Keeper, Kathi Appelt (365 Books, Day 161)

Author by way of janni; thank you.

I am having great difficulty describing this book. It is very hard to pin down. There are books that do not want to be pinned down, criticized, explained, or even sometimes discussed, because they are so subtle and delicate that anything you say about them feels, in some way, like a fundamental misrepresentation. You hear yourself say 'well, it's a kid's book', and then stop there because there are strands of the book that are clearly designed to be the sort of thing that works into a kid's hindbrain unnoticed but delights an adult reader or re-reader. You can say 'it's kind of about mermaids', except that mermaids specifically, as one standardly thinks of them, are evoked in this book by absence and allusion and things that are similar and things that aren't. You can say 'it's a fantasy novel', except that 'fantasy novel about mermaids' is going to lead readers to expect one sort of thing, and this is not that thing at all, at all, or if it is then only sideways.

Nothing I say about this book is true. It's always more complicated.

All right, one thing I can say clearly: this is a book that gives good ocean. It's as good ocean as the best ocean books I know, which are Jane Yolen's Neptune Rising and the Brittany section of Possession (which latter specific book-section I also find myself comparing this to in about sixty-three other directions, a very odd thing to say about a kid's book set in East Texas but I cannot help it).

Back to uncertainties.

This is a book where Keeper, who is ten, lives with Signe, who is not her mother, and their neighbors/family and animals on a beach in East Texas. Keeper's mother is not present because she was a mermaid. Keeper knows that. They go along pretty well, mostly, one kid, two dogs, one cat (well... hm. I told you things I said about this book would not be true), a seagull with a broken wing, a surf shop run out of a school bus and gumbo served to everybody as a family tradition on the night of the blue moon. Until Keeper manages to have the sort of day you can only have at ten, where unintentionally you genuinely ruin many, many of the things that are extremely important to the grownups around you and know how bad it is but not how to fix it; she decides to do something drastic and powerful, which is indeed drastic, but not the way she intended it.

I look back at that entire paragraph and I want to throw it out because the words are accurate but it leaves out all the everything significant.

Oh hell. Just read the thing. There are some books that don't want to be written about. This one was brilliant, in a very quiet manner.

Keeper, Kathi Appelt (365 Books, Day 161)

Author by way of janni; thank you.

I am having great difficulty describing this book. It is very hard to pin down. There are books that do not want to be pinned down, criticized, explained, or even sometimes discussed, because they are so subtle and delicate that anything you say about them feels, in some way, like a fundamental misrepresentation. You hear yourself say 'well, it's a kid's book', and then stop there because there are strands of the book that are clearly designed to be the sort of thing that works into a kid's hindbrain unnoticed but delights an adult reader or re-reader. You can say 'it's kind of about mermaids', except that mermaids specifically, as one standardly thinks of them, are evoked in this book by absence and allusion and things that are similar and things that aren't. You can say 'it's a fantasy novel', except that 'fantasy novel about mermaids' is going to lead readers to expect one sort of thing, and this is not that thing at all, at all, or if it is then only sideways.

Nothing I say about this book is true. It's always more complicated.

All right, one thing I can say clearly: this is a book that gives good ocean. It's as good ocean as the best ocean books I know, which are Jane Yolen's Neptune Rising and the Brittany section of Possession (which latter specific book-section I also find myself comparing this to in about sixty-three other directions, a very odd thing to say about a kid's book set in East Texas but I cannot help it).

Back to uncertainties.

This is a book where Keeper, who is ten, lives with Signe, who is not her mother, and their neighbors/family and animals on a beach in East Texas. Keeper's mother is not present because she was a mermaid. Keeper knows that. They go along pretty well, mostly, one kid, two dogs, one cat (well... hm. I told you things I said about this book would not be true), a seagull with a broken wing, a surf shop run out of a school bus and gumbo served to everybody as a family tradition on the night of the blue moon. Until Keeper manages to have the sort of day you can only have at ten, where unintentionally you genuinely ruin many, many of the things that are extremely important to the grownups around you and know how bad it is but not how to fix it; she decides to do something drastic and powerful, which is indeed drastic, but not the way she intended it.

I look back at that entire paragraph and I want to throw it out because the words are accurate but it leaves out all the everything significant.

Oh hell. Just read the thing. There are some books that don't want to be written about. This one was brilliant, in a very quiet manner.

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