15 May 2002  A CORNER OF THE UNIVERSE by Ann Martin, Scholastic Press, October 2002

"Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,

They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe.

Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind,

Possessing and caressing me.

Jai Guru Deva Om

Nothing's gonna change my world,

Nothing's gonna change my world..."

--Lennon/McCartney

"I look for the films from this summer. Dad has spliced them together onto a big reel labeled JUNE--JULY 1960. I hold it in my hands, turn it over and over."

Hey, Ann Martin! I also grew up with a bunch of old home movies. Luckily, back in the mid-90's, my parents brought the reels someplace where they were all copied onto VHS tapes and duplicated for me 'n the sibs.

But I remember back in the 60's when we'd periodically sit around watching them with the Jiffy-Pop popcorn and the movie screen and that little projector that'd get hot enough to cook on. I also knew about running the movies backward and forward. My favorite film involved the family and my grandfather Rex out back at our little Doughboy-style pool. I guess I was eight. There I was, climbing up the little ladder, perching at the top with my thumbs linked, and then diving in with a big splash. If I stopped the projector and reversed it, I would do a reverse dive, feet-first back out onto the ladder with the accompanying big, silent reverse-splash.

"...And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why

And there but for fortune, may go you or I..."

--Phil Ochs

Ann Martin has written a courageous tale involving mental illness. A CORNER OF THE UNIVERSE, like her last book BELLE TEAL, is set in the early 1960s and is told in a quiet, straightforward narrative style by a preteen main character. Hattie Owen is a shy eleven-year-old living in her parents' small-town boarding house. Her strong-willed and extremely proper grandmother lives nearby. Hattie's sheltered world is shaken up when twenty-one year old Uncle Adam, about whom she's never been told, arrives with the beginning of the summer. The long-term care facility where he had been living has closed.

"After lunch Adam and I sit on the porch, and now he's serious and thoughtful. Adam's moods are like a deck of playing cards with someone riffling through them--dozens of cards, one after the other, in a blur. 'The whole world passes by your house, Hattie,' Adam says after a moment. He's looking toward Grant Avenue.

'I know. That's why sometimes I hate our porch.' When Adam looks at me sharply, I hasten to add, 'I mean, I don't really hate our porch--' 'You can hate your porch,' says Adam.

'Good. Because sometimes I do.'

Adam is just looking at me, waiting.

'Some days,' I say, 'I feel like I don't belong anywhere in that world. That world out there.' I point to Grant. 'People walk down our street and people drive down it and people ride their bicycles down it and all of them, even the ones I know, could be from another planet. And I'm a visiting alien.'

'And aliens don't belong anywhere,' Adam finishes for me, 'except in their own little corners of the universe.'

'Right,' I say."

A potential challenge of selling A CORNER OF THE UNIVERSE will be to find parents, teachers, and librarians who don't freak out about recommending the book to children close to the age of the main character despite Adam's noted propensity for staring at the bosom of a twentysomething resident of the boarding house.

Ann Martin has written a story with a lot of heart, a story about another face of tolerance, and I hope preteen kids do get the opportunity to read it.

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com