This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer.
Find all my work at MJMunoz.com
Prepare yourself for some off the cuff book talk as I tackle another middle grade book
chapter by chapter.
I was talking with somebody about stuff lately and I told him yesterday, if this book doesn't
have me by chapter 5, I'm just going to drop it because I'm not wasting my time and I'm
not going to spend 45 days, 9 weeks worth of time as far as release schedule is concerned
on this book if I don't like it, if it's not good enough quality for me.
So I was going to drop it but then I listened a little bit more, I listened to this chapter
this morning and I thought, you know what, there's something here.
There's something here and I do like something that's going on and that something isn't
Amanda Beale but it is personified by Amanda Beale I could say and that is that there's
an actual story going on now.
There's actual conflict, there's actual character and I always go back to this and I always
say it like that but I believe in the old adage that character reveals conflict and
I have to agree that that's absolutely true, that character does reveal conflict and or
rather it's conflict reveals character, that's what I meant to say and the thing is that
we haven't had Maniac McGee interacting with anybody other than yelling talk talk talk
to his aunt and uncle in chapter 1 I think, yeah because this is chapter 2 right?
Now this is chapter 3 because it's Maniac McGee chapter 3 which is setting me free and giving
me a new perspective on it.
So anyway, yeah you had an introduction, you had one chapter, you had a second chapter
and in those three chapters there was no real conflict and there was no real opportunity
for Jeffrey's character to be established.
By the way I also now know it's Jerry Spinelli and Jeffrey Lionel McGee.
I've got that all straightened out now I think.
Anyway so yeah now there's a conflict, now there's something going on, Jeffrey is interacting
with somebody and before, again other than talk talk talk why weren't you talking and
running, there was no interaction that he had with anybody so while I like the performance
by Merckison, I gotta look that up, anyway well I like the performance, it can only do
so much with what's there and I believe it did elevate the content so far of the book
but here we're really getting something and what we're getting is this conflict between
Jeffrey and Amanda and the conflict that they're getting, it's kind of multi-layered and I'll
cite like one thing from the chapter specifically or one part of the interaction that happened
with them specifically and I'll expound on that because I don't want to go through the
whole chapter, I can leave that kind of stuff for later and it's probably the most significant
part.
He sees her suitcase, he stops running or stops jogging through the town when he sees
her lugging a suitcase with her, he doesn't know where she's going, she's going to school,
he doesn't know that so he stops and says hi to her and she says hi back because she's
polite she's nice and he asks her oh are you running away too and she laughs and she says
like she laughs because it's absurd to her that she would be running away which to me
says a couple things, it means she has a good home life, it means she's happy with things
as they are and if she has a good home life she's happy with things as they are even though
she's living in a town divided by racism because she's in this interaction it's mentioned or
it's brought up, it's presented to the audience in her thoughts or whatever that he's probably
from West End where the whites are and he doesn't belong in East End she says to him
which is where the blacks are and she doesn't understand what he's doing there and she's
kind of suspicious of this but that's what she's used to and she's okay with living like
that so that actually does some really interesting very clever things, it shows that Jeffrey
ran away or it reinforces the fact that Jeffrey ran away from his terrible home life and then
you have here a girl who's similar to him in some ways like the connection, the book
thing seems like a connection which I'll get to that too because I want to talk about that,
the go damn bad of it but the idea that he ran away from home because it was so terrible
and he lived in a divided home in a town that wasn't divided let's say is interesting because
that's a direct foil or contrast to Amanda Beale who lives in a whole home I'm assuming
from here the fact that she hasn't run away I'm just like I'm partly assuming and partly
projecting from what I know from reading books how things could go so the fact that she hasn't
run away means she's either not fed up enough with things because he stayed for eight years
in this horrible house of two toasters and yet his town wasn't divided as far as we know
yet her town is divided into East End and West End, two mills are divided into East
End and West End but her home is probably whole and that's why she's happy in the home
and that's why she's happy to keep going to school either that or she hasn't reached
her breaking point yet but I think in order to set up the contrast we've got a homeless
wanderer who runs from his home his broken home and then he finds himself lodged in a
whole home within a divided town and that'll be something that creates more of the conflict
