Okay, a full disclosure is needed here.  I’m generally not fond of Y.A. books (Young Adult books, for those of you who might not know).  In general, they’re scary.  At least for this parent of a young girl.  And I say this having taught high schoolers for eight years!

I’ve found the perfect anecdote that I want Liliana to read some day.  A very smart, funny book that somehow also ends up being a great “guy manual,” too–The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart.

Frankie Landau-Banks (called this because her father wanted a boy named Frank) is known as Bunny Rabbit at home.  She’s repulsed by this–well, you probably already know why–because she’ll be a sophomore at Alabaster, a private boarding school, next year.  Her family and friends still treat her like she’s in elementary school.  And if that’s not enough, her heartthrob upperclassman boyfriend Matthew and his buddies rapidly absorb Frankie into their guy-domain, but their “girls” are conveniently left out of anything they deem important to their little club, secretly known as the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds.  Funny thing, though: Frankie’s father, called Senior by Frankie, was in the same Order, way back when, and he talks of a secret manual they had.  Frankie’s current guy friends don’t even know it’s hidden somewhere on campus.

Leave it up to Frankie to “figure out” this whole guy-girl thing.  She battles this question throughout the book–what kind of treatment and behavior she’s able to live with in order to maintain her boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with Matthew, because, after all, she’s in love.  After Matthew sends her a secret invitation to a golf course party, where a bunch of upperclassmen dressed in black mill around in the cold night air, with no drinks, no food–nothing really–she comes away with the spark of an idea.

“Most young women, when confronted with the peculiarly male nature of certain social events–usually those incorporating beer or other substances guaranteed to kill off a few brain cells, and often involving either the freezing-cold outdoors or the near-suffocating heat of a filthy dorm room, but which can also, in more intellectual circles, include the watching of boring Russian films–will react in one of three ways….Some like Trish [this is Frankie’s best friend] will wonder what the point is, figure there probably is no point and never was one, and opt for typically feminine or domestic activities such as crumble-making, leaving whatever boyfriends they have to “hang with the guys”….Others, like Star, will be bored most of the time but will continue attending such events because they are the girlfriends or would-be girlfriends of said boys, and they don’t want to seem like killjoys or harpies….The third group aggressively embraces the activities at hand.  These girls dislike the marginalized position such events naturally put them in, and they are determined not to stay on those margins.  They do what the boys do wholeheartedly, if sometimes a little falsely….As I said, most girls will engage in one of these three behaviors, but Frankie Landau-Banks did none.  Although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did not confuse the golf course party with a good party, and she did not tell herself that she had had a pleasant time.  It had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations.  What Frankie did that was unusual was to imagine herself in control.  The drinks, the clothes, and invitations, the instructions, the food (there had been none), the location, everything.  She asked herself: If I were in charge, how could I have done it better?”

My kind of girl!  Knowing nothing, really, about the Order, except brief phrases she hears Senior and his friends boast about over drinks, she sets out to infiltrate the Order, which has up-until-now been a male-only club.

I won’t give away any of the plot, because it’s a delightful romp of a read.  In the end, Frankie has come out on the other side, where everyone skirts around her nervously, as though she’s done something insane, when only she’s spoken her mind.  Frankie’s sister suggests therapy.

“Frankie did not accept life as it was presently occurring.  It was a fundamental element of her character.  Life as it was presently occurring was not acceptable to her.  Were she to mellow out–would she not become obedient?  Would she not stay on the path that stretched ahead of her, nicely bricked?

“She did not get much out of therapy .

“Frankie Landau-Banks is an off-roader.

“She might, in fact, go crazy, as has happened to a lot of people who break rules.  Not the people who play at rebellion but really only solidify their already dominant positions in society–as did Matthew and most of the other Bassets–but those who take some larger action that disrupts the social order.  Who try to push through the doors that are usually closed to them.  They do sometimes go crazy, these people, because the world is telling them not to want the things they want.  It can seem saner to give up–but then one goes insane from giving up….And so, another possibility–the possibility I hold out for–is that Frankie Landau-Banks will open the doors she is trying to get through.

“And she will grow up to change the world.”

This book won a Michael L. Printz Honor Award this year, and if you’re the parent of a teenaged girl, there’s nothing in this book (if you’re honest with what she’s learning at school and elsewhere) that you won’t like.  It’s hilariously funny and scathing.  It highlights what young girls these days will sacrifice for a boyfriend.  If you’re leery, read the book first.

I highly recommend it.

And now, because Dan and I and little L. are leaving this tropical island today, I leave you with one of my favorite Hawaiian-style songs.  It’s one that my sister Worthy used in a family video she made in college.  It’s one that my friend Sara sent me when I was especially low with Liliana, early on, saying that Dan and I were Liliana’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”