Hey, Big Spender, Let's Dance!

Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher
5Q 3P; Audience: J/S (Grade 9+)


It's Chicago, 1941, and life is tough in the Yards. Money is hard to come by at the tail end of the Depression, especially if you're female and young. Ruby Jacinski's mother's rheumatoid arthritis is so bad, she can no longer work in the meat factory. Ruby has no choice but to drop out of school and get a job to support herself, her mother, and sister. She too goes to work in the hated meat factory, and she loathes every minute of the dull, smelly, bone-aching work. The only bright spot in her life is when she gets to dance. When Ruby hears music, her body wants to take off into it. When she dances, people stop to watch. That and her feisty personality bring her to the attention of Paulie Suelze, recently dishonorably discharged from the Army and a small-time hood on the rise. If her mother knew she'd talked to - kissed! - Paulie Suelze, Ruby's life wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel. But Paulie is exciting, dangerous, and handsome, and all three qualities are appealing to Ruby. Just as appealing to her is the new work he suggests for her. Why not earn money doing the thing she most enjoys doing? Why not teach dancing at the Starlight? Instead of $12 a week, she could earn $50. She could pay off their back rent and grocery tab, get her mother's wedding ring out of hock, and maybe even earn enough to get them out of the Yards and into a nice place. What's not to like about a job like that? As far as Ruby's concerned, this is a wonderful opportunity. But she knows that as far as her mother is concerned, Ruby's dancing with strange men for money is one step short of going to hell in a hand basket. It's just the first of many secrets she has to keep from her mother.

Ruby soon discovers that Paulie hasn't given her the full story either. She isn't a dance teacher. She's a taxi dancer. She dances with men who buy her time. And if she works it right, they'll buy her dinner, too. They'll take her out to night clubs. If she sets her line just right, these fish will show her a great time, and all it will cost her is a few dances and a few stepped-on toes. But Ruby is far more naive than she thinks, and before long, she's got herself caught up in a real mess, and the only person who can get her out of it is Paulie Suelze. Dangerous, charming Paulie, who makes her heart race. Dangerous, charming Paulie Suelze, who can't be trusted.

Musings:

Everything in this book is sharply drawn, from the characters right down to the details that bring the early 1940's alive. Ruby is a multifaceted protagonist, and there's no attempt made to make her look particularly good. She makes plenty of mistakes, she's headstrong, cocksure, and unwilling to listen to good advice. She's a naif who thinks she knows it all, and it takes several knocks for her to even begin to realize that she doesn't. Ruby knows how to stand up for herself, but doesn't always know when to lie low. And she most certainly isn't a good judge of character. But Ruby is loving, loyal, and good-hearted, and she can look past her prejudices to value an individual. You get the sense at the end of the book that Ruby has grown a lot and is becoming not only a woman to be reckoned with, but a woman who has learned from her mistakes and is the wiser and better for it.

Atmosphere simply oozes out of this book. With talk of iceboxes, cold water flats, one bathroom shared by an entire apartment building, one telephone in the neighborhood, dancing at the corner drugstore, "black and tans", and the knowledge that everybody knows everybody's business, the 1940's come alive. Period detail extends to the casual use of derogatory terms and rampant racism and male-female relationships. Ruby is at first appalled at the idea that she has to dance with black and Filipino men and her fish (men she has on a string) insist that she does not. Her friendship with a trumpeter in the band has to be their secret, and going to jazz clubs where blacks and whites mingle is scandalous and dangerous. Women are subordinate to men and most just want a man to take care of them. A man beating a woman on a public street simply means that people walking by avert their heads and continue on their way. Premarital sex is wrong, and once you've had it, you know too much to ever be a carefree girl again. Fletcher effortlessly blends all of these elements into her novel, letting period detail enrich rather than overwhelm her story.

This is a book that adults will read with as much enjoyment as teens. Highly recommended.

Boy Toy

Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
5Q 3P Audience: S

I usually try to come up with something a little quirky or at least more interesting than "title of book" for my subject lines. But I can't do that with this book. Boy Toy is too disturbing to treat it lightly. It was a hard book to read, not because of how it was written, but because of its subject matter. At times, I almost didn't want to pick it back up again, because it was so hard to read about Josh's experiences. But it is also a compelling read. You don't finish Boy Toy, close the cover, and grab the next book on your pile. You need time to decompress afterwards.

The topic, sexual situations, and language mark Boy Toy as a book for older teens. Lyga isn't coy about his topic. Though the writing is not explicit, it is abundantly clear exactly what Eve is doing to Josh. I was uncomfortable reading certain passages, as I think most readers will be. (It should be uncomfortable to read about sexual abuse.) Boy Toy is well written, thought provoking, and deeply unsettling. It deserves its place on ALA's BBYA 2008 list and its Cybil Award. But readers should know going in that it's also a book that will evoke strong reactions.

When Josh walks into his seventh grade history class, his instant reaction is that his teacher is HOT. He fantasizes about Mrs. Sherman in all the ways a twelve-year-old boy knows how to fantasize. But he is in no way prepared for what happens next. When Mrs. Sherman asks him to be a part of a study she is doing for one of her graduate classes, he doesn't realize where she intends it to lead. He just likes the idea, since it means they'll spend a lot of time alone together. At first, they work in the classroom after school, but soon they begin to work at Miss Sherman's house. It's cool. She has an X-box, a Playstation, and every kind of video game a twelve-year-old could ever want. He gets to spend time with a beautiful woman who treats him like an adult and play otherwise forbidden video games. Paradise must be like this. In fact, Mrs. Sherman's apartment becomes their own little Garden of Eden, right down to Mrs. Sherman becoming Eve. Ever so slowly, Eve lures him ever closer to tasting the forbidden fruit. First she offers him sips of wine and then she teaches him how to kiss. And then...then she gives Josh the whole apple, and nothing is ever going to be the same for him again.

Lyga deftly shows how this relationship affects every aspect of Josh's life. It affects his parents' marriage, his friendship with Zik (his best friend), and makes it absolutely impossible for him to have a normal relationship with girls his own age. But Lyga goes deeper than even that. Josh knows what happened to him. But nothing about it is as cut and dried for him as it seems to be for everyone else. After all, that apple was delicious. If he enjoyed eating the fruit, if he wanted to eat it, should Eve be blamed for giving it to him? Adding that question to the mix adds an even deeper layer to this book.

The only thing I'll quote from this book is a passage on forgiveness, because I thought it would be interesting to compare it to the forgiveness quote from Deb Caletti's The Fortune of Indigo Skye:

See, forgiveness doesn't happen all at once. It's not an event -- it's a process. Forgiveness happens while you're asleep, while you're dreaming, while you're inline at the coffee shop, while you're showering, eating, farting, jerking off. It happens in the back of your mind, and then one day you realize that you don't hate the person anymore, that your anger has gone away somewhere. And you understand. You've forgiven them. You don't know how or why. It sneaked up on you. It happened in the small spaces between thoughts and in the seconds between ideas and blinks. That's where forgiveness happens. Because anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth. At least, that's what I hope.