Author: Sharon G Flake
Publisher: Hyperion
Rating: WARTY!
This novel had been on my low-level radar for a while, but I'd never got around to picking up a copy. I was finally motivated to pursue it more seriously after listening to Pinned by the same author. I liked half of Pinned - the half relating the girl's story. The boy's story made me feel irritated, so I was hoping for less irritation and more enjoyment out of this, which is in some ways a similar story.
With Flake trying to imitate the speech patterns of the under-educated, it's hard to tell if she intended to write "...I should of known..." in place of "I should have known..." but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. It was a little harder when she wrote "...Geneal Electric..." in place of "...General Electric...". I can see how this kind of thing would be on the money if it were enclosed in quotes as speech typically is, but when it's written out as part of a first person narration, it doesn't immediately strike one as accurate, especially when other parts of the narration are grammatically correct, such as when she writes, on the same page (13) as that first one: "Caleb and I". Go figure!
This story is about Maleeka, a student at McClenton middle School, and her trials and tribulations, not least of which is that she's the butt of racist comments from people of her own race simply because she's blacker than they are! She's also bullied relentlessly by Charlese, a spoiled brat of a girl who's in serious need of a major ass-kicking. Oh, did I say that out loud? No, I meant that she's in serious need of a detention if not an expulsion.
Maleeka is a very smart girl who had the chance to go to a better school, but she 'chose' this one by her refusal to communicate when she 'interviewed' at the other school. Now she has all this to put up with. This kind of bullying and racism bothers me. It's not like this novel is set in the fifties or something; it was published in 1998. I sincerely hope there are no schools like this one, but I fear there might be. What bothers me is not that the bullying takes place per se (there are always bullies of one stripe or another), but that no one steps up to rein it in or to punish the perps. It's like the teachers are either blind or simply don't care. I don't know whether to be incredulous because it's so unrealistic, or because it actually is realistic.
The cover for this novel is yet another in a long line of examples of cover illustrators failing to read the novel. The cover image doesn't represent how Maleeka is described in the text. This is the same problem with the other novel that I read by this author. The lesson, once again here, is to stay away from Big Publishing™ if you want to get a book cover that's at all relevant to what you wrote.
Some of Flake's writing is a bit dumb. At one point, she uses 'cocoa' to describe the appearance of Maleeka's skin (which actually doesn't strike me as being as dark as she suggests Maleeka is elsewhere in the text, but that's not the problem). The problem is how many more comparisons of dark skin and eyes with food and beverages must we endure, and is it better or worse if that comparison comes from a writer who shares that hue?
The other instance which struck me is when Maleeka describes the school cafeteria. Food is routinely bad in schools in YA novels, but Flake takes it to a new level. Because Charlese gives some sass to the servers, she gets a burger with "something indescribable" on the bun, and it's described as resembling something that used to be alive. What the heck is burger meat? Chopped liver?!! This is what happens when a writer is so focused on conveying a cameo that they become blinded to the big picture.
I can't recommend this novel.
