came his legs. Flip. Head and arms were out of the water. Just like Basil.

Adam, do you really think of me as nothing more than a child? I realize I'm naive and backward for my age in lots of ways, but I don't feel about you the way a child feels. I've never felt about anybody else the way I feel about you, touched in every part of me...Is it only my feelings? Doesn't it touch you at all?

He broke in, saying sharply, "Vicky, what are you doing?"

I could feel heat suffusing my face. "N—nothing."

Now he was shouting at me. "Don't do that!"

"Why? Why not?"

"Because—because—" He clamped his mouth shut. But he was telling without speaking. Because it's too intimate.

But I did it with the dolphins. Why was it all right with the dolphins?

And the answer came lapping gently into my mind like the water lapping about my body. Because this is how the dolphins are, all the time. They're able to live with this kind of intimacy and not be destroyed by it.

I have always loved the part of this book where Leo tells Vicky how his parents made love after his own grandfather's death as an "affirmation of life" (it's not creepy, I swear), and it seems to sum up the entire thesis of this book—that sex and death are intertwangled with joy, which is, as Vicky's grandfather puts it, "the infallible sense of God in the universe." Meg Murray may well get to be consumed by tilting planets and fandolae and the future of the universe, but Vicky is, in her own quiet way, touching on questions just as crucial, however young and awkward she is. Like Meg, Vicky is a conduit for discussing the big questions, but I have always felt that she alone is also a conduit for representing the overwhelming feelings of adolescence, especially for girls. As Adam puts it, "I simply did not expect that John Austin's kid sister would be thunder and lightning and electricity."

• • • • •

Hello, pretty ladies! Thank you for being so extraordinarily nice to my dear friend Laura Lippman last week! (Just fyi, my personal takeaway from the Gilbreth family has always been flaking whitewash, shingled hair, QWERTY, "Lincoln freed the slaves. All but one. All but one," and Davey Jones Locker, not necessarily in that order. Oh, and the scent of oranges in California! This could go on for hours.) If you have not already, please go check out Laura's Times' Magazine Sunday Serial of last week, which returns, I presume, yet again in this next one.

ADDITIONALLY AND FURTHERMORE...construction at YA Book Central continues APACE, and various announcements, including the TITLE AND COVER PEEKS, plus SPECIAL ACTION ITEMS, will be appearing as soon as the publisher authorizes it, i.e. soon. Want to know before everyone else? OBVIOUSLY. To sign up, click here or send an email to jezziefinelines@gmail.com with the words DOLPHINS DO IT BETTER in the subject line, and I will put you on it!

Now, onto the last Plotfinder, which gave us a rare visual. I encourage all of you who haven't looked at it to give it a click and scroll down before proceeding.

LAST FACEFINDER VISUAL

Okay, good. (Guys, you are OBSESSED WITH Matt Dillon, but that is not Matt Dillon! BELIEVE ME, I KNOW MATT DILLON. Hair is right, though.) As I said last week, one of these I know for sure, the next I am 98%, and the third I just like to believe is true. Therefore, the winner is one Elissa P., who replied to the challenge:

1. Courtney Cox
2. Ethan Hawke
3. Alanis???? (I really want to believe this one)

I ALSO WANT TO BELIEVEEEEEEEEE!!!!! But yes, that is Courtney Cox, and, I am quite certain, Ethan Hawke. (You have to look at the eyes, or, rather, eye.) Is that or is that not a pre-nose job Alanis? Did Alanis have a nose job? God knows; either way, there's nothing ironic about that corsage. But! Elissa, please write me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com to claim your prize of one free column demand. Previous winners, your columns are coming up in the order in which they were received — do not despair! I was saving them for the cold weather.

