Children's Books Too Cool for School

I think it is safe to say that Kathi Appelt isn't my bag. If she's yours, just go ahead and ignore the rest of this post. Or read it and seethe. Or maybe, just maybe go ahead and read what I've got to say, and see if you can find any truth in it.

Last time I found myself complaining about Appelt (And I don't, usually. I like her picture books! See Bats Around the Clock.) it was because she wrote a weird novel featuring malignant forest spirits, animal cruelty, and a drunk named Gar Face who was beaten mercilessly by his father. None of this is, inherently, a problem.

But I was left with one burning question: Who on earth is Appelt's intended audience?

I had high hopes for Keeper, at first. It seemed like a simpler, less... inappropriate story. Sure, it features some complex relationships and situations, but nothing on the level of The Underneath's vivid description of the burning sensation of bad vodka. (Yes, really.)

The titular Keeper is ten years old, living just outside of the tiny town of Tater, Texas (I love that alliteration!) on Oyster Ridge Road,  a "world unto itself." She lives with an adoptive parent, of sorts, named Signe, and spends her days helping her neighbor, Dogie, wax surfboards, or helping the only other resident of Oyster Ridge Road, Mr. Beauchamp, care for his flowers. Throw in two dogs (Keeper's BD or "Best Dog," and Dogie's Too, shortened from "Best Dog Too"), Mr. Beauchamp's cat, Sinbad, and a seagull named Captain, and you have the sum total of Keeper's world.

Keeper is surrounded by love, but feels that she has "ruined everything," on a blue moon day that started out so promising. Signe was to make her famous blue moon gumbo, Mr. Beachamp's night-blooming Cyrus was to have its once-yearly flowering, and Dogie was going to sing his "two word song," (that is, "Marry me") to Signe. Finally. 

But then, the crabs Dogie caught for the gumbo call out to Keeper, asking her to free them. Keeper knows she can hear the crabs because she is (she believes) part mermaid. The last time she saw her real mother, who leaves Keeper with her friend Signe when Keeper is three, was out in the sea. Therefore, she believes her mother was a mermaid who has returned to the sea. Signe has let her believe this, apparently in an attempt to protect her from the emotional truth -- that Keeper's mother abandoned her.

So when Keeper "ruins everything", she heads out in a small boat in the middle of the night, hoping to find her mermaid mother, Meggie May, to make everything all right.

My concerns about intended audience come less from the weight of the subject matter this time -- Appelt actually deals rather deftly with issues like non-traditional family structure, child abandonment, and even post-traumatic stress syndrome -- however, the structure of the story as a whole, still failed to feel like it was written with actual child readers in mind. (I'd like to add here, that homosexuality is a topic that comes up, briefly, in the story. This isn't one of my objections, although many others have found it objectionable. I think she deals with the so-called "issue" very well.)

The language is both too slow-paced and poetic for your average elementary or middle grade kid, while lacking the kind of complexity that might engage an older child. The plot had almost no real movement -- the story was far more character-driven, and the pacing was very slow -- but the language and Keeper's personal world-view were entirely more juvenile.

Once again, Appelt has written a book whose only real audience is adults who read children's books, and once again, I'd be willing to bet good money, just as I was with The Underneath, that this will be on the Newbery's shortlist.

And I will continue to be frustrated with modern Newbery winners and their lack of kid-appeal. And the world moves on.

Keeper is more of a "girl book," than anything, although I could see broader gender appeal, and would be best for a really precocious 10 or 11 year old... or an adult who reads children's books.