and helps set up the story and I wouldn't be shocked if he goes over to West End and
befriends some white kids over there a white family and then that's another thing where
he's seeing another whole home in a broken city in a broken town that would be really
interesting but yeah so her carrying the stuff looking like a homeless wanderer like him
made a connection and it was a cross-racial connection he didn't see her as someone who's
black therefore he can't be similar to her he saw her as somebody who's on the run from
his family and from his home like he is so there's a connection right there there's that
like brotherhood sisterhood type thing going on there's just there's that connection there
and that connection is what enables him like he's an open person who's open to connection
probably because he has seen modeled for him disconnection and disharmony and discord in
family and you know supposedly loving the most loving relationship there should be husband
and wife and you know he's lost his mother and father too and I still disagree with the
way the first two or three chapters like the intro of the two chapters were put forth however
they do supply a lot of the necessary background to understand all of this stuff but they didn't
have to do it in that way and I feel confident I feel comfortable saying I disagree with
how it was presented but also at the same time saying on the other hand I do like what's
being put forward because you can see these connections so he connects with her over this
thing she opens up the books he's loud she's loud she ends up after waffling back and forth
I decided to go and give him a book and he tells her her address she tells him her address
and says but you can't go there to deliver the book back to me which I predict he's going
to go do that and I predict him the reason he can't do that is because he's white not
black and that'll cause tension and cause issues because the black folk and white folk
don't mix in twin mills so that's what it seems like anyway so I think it's a really
interesting stuff it's really compelling seeing the way that they react to each other is interesting
she says something about like his family or his mom and dad or whatever and like starts
walking off and he falls back because he's like so shocked like he can't say my my parents
are dead is a meme I'm gonna insert it right here okay he can't say that he can't say
that right now he can't acknowledge that hurtful truth and it's a it's a touching moment it's
a touching moment we get to see him confronting the fact that his parents are dead that he
is an orphan not just a runaway but also an orphan and his hesitation that the fact that
his hesitation slows him down when he's like said to be this boy who never stops running
basically is really interesting and it really textures his character and it makes me more
interested it shows me a weakness or a flaw or a chink in his arm or whatever that like
oh this guy is affected by things and that makes me like him more and Amanda like laughing
at the fact that he thinks she's a runaway says a lot about her like that's a preposterous
idea and then the fact that like she was never late to school except for that one day when
she's there to give him that book like that also like says a lot about who she is and
like either she loves school or she is very disciplined at home and there's a lot of
rigidity and structure that says like you will go to school and you will succeed which
coming from like I don't know if she's poor or not but coming from like a black family
in the South ish area I could see like a want and a desire to like be proud and like look
we're you know like we're a proud family not the proud family we're a proud family and
we're going to live as such and like act with decorum and self-respect and like respect
for the society in which we exist and we're going to you know do our best because we can
and we are capable of doing our best so we will do our best and be above reproach be
above you know derision and scorn and anybody who gives that to us is a weak person who
is doing it because of their families and their insecurities and it says nothing negative
about us it only says negative things about them so like I can totally see that being
the case reminds me of the Logan family from the thrill of thunder you might cry that was
a good book that was a really good book so anyway yeah speaking of books when McGee
was like shocked by these books and again I can't quite tell when this was what is this
the 60s is it the 50s is it the 70s is it the 80s is it the 90s I don't know it's very
unclear so far when it's set and the level of media saturation that there would have
been at the time would make it believable that books a suitcase full of books and would
delight Lionel or not Lionel Jeffrey and the fact that he tells her any book give me any
book I want any book also speaks to the like low level of media saturation there were only
a few TV channels not everybody had a TV that kind of thing you know media was an event
and a book like still represented like an escape into another world makes me think that
it makes me think that's interesting at first I kind of groaned and I thought another book
where books change the world or I was even contemplating I'll let you in a little secret
so you know I'm an author right so I'm working on a book series right now that was going
to be a kid gets sucked into a video game it's been done too much you know it hasn't
