From: Paci Hammond <paci>
Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 23:56:25 -0800

I've been enjoying everyone's comments on humor in children's books, and helping myself to your suggestions. I would like to make a few suggetions for YA novels with humor, and offer my analysis. All of these novels are profoundly serious in the main, so of course the protagonists have to cope, as do we all, by using their wits, dry, wry, sardonic,
(whatever).
        My list: Chris Crutcher's "Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes", Angela Johnson's "Toning the sweep", and "The window" by Michael Dorris (published posthumously by his estate). In each story, the humor comes through the perspective of the narrator, mostly internal views of other characters and the way they interact, rather than funny "scenes". A good deal of the humor is bittersweet; it is a defense against the pain they feel in their relationships to adults and peers, as well as an expression of their alienation from their "old world", and their growing awareness of themselves as independent beings. Humor is a survival strategy, after all-
"There must be some kinda way outta here, said the joker to the thief."
                                        -Bob Dylan, "All along the watchtower"

Paci Hammond Montclair School Library Oakland, CA 94611
Received on Fri 22 May 1998 02:56:25 AM CDT