James Howe's The Misfits and Totally Joe

Following a book recommendation from one of my best friends, I bought the set of four Misfits books used on ebay. They arrived today and I've already finished two of the four. (I intended to do all four, but I kept getting sidetracked.)

I know James Howe as the author of the Bunnicula series, so I had no idea this series of four books even existed. Looking at the inside of the book, The Misfits was written in 2001, so this makes sense. In 2001, I'd already been out of undergrad for a year, so there weren't many ways for me to find out about a book set in middle school.

But I'm very glad I finally learned about the series and read it. The Misfits actually spawned a real movement called No Name-Calling Week, which began in 2004 and continues now.

The book focuses on four characters, referred to as The Gang Of Five (this is explained best in Totally Joe), who are each an outsider in their own way. The POV character of The Misfits is Bobby, who's the overweight kid. Then there's Joe, who's quite feminine and ends up finally coming out as gay, even though it's pretty obvious to everyone. (Again, this is more thoroughly covered in Totally Joe.) Addie, the lone female, is tall, intelligent and outspoken. Think Hermione during the heaviest bout of her SPEW stage. And Skeezie is an ex-bad boy who looks like he rolled out of the fifties.

Addie gets it in her head to create a third party for the school's election. After one very failed attempt by Addie and a horribly painful lunchtime conversation, Bobby ends up making this happen by coming up with the idea for the No-Name Party, a party whose platform is based on anti-bullying. The four members of The Gang of Five become the party's ticket.

The book is mostly well-written and uses some interesting formats. The gang meets at a local restaurant for their Forum and Addie writes down the minutes, so there are full chapters more in play format than prose. It's not just straight prose, which is both interesting and well-done.

I only really have one criticism of the book. The entire thing goes by and there are very few visual descriptors of the main cast. You know Bobby is overweight and white. That's it. Addie is tall and it's mentioned she has short hair briefly. There's also a scene where another character is discussing the color of her skin, like "the inside of an almond" or "peach ice cream." Joe, also white, likes to streak his hair in unnatural colors and paint one pinky nail. (He's got a more thorough description in his POV book.) Skeezie might have the best description in that you can immediately picture a 50s dude and that's pretty much him. It's also noted that he's "not Italian," though he gets called names that are Italian-based by the school's bullies.

So that said, when it comes to the school's minority characters, shouldn't they be so briefly described? Except they're not. There's a rather uncomfortable scene with DuShawn, one of the grade's three black students, describing himself and the two black female students, as well as an adopted student who's Chinese. I felt this overly descriptive method for the minorities made them seem more Other than should have been intended, considering the book's big turning point is that it's the main cast who's the most Other of them all. (According to DuShawn.) Why do I know the texture of one minor cast member's hair and not the color of the narrator's? It's a bit problematic.

I did really enjoy the book. Once it got past the first few chapters, where the more uncomfortable racial stuff is (dear gods, Addie, SHUT IT), it was pretty amazing. Bobby's relationship with his dad is sweet and I liked the development of his relationship with his co-worker. (Not that kind of relationship. Just read it. You'll see.)

I liked most of the cast. Addie was my least favorite of the four. Like I said, imagine SPEW Hermione. Maybe SPEW Hermione plus later books BSC Dawn. (Not early Dawn. She was cool.)  Although one good point about her is that a lot of her political stances are completely relevant now, even almost 20 years after the book was written. She feels almost like she could be saying some of her lines about today's political dumpster fire. Bobby and Joe tied for favorite character, although Skeezie does have his moments.

It's a good read. Check it out.

Moving on, the second book is from Joe's point of view, but in a different way. Howe is clearly getting creative with his formats. The entire thing is written as a school assignment called an "alphabiography." Each student has to write about themselves with a section based on each letter of the alphabet, plus a "life lesson" for every section. I feel like this would be an incredibly difficult assignment and a giant pain in the ass, but of course it flows perfectly in the book itself.

This one is set right after the events of the first book and takes Joe from October through March of his seventh grade year. It's a more individual, personal journey than Bobby's. Bobby had some personal stuff, but he was still also the narrator of a multi-character ride. This is just Joe's story.

I like his voice, although his habit of stacking parenthetical remark after parenthetical remark is a bit annoying, especially when he overuses (Hello.) and it feels pretty forced.

I'm going to keep this short, because it's too spoilery if I go into much detail, but Joe officially comes out, deals with the ramifications of that, and deals with his first dabblings at relationships. Aunt Pam, who was the best adult character in the first book and I totally forgot to mention her, remains awesome. Although why Howe has her piercing ears with a needle when this was written in 2004 is beyond me. Just go to the goddamn mall.

Character-wise, my opinions remain mostly the same. I like the three boys. Addie's taken a downturn and so has DuShawn. I'm honestly not looking forward to the third book, because it's her POV and seems to be written in prose verse, which is kinda...ugh. Though it's probably not going to take long to get through when there are barely words on the pages. But I don't like how she lets him talk to Joe. She gets in a fight with him about it during one scene, but there aren't any lasting effects and I think far less of her for it. Colin...I feel bad for him, but I'm glad he came around in the end. And I'm looking forward to learning more about Zachary, so I hope we see more of him.

I'll likely be back tomorrow with the other two reviews.