okay there's millions of thriller books millions of crime books probably literally it's not
just tens of thousands there could be millions anyway but at least there's hundreds of books
in any one genre that tell like a certain type of story but like what I'm going to bring
to it is unique and what I'm going to bring it is so to you what I'm going to bring to
it is so unique that this was a possibility somebody suggested to me my my secret counselor
my benefactor benefactors was I used to anyway she advised me don't make this a book about
video games to make it a timeless book or book series and make it about books this kid
is in a his family owns a bookstore or they own a library or whatever and that's how he
gets sucked into this other world and I thought that's actually doable the way I was going
to do these video games is there's different worlds within this one location and the kid
goes from one to one to one and has adventures inside of each one and whatever happens happens
and I thought you know the way I'm structuring his family structure and like his internal
journey and this like the other worldliness of this other world I'm not doing like a lit
RPG I'm doing like he's in another world with his game skills he can transfer those skills
from thing to thing I was thinking he could also just transfer that because it's like
he's actually inhabiting the character the hero character of that game that narrative
though right that's my point it's like video games can have a very powerful narrative even
if it's like subtle even like the legend of Zelda can have a very powerful narrative with
it such as a silent protagonist even Mario to some extent can have a you know pretty
powerful narrative like they've made movies out of both of those things where it's not
oh it's a video game in this world I keep getting phone calls while I'm recording stuff
anyway so the way I have it set up I could have it either be he's going from video game
to video game or book to book and the internal journey is the same because it's not lit RPG
where there's you know game rules and stuff and stuff flashing up on the screen in front
of the character I haven't read any lit RPG so I wouldn't be interested in that watching
anime that was lit RPG that was really cool log horizon by the way and so I was thinking
part of me wanted to not do the books even though my advisor told me to do the books
because I thought I'm like I'm already a good way into developing these this video game
world and like how the fantasy works and I because it's a fancy world I could just transfer
it and say it's a book instead but something felt unauthentic to me about doing the book
switching to books because like I've played video games and I've enjoyed them and I think
that there's a healthy balance that you can have with you know using those for entertainment
and escape and catharsis and I've also read books and you know watch movies and things
like that for the same purpose basically but they're video games do feel like more of a
time suck and they feel a little bit more like a waste of time than reading a book because
despite the fact that the narrative is there there's also the mechanics of the game that
you're playing and like those mechanics can draw you in especially if it's like an RPG
like I like to play where like you're grinding and you're spending a lot of time doing stuff
and it's like if you're actually doing anything where if you're reading a book and you're
going through the narrative like the narrative parts of the games are great I think and even
if you could like turn that into a visual novel or if you could do something else with
it like I just think video games are like a there's more danger to playing video games
than they're like playing a lot of video games like playing a hundred hours worth of video
games is less good for you it's it's less beneficial I'll say it that way then reading
a hundred hours worth of books because again I'll share a lot my favorite video game franchise
is probably the persona series which there's good things and bad things about it but like
as an adult I felt comfortable very comfortable playing that I wouldn't advise it to a kid
although I did play the first one in like my last year in high school I played my first
person I am not the first one I played persona 3 and persona for that year and I easily put
a hundred hours into persona 4 and that was to complete the game and all its stuff and
there's a lot of characters that you interact with and a lot of character stories that you
get to learn through these gameplay mechanics and everything but like had I read a hundred
hours with the books instead I think I could have benefited from that had there been a
persona for book series that took a hundred hours to read through I think that would have
been even better than the video game in a lot of ways as far as like what it did for
me as a person because the like side story stuff told in the persona games is really
interesting it's really like deep and impactful and very humane and humanitarian and I don't
know it sounds weird and then you're going around slashing around you know slashing
shadow monsters and stuff and blasting with you know various forms of magic and things
like that so like I just I really do like while I can appreciate a video game I do think
like it's something you should be more cautious with than you should be cautious with books
