22 February 2003 SLUMMING by Kristen D. Randle, Harper Tempest, July 2003, ISBN: 0-06-001022-3

"The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain! The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain!"

--Eliza from My Fair Lady

Tolerance.org, a web-based division of the Southern Poverty Law Center, has created Mix It Up, a network for youth activists who are challenging social boundaries in schools and communities. Last November they sponsored a national Mix It Up At Lunch day, which encouraged kids to consciously leave the confines of their own cliques and go sit instead with somebody they would ordinarily look right through. (There are some great stories on the Tolerance site from kids who are involved in this movement.)

SLUMMING is a tale in which three friends take paths that meander somewhere between Professor Henry Higgins' arrogant assumption that he can remake Eliza into his ideal woman and the Mix It Up philosophy that you need to throw off your assumptions, prejudices, and feelings of superiority in regards to those outside your own group.

"...you got to look outside your eyes

you got to think outside your brain

you got to walk outside your life

to where the neighborhood changes...

--Ani Difranco, Willing to Fight

Nikki:

" 'People always talk about how rude the French are,' my mother told me once. 'But that's because so many Americans think the world starts and stops with them. America isn't normal. It's just America. There are a lot of wonderful normals out there--hang on to yours too hard, and you'll miss a lot.'

"I think I'm beginning to understand what she meant."

Sam:

" 'Why do you do this?' I ask her [Tia].

" 'What?' she says.

" 'Why do you make fun of everything about me?'

"She laughs again, one short, hollow-sounding laugh.

" 'Because you're a cartoon character,' she says. 'You're fake.'

" 'I'm fake,' I say.

" 'When you let me off at my house, and you drive down and turn the corner, you just--disappear. And then they bring you out tomorrow at school, with your little letter jacket and your clean shirt. I'm surprised you don't wear loafers or saddle shoes or something.' "

Alicia:

"But one day, one morning last fall...I looked up, and there he was. I could hardly see him through the press of his friends. Then the crowd shifted, and suddenly, there was his face. He was laughing, and then he looked right into my eyes."

Nikki, Sam, and Alicia are high school seniors. They are long-time companions as a result of being the only three Morman kids their age in the school system:

Nikki:

"Without that, I doubt we would have gotten as close as we are--the three of us are so different. Sam is the football scholarship type--letter sweater and pins and all that. Alicia's the service club/student government type. And I'm the scholar and mess-off type. Three separate social classes. Sam is beautiful but focused; Alicia's got this fairy-like delicacy, both in mind and body; and I just run around, collecting people and talking a lot. We see the world in very different ways."

Alicia:

"The idea came all at once: we will each choose a person who is obviously untapped, and we will try to open him up, set him free, give him life. I do not anticipate that it will be that hard--kindness, a little attention, support, friendship."

SLUMMING shows us what takes place when these three young adults put their plan into gear. As happened with the characters in Kristen Randle's previous YA novel, BREAKING RANK, there are some intense reactions and unexpected consequences in SLUMMING when the three decide to mix it up with teens they've always seen around school but with whom they have never connected.

And when they boldly step outside their lives and stick their faces into somebody else's, there is the question of what happens next:

" 'So, is this a temporary thing? You score a friend, and then you go back to the way things were'--she opens her hands--'mission accomplished?'

"I don't know,' I admit. 'I didn't think it through that far.' "

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com