AND NOW TO THIS WEEK'S PLOTFINDER!!!!!!! Laboring mightily myself of late, I have taken pity upon this poor fellow laborer, Sarah, whose efforts, tho' verily admirable, have as of yet come to naught:

A Ring of Endless LightA Ring Of Endless Light [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

Earlier: Bridge To Terabithia: Troubling The Waters
•Flowers In The Attic: He Ain't Sexy, He's My Brother
•A Little Princess: A Reversal Of Four Buns
• Tiger Eyes: Cuando Los Lagartijos Corren
•Homecoming: A Dicey Prospect
• Go Ask Alice: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
• The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase: Life's A Bitch And So Is The Governess
•Stranger With My Face: Stop Projecting
•Happy Endings Are All Alike: The Price Of Fault
•The Pigman: A Day No Friends Would Die
•Julie Of The Wolves: The Call Of The Wild
• Deenie: Brace Yourself
•A Wrinkle In Time: Quit Tesseracting Up
•Love Is One Of The Choices: No, Not That 'Sex And The City'
•The Girl With The Silver Eyes: Little Pitchers Have Big Pharma
•Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself: Springtime For Hitler, Part II
•Summer Of My German Soldier: Springtime For Hitler, Part I
•From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: City Of Angels
•A Gift Of Magic: Totally Psyched
•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan
•The Secret Garden: Still No Idea What A Missel Thrush Is
•To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie: No Telephone To Child Services
•The Westing Game: Partners In Crime
• The Moon By Night: Travels With Vicky
•My Sweet Audrina: The Book Of Sister And Forgetting
•The Long Secret: CSI: Puberty
•The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: A Pocket Full Of Orange Pits
•The Witch Of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!
•Are You In The House Alone? One Out Of Four, Maybe More
•Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once A Week
• Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City
•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today
•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn
•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care
•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon
•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads Beverly Cleary's 1963 novel 'Sister of the Bride', in which Barbara McClane discovers she's more than just a member of the wedding.

Is it possible to write a feminist novel featuring a cunning lace jacket and the baking of many batches of Snickerdoodles? Giving it the old college try is Beverly Cleary, best known for the unsinkable Ramona Quimby, not her many novels of young love — though many of them put as profound a spin on adolescent girldom as Ramona does on a girl's childhood.

When we meet Barbara McClane, she is a junior in high school, a scant — in her optimistic view — two years behind her sister Rosemary, who's just announced she's marrying her college beau, Greg. Barbara, painfully stuck at home spatting with her younger brother Gordy, is at that mutable age where one's personality seems as up for debate as health care reform, and Rosemary — a chilly, eminently more sophisticated moon — is currently the tidal draw towards which Rosemary is pulled.

While Barbara toils along, hounded by the family Siamese, teased by her father, and seemingly only tolerated by her busy mother, Rosemary is newly slim, getting exposed to Plato and psychology, beloved by a former Air Force captain, and otherwise enjoying all the intellectual and emotional fruits available to a liberated woman of the early 1960s.

Barbara is desperate to be similarly liberated, but her own prospects for the future, school- and boy-wise seem dim. Not only are her grades endangering her future at Cal, her current swains are only the moody neighbor Tootie Bodger, a trombonist with a desperate crush on Barbara, and Bill Cunningham, who appears, dashingly, on his Vespa to flirt with Barbara and gobble up all the cookies, then departs before asking her out.

But when Rosemary announces her impending wedding, she pounces: "Maybe at last she had found what she wanted to do...get married in two years like Rosemary." If she can't live Rosemary's new, sophisticated life, she can at least, for one day, live her wedding.

As befits a dreamer casting about for a dream, Barbara's idea of a wedding is born from the bright pages of magazines she studies busily, involving flowing veils, handsome groomsmen, exquisite flowers, and other celebratory perks. In her world, a wedding is less an event than spiritual Kabuki, aesthetics and accoutrement reflecting the purity and poetry of true love.

But Rosemary, newly practical and modern, is irritatingly unwilling to invest in this fantasy. Her post-pillbox view of marriage involves a small wedding, a suit, brown towels, and, ideally, hand-thrown pottery. Engagement rings are "middle-class," presents mean she and Greg will be plagued by "things," and she's going to finish school, not drop out to be a better wife — because Greg thinks school will make her "a better wife and mother." Rosemary and Barbara's mother is bemused, their grandmother aghast, but Rosemary deeply crushed:

She's overdoing it all the way, thought Barbara. No pretty dishes, no pastel linens, that practical suit. The whole thing, from Barbara's point of view, was beginning to sound just plain dreary. If this went on, she and Greg would probably spend their honeymoon picketing something.