I also think a movie or television series a hundred hours worth of that is probably
doing less for a person than reading like a hundred hours worth of books so with that
being said or even though I'm saying that I still feel like for my story the video games
make sense for the context of the character and I still kind of cringe at the idea of
I mean I have this kid who's you know part of a book family even though like we're there's
like three of us in the house who are pretty avid readers I would say but anyway of like
having a books save the world or having this guy go through a journey through these books
and that you know changes him as a person like that makes more sense but it's like less
fun and it feels like I'm an author so I'm gonna write about books that's kind of not
so great I tried reading a comic book series where the guy wanted to be a writer and part
of it it was supposed to be a superhero thing and then part of it the first like good chunk
of it which is why I dropped the series among other things that came up later was that like
the guy wanted to be a writer and he'd spent a couple years in LA not pursuing his career
of being a writer even though he wanted to be a writer so he goes back home and shamed
to the Midwest or whatever and he keeps trying to write there and just like what is this
like why why is it so important this guy's a writer and then stuff happens he switched
he stopped being the main character yada yada yada and it's I don't know it's like it it
feels pretentious to have a writer writing about writing and I don't like that and it
also feels pretentious to have a writer writing about books so that's my real core problem
with this so this felt like it was gonna be pretentious and I've grown at it at first
but honestly Jerry Spinelli did a good job with it and I think in the context of the
time and place books would be a big deal to these kids and it would make sense I mean
it could have been comic books it could have been regular books it could I mean there were
all sorts of books in there she could have comic books in there I don't know but like
you know any form of escape like you know if it's Treasure Island if it's Robin Hood
if it's you know whatever like those things can transport a kid away from things and I
would think being homeless and just running we don't know what he did in that year where
he was away like he would have had a lot of opportunity for boredom and downtime and loneliness
and I could see books filling the gap for him filling the gap not feeling it filling
it and helping him to cope with that and I think it's rather interesting I think it's
rather interesting so anyway I like this chapter please excuse my asides but look at chapter
zero or the introduction chapter one chapter two how brief my talks on that were and how
like low energy I was talking about those because they weren't exciting they weren't
interesting this chapter is exciting this chapter is interesting there's something neat
going on here there's something I can sink my teeth into and there's something I can
say about this book and unless it turns out to stink in a couple chapters I'll keep going
and I'm probably the other episodes won't be this long with me talking about it but
he's like I had to get a lot off my chest I had to share a lot because this book's put
me in kind of a weird place and it's been like you know reading it and discussing it
has been kind of weighing on me and it's like giving me a lot to think about and I typically
there's an adorable squirrel outside my window right now running around with a bunch of sparrows
it's so cute he popped up on his two legs and I was like and then he ran off anyway
he was smiling that's why I gestured and I didn't say what I was saying what I was doing
so anyway um yeah I I hope that the rest of these won't be this long because I feel like
this has gone on like really really long um not that the book isn't turning out to be
worthy of it but it's just it's a long thing for a single book discussion for a single
chapter discussion of a book so anyway I'm finding it interesting now that Jeffrey is
in conflict or in contact with characters and we're seeing some conflict and it's revealing
some of his character and it's helping me to understand the world better I like it a
lot more so maybe having the character exist and be talked about in a vacuum with no context
with context being given in the strange you know slam poetry style isn't for me but an
author who can do that if he puts the characters in interaction with other characters I can
really like what they're doing I can really like what they're saying I can really hear
the message I can hear what he's trying to say I can see what he's trying to put out
and get across to me in his words in his slick style and everything when he abandons the
style and goes for substance and that I can sink into and that I can think about and that
I can integrate into the way I'm perceiving my own world and the way I'm thinking about
his book as well I think is what I'm saying.
I hope you enjoyed that please remember to like share subscribe I invite you to comment
ask questions and share your thoughts with me it's always more fun when you're part of
the conversation until next time keep reading be well and do good things visit MJMunoz.com
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