Thunder Girls 1

Today, the third Thunder Girls book released. I received my copy and vowed to finally make headway on this series.

I love the Goddess Girls series, but these past few volumes, I've fallen hopelessly behind. I still haven't read Eos's book, even though I've had it almost a year. I may tackle it and the Little Goddess Girls ones after Thunder Girls.

Thunder Girls is basically Goddess Girls, but with Norse mythology instead of Greek. This first book originally published in May 2018 and sat on my pile after I read a few chapters. I'm not well-versed in Norse myth, so I took a break to read a Norse mythology book to give myself some more background. Then came Hurricane Michael and my copy got wet. I managed to save it and bring it along with me when I moved. The second book came out and shipped the day before the hurricane and somehow miraculously made it to me when I was living in the hotel room here before getting into our first apartment. I picked up Freya's book again a few months ago, got 2/3 done and then got distracted from it AGAIN.

It's not that it's a bad book. I'm just that easily distracted. I read a good dozen things at the same time, if not more. But today...today I vowed to finish it and I did! Read it from cover to cover, then donated my wiggly-paged copy to the Little Library box in my apartment complex. I had bought a fresh copy months ago.

This first book, featuring Freya, introduces us to the world of the Thunder Girls. There's just been a war between the Vanir and Aesir, and Odin decides to create a school called Asgard Academy. He brings students from all nine worlds (supposedly...we have yet to see two worlds represented) together at the school in order to foster good relationships between the worlds. Plants, as Freya's twin brother Frey says, are affected by negativity. Yggdrasil, the World Tree, will be endangered if the worlds don't all get along.

Freya does not want to move to Asgard to attend the school. She and Frey are Vanir and she doesn't trust the Aesir after the war, which they said was started by the twins' nurse, who they view as more of a grandmother. Their mother is briefly mentioned as an earth goddess who travels a lot. No mention of a father.

A quick interjection here. You know how the first rule of Goddess Girls is Do Not Expect Accurate Greek Mythology? Yep. Same applies here, because we're already veering off course.

In Norse myth, Freya and Frey's father was Njord. In Thunder Girls, Njord is still a Vanir, but he's their same age and their friend. Their mother is Njord's "unnamed sister-wife," according to Wikipedia. In Thunder Girls, she's called Nerthus. Nerthus is actually a Germanic goddess, but there are theories that she's also this sister-wife.

I'm not going to look everyone up, but I'm just saying there's going to be a lot of flexibility here, as in Goddess Girls.

The main plot of the book is that Freya doesn't believe she has any magical skills. She has a jewel named Brising that she gets cryptic predictions from, but she loses it on her way to school. So she spends most of the book doing a succession of plots: trying to get her brother and their friends to return home and give up going to school, trying to find Gullveig, trying to figure out the last prophecy she got from Brising, trying to recover Brising from the dwarves. But what she really does is threaded throughout the story itself: her most magical skill is her ability to create friendships, which is very important to Odin.

It was a pretty good story, but got bogged down a bit with all the world-building.

There are a lot of characters introduced. I'll list them off here so I don't have to do it again for each book.

VANIR:

Freya: Goddess of love and beauty. Very into fashion and jewelry-making. Predicts the future using Brising, which ends up being turned into a necklace. Has a marble that turns into a cart pulled by two giant silver cats. Gets constant fanmail from Midgard fanboys. She's basically Aphrodite from Goddess Girls only less boy-crazy.

Frey: Twin brother of Freya. God of nature.

Njord: God of the sea. Collects shells.

Kvasir: Not much is said about him. It'll be interesting to see how he's used, because he doesn't have a good ending in myth.


AESIR:

Sif: Not much said about her yet, but she's a shapeshifter with golden hair. She's really into hair accessories.

Idun: Brunette to Freya and Sif's blondeness. Her thing is apples and the juice she makes keeps everyone young.

Loki: Already causing trouble in the first book, but also working with Odin.

Thor: Red-haired action boy. He's a bit like Hercules in Goddess Girls.

Bragi: God of poetry

Od: Freya's crush. A quieter boy who's a bit awkward around girls. Terrible with direction, gets lost a lot.

Odin: Principal. You know Odin.

Frigg: Co-principal. Wife of Odin. Knits a lot of celestial stuff like stars and clouds, but when she uses yarn to create actual objects, they turn out a bit off.

Heimdall: Protects the Bifrost bridge.


GIANTS:

Angerboda: A white-haired frost giant whose name means "distress-bringer." Crush on Loki. (In myth, they're married.) Doesn't like Freya. She's the main "mean girl," like Medusa in Goddess Girls before she turned out nicer.

Skade: Half-frost giant, half-Aesir. When the other giants go to full size, she only goes halfway that big. She has black and white hair and is the athletic, tough one. She's the goddess of skiing. She's also a huntress, so definitely the Artemis-like character. She's really into winter stuff. In myth, she had a failed marriage to Njord, so I'm curious to see if their relationship will be hinted at. I'm getting the feeling she'll be my favorite of the Thunder Girls. I do wish they'd kept her original name spelling from her appearance in the Goddess Girls Girl Games super special though. "Skadi" makes me want to pronounce it correctly. "Skade" makes me go German with it and then I say the ending syllable wrong.