But if Rosemary's view of marriage leaves much to be desired, Barbara thinks the vision offered by her mother's generation is even worse. A member of a happy-housewife group called the Amys (Rosemary's college-educated verdict, much to the amusement of her parents, is that the Amys "don't use their minds"), Barbara's mother seems unduly concerned with the price of flowers and the length of the veil, practical matters Barbara thinks should be divorced from the altar's joys. When the Amys give Rosemary a shower complete with dishtowels, sequined oven-mitts and endless fish molds, Barbara lowers the boom: "There was no poetry in their soul. Just recipes."

But now Rosemary, who has finally accepted the idea of an engagement ring and veil, is starting to display a dismal household-drudge streak, too. She and Greg secure an apartment where they can exchange rent for being landlords, and Barbara, picturing a sleek, modern building or, alternately, charming old place crawling with plants, is dismayed about the actual digs: a gray, junky apartment with a taxi-yellow bathroom and a Murphy bed, in a building where Rosemary will be stuck lining the garbage cans with newspaper and cooking in the teeny kitchen. She thought the veil signified an acceptance of the frillier realm — but she is again brought down to earth. "And bragging about how she would clean those halls to pay the rent! What was the matter with her anyway? Had the poetry gone out of her soul, too?"

But the absolutely nadir occurs when Rosemary, who, in her new sophistication, is usually a dependable co-Snickerer at the Amys and her mother's generation, starts, appallingly to soften towards them:

"...but next semester I think I'll join the Dames."

"And what are the Dames?" demanded Barbara, beginning to undress.

"A club for wives of students," answered Rosemary.

"What do they do?" Barbara was always curious about university life.

"Oh—things like having someone talk on nutrition and how to get the most out of the food dollar," said Rosemary.

At least this was on a higher plane than the Amys, who were inclined to exchange cooky recipes. It was evidence that the Dames used their minds.

"And at the end of the semester there is a party," continued Rosemary with a mischievous smile. "That is when the girls who work while their husbands go to school are awarded their Ph.T. degree."

Barbara had heard of a Ph.D. degree, but never of a Ph.T. This was a new one. "What does that stand for?" she asked, pulling on her nightgown.

"Putting Hubby through," answered Rosemary, laughing.

Barbara groaned. "They sound every bit as bad as the Amys. Worse, even."

"Maybe," agreed Rosemary, "but they have fun." She thought a moment before she said, "And so do the Amys."

It's interesting, on the cusp of the feminist movement with its cowl-neck-sporting support groups, Cleary chose to offer a defense of the women's support groups that already did exist. Gazing with bemusement on the psychobabble-spouting co-eds in muumus who think women should use their minds but can't finish a dress, Cleary, through Barbara, emphasizes that the Amys are more than smug Hockey moms (whose hypocrisy I imagine Cleary would happily skewer, too):

There was actually a variety of women in the room—the Amy who wore leather sandals and wove her own skirts, another who was active in the League of Women Voters, the mother whose calm was never disturbed by her six children, a mother who wanted to write but could not find time, an Amy whose rough hands and deep tan were the results of hours spent in her hillside garden.

There might be something silly about sequin-trimmed oven mitts — but it's not clear it's any less silly than only wanting hand-thrown poetry and brown towels. Cleary's housewives, and Rosemary, aren't just housewives—Barbara's mother works, both for money and enjoyment, and if Rosemary rolls her hair, she rolls it while studying Plato. Even Barbara has to admit that the Amys, who take on the flowers, food and sewing needs of the wedding, have impressive and useful skills: "The Amys had many talents...Barbara and her mother were most grateful of all to the Amy who dropped in to admire the wedding presents, and watched Millie stolidly sewing her way through the sea-spray organza, and simply took the whole thing away from her and that morning had returned it, complete and pressed."

This may explain why, playing at wifely helpmeet, Barbara starts to chafe at Bill, who kills his chances with her when he has the audacity to blow past cookies and bring her a shirt to mend because she seems so "domestic":

She discovered she was tired of baking cookies for that—cooky hound. She was tired of trying to win him, and as for her daydreams about getting married someday, she found them so silly she was embarrassed even thinking about them. Imagine living in an apartment like Rosemary's with Bill Cunningham and washing his socks. Never, never, never!

Domesticity, Barbara is learning, isn't a coy blind thrown up to catch a man. It's a battery of practical skills — or, at a level that strains towards its own poetry, a dingy, fond expression of love:

Not everything about Rosemary's life was wrong. There was Greg. And marriage was not something out of the slick and colorful pages of a magazine. It was not just parties and new clothes and flowers and a wedding veil....It was a lot of other things, too, like love and trust and living within one's income and, in Rosemary and Greg's case, putting their educations ahead of their immediate comfort. Why, Rosemary was prepared to do all of this cheerfully, even gaily, and it had not even occurred to her that she was being brave or self-sacrificing. She was doing it because she loved Greg and had faith in his future.

And for the first time the thought came to Barbara that Greg was lucky to be marrying her sister.

By the end of the book, Barbara has happily tosses aside her bouquet dreams — as well as her desire to follow in Rosemary's footsteps. She's not going to pin her future on a hazy groomsman, she's going to figure out what kind of people she likes and what kind of person she is. And, as Barbara looks forward to figuring out if prefers Tootie to Bill and what courses she'd like to take at Cal, in its greatest irony, a cheery book about an early wedding becomes an argument for anything but.

• • • • •

But just because Beverly Clearly cleverly slipped her feminism in on the sly doesn't mean you don't have to fling off your undergarments and set them afire on occasion just to keep the powers that be fully alert. I mention today's NPR bra-burning story because SHELF PLEASURING fans may have pricked up their ears at the mention of one of the rabble-rousers, Alix Kate Shulman, whose MEMOIRS OF AN EX-PROM QUEEN is one of the more fun (explicitly) feminist novels ever written. It's replete with dirty losses of virginity in parking lots and sexy snorkeling, and I highly recommend. Thanks to whatever Amazon reader provided this cover scan:

On to the Plotfinder of two weeks ago. Strangely enough, NO ONE knew it, or everyone was too obsessed with incest to attend to it at that moment. Anyone who wants to take a crack at duck imprinting is MORE than welcome to go for it.

For this week, I thought we'd try a different kind of Plotfinder, one hatched by my 19 months of rummaging through the 9 trillion books that will appear in what I currently enjoy calling THE BOOK.

Welcome to FACEFINDER! What is Facefinder? Well In the old days, YA covers used to wend towards photographs or paintings OF photographs, a technique that has sadly been entirely obviated by Photoshop. Anyway, some of these cover models were child actors...and some went on to become FAMOUS PERSONAGES. Or at least, I think they did. I can assure you that the first of these covers IS actually the actor (she is one of those actresses who insists on being called actors) in question. The next, I am 90% sure is the person I think it is, and the third, I just like to believe is.

In any case, can you name these three? First person to get them all correct (i.e. agree with me) wins a column choice. As always, put your answer in the comments, or email them to me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com.

BEHOLD!

Now, for next month's reading. In the upcoming weeks, please look forward to:

Next Friday:

Belles on their Toes (guested by the beautiful and talented Laura Lippman)

The Friday after:

A Ring of Endless Light

and the next Friday....

And This is Laura!

Speaking of THE BOOK. Yes, the Book! Do you want to be the first to hear any announcements, goodies, info or planned devilment thereof? (-on? -in? -abouts?) Of course you do! Especially since I will be ANNOUNCING THE TITLE, AND SUBSCRIBERS WILL FIND OUT WHAT IT IS FIRST, IF I CAN FIGURE OUT HOW TO SET UP A MAILING LIST!

To get on the mailing list, you may click here to send an email to sign up (thanks to Erika V. for THE POP-UP CODE!] or simply send an email to jezziefinelines@gmail.com with the words OBVIOUSLY I AM GOING TO KNOW FIRST in the subject line. I am sort of in love with this title and eager to share it with you, and I hope you will love it too.

I also need your help. (This is the longest afterward EVER; I apologize.) I am in need of hi-res scans for these two covers. Do you have them? Do you have a scanner that can do 360 dpi, too? You are the best. Please email them to me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com.

Do you have any other demands, desires or prognostications? Terrif! Simply email me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com to let me know. I cannot answer every email (marvelous intern candidates, you will hear from me soon!!!!!!), but trust that I use them ALL to subvert the dominant paradigm.

Sister Of The Bride [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

Earlier: Bridge To Terabithia: Troubling The Waters
•Flowers In The Attic: He Ain't Sexy, He's My Brother
•A Little Princess: A Reversal Of Four Buns
• Tiger Eyes: Cuando Los Lagartijos Corren
•Homecoming: A Dicey Prospect
• Go Ask Alice: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
• The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase: Life's A Bitch And So Is The Governess
•Stranger With My Face: Stop Projecting
•Happy Endings Are All Alike: The Price Of Fault
•The Pigman: A Day No Friends Would Die
•Julie Of The Wolves: The Call Of The Wild
• Deenie: Brace Yourself
•A Wrinkle In Time: Quit Tesseracting Up
•Love Is One Of The Choices: No, Not That 'Sex And The City'
•The Girl With The Silver Eyes: Little Pitchers Have Big Pharma
•Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself: Springtime For Hitler, Part II
•Summer Of My German Soldier: Springtime For Hitler, Part I
•From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: City Of Angels
•A Gift Of Magic: Totally Psyched
•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan
•The Secret Garden: Still No Idea What A Missel Thrush Is
•To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie: No Telephone To Child Services
•The Westing Game: Partners In Crime
• The Moon By Night: Travels With Vicky
•My Sweet Audrina: The Book Of Sister And Forgetting
•The Long Secret: CSI: Puberty
•The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: A Pocket Full Of Orange Pits
•The Witch Of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!
•Are You In The House Alone? One Out Of Four, Maybe More
•Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once A Week
• Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City
•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today
•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn
•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care
•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon
•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads Katherine Paterson's 1977 book 'Bridge to Terabithia', the story of Jess Aarons, the second-fastest runner in the fifth grade.

The life-changing friend is a standard trope of teen fiction, but rereading Bridge to Terabithia, it occurs to me that one does tire of the all-too-common morally bracing appearance of a Pollyanna (as in my beloved "An Old-Fashioned Girl," or, you know, "Pollyanna.") An outsider who is revolutionary purely because of her strangeness ("The Secret Garden," "Iggie's House") is a great variation, but I'm not sure I've ever seen before a character who manages to be both moral and strange outside Bridge to Terabithia's Leslie Burke — both wholly herself and wholly strange, and wholly a revelation to protaganist Jess Aaron.

Jess Aaron is a fifth-grader whose elbows are bumping up against both his own limitations and those of his outside life (insofar as a fifth-grader has an an external and internal life — but, you know, if anyone can make you understand how they do, it's Katherine Paterson). The oldest boy in a working-class family of four other girls, he's a budding artist, which goes over poorly with his trucker dad ("'What are they teaching in that damn school? Bunch of old ladies turning him into a—'"), as well as with the old ladies, in fact (“The devil of it was that none of his regular teachers ever liked his drawings. When they'd catch him scribbling, they'd screech about waste—wasted time, wasted paper, wasted ability.") His mother, overwhelmed with his sisters, is too busy to pay much attention to him, but Jess, who's asked to stand in as the man of the household when his father is gone to work in D.C., feels the loss of his father the most keenly:

Jess watched his dad stop the truck, lean over to unlatch the door, so May Belle could climb in. He turned away. Durn lucky kid. She could run after him and grab him and kiss him. It made Jess ache inside to watch his dad grab the little ones to his shoulder, or lean down and hug them. It seemed to him that he had been thought too big for that since the day he was born.

His new neighbor, the life-changing Leslie Burke, could not be more different. A transplant from D.C., child of noblesse oblige who've taken a house in rural Virginia because they're "reassessing their value structure", Leslie meets Jess in the meadow where he is practicing his running in anticipation of winning one of the lunchtime heats to make him the fastest runner in the school. Leslie's comment, very far from typical girlish admiration, is, like herself, both artless and unwittingly incisive:

“If you're so afraid of the cow, why don't you just climb the fence?”

As it happens, Jess is afraid — although he doesn't realize it until he sees his new schoolmate Leslie flout all of the conventions that have held him back heretofore. On her first day of school, Leslie , shows up in old tennis shoes and shorts, in stark contrast to all the country children in their faded best. A child of a world where pride would keep anyone from showing up that way in public unless they had to, Jess is embarrassed for her — but then finds himself defending her when she breaks yet another barrier — joining the boys in the race:

“Gary stopped walking and wheeled to face him. Fulcher glared first at Jess and then at Leslie Burke. “Next thing,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “next thing you're gonna want to let some girl run.”

Jess's face went hot. “Sure,” he said recklessly. “Why not?” He turned deliberately toward Leslie.

“Wanna run?” he asked.

....For a minute he thought Gary was going to sock him, and he stiffened. He mustn't let Fulcher suspect he was scared of a little belt in the mouth. But instead Gary broke into a trot and started bosses the threes into line for their heat....See, he told himself, you can stand up to a creep like Fulcher. No sweat.

Of course, Leslie then goes on to beat the pants off all of the boys in the school. It's not a particularly feminist moment, though: she is honestly confused when they refuse to accept her win, as they will refuse to accept every other aspect of her that doesn't fit in with their world. Beating them in running, they must understand, is only one of the examples in which Leslie is literally ahead —not due to her economic and cultural advantages, necessarily, but in how those freedoms have enabled her to be utterly herself, a privilege they don't share.

Jess, attempting to break boundaries himself, is bitterly disappointed to lose, but still differs from his peers in that he can see that Leslie's open embrace of life isn't something to be feared, but admired, recognizing his own desires to be authentically himself in her: “She ran as though it was her nature. It reminded him of the flight of wild ducks in autumn. So smooth. The word 'beautiful' came to his mind, but he shook it away and hurried up toward the house.”

And here is where Jess makes a willful change — a decision to no longer be bound by his distracted parents or by the teachers in the school, but to embrace the people in his life who seem to be interested in other aspects of him than in how well he's milking the cow: not only his "hippie, peacenik" music teacher, Mrs. Edmunds, with whom he's been in love for ages despite the scorn of the school for her and her hippie pants and makeup, but Leslie herself. This happens, appropriately enough, as they're singing "Free to Be You and Me" in class (and did you KNOW that those lyrics were by Bruce Hart of YA titan Bruce and Carol Hart fame, by the way?):

Caught in the pure delight of it, Jess turned and his eyes met Leslie's. He smiled at her. What the heck. There wasn't any reason he couldn't. What was he scared of anyhow? Lord. Sometimes he acted like the original yellow-belled sapsucker....He felt there in the teachers' room that it was the beginning of a new season in his life, and he chose deliberately to make it so.

And thus begins a friendship in which Jess finds a freedom to be himself he hasn't considered before, and Leslie finds a friend in the sea a school population with a knee-jerk scorn for girls who don't wear dresses, own TVs, or stand on the sidelines cheering during races. This friendship finds its apex in the imaginary world of Terabithia, an kingdom in the woods conceived by the visionary Leslie, reached only by a rope swinging across a river, located physically and philosophically just on the cusp of where Jess's fears begin:

There were parts of the woods that Jess did not like. Dark places where it was almost like being under water, but he didn't say so .... Jess agreed quickly, relieved there was no need to plunge deeper into the woods. He would take her there, of course, for he wasn't such a coward that he would mind a little exploring now and then further in amongst the ever-darkening columns of the tall pins. But as a regular thing, as a permanent place, this is where he would choose to be...

... there in the shadowy light of the stronghold everything seemed possible. Between the two of them they owned the world and no enemy, Gary Fulcher, W