From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:50:46 -0500

Thanks, Brenda Bowen, for explaining some of the decisions involved in creating the dynamic jacket for True Believer (July 11) . The jacket is intriguing for anyone who hasn't read the novel, and it's even more so for those who have. The images are ambiguous, and so is the title. Both are loaded with meanings.

It's fun to think more about the title, about many ways of considering Truth, Belief, and Believers in TB.

LaVaughn's staunch mother is one of my favorite "believers." She's so much more real than the typical one-dimensional parent character in so many children's and young adult books. Yes, she has the requisite parental wisdom, but she dishes it out in unique ways: "If you can't go to high school for one day, you sure can't go to college for four years. That's real sad, and I'm thinking how to spend your college account you won't be needing. I'm real tired of riding the bus. A blue car would be nice." (good contrast to Jolly as a young parent). Even though LaV's mom is a mature parent, like all adults she makes mistakes. And she's on the verge of a huge one with Lester (a different kind of contrast to LaV's crush on Jody).

I'm so fond of dear Patrick with his two shirts, so committed to Biology and also to LaV. We're breathless as we read his personal story interlaced with his take on the nature of evil and and also of evolution, all on the same couple of pages.

Myrtle and Annie must be considered. Although it's difficult for me to be fond of them, these characters push readers to think not only about a certain type of extremism (hey, fundamentalism crops up in every world religion), but also about how friendships can be altered as kids grow (another contrast, this time with Jody's reappearance in LaVaughn's life, and vice versa).

Most of all, there's marvelous Dr. Rose (hmm, we can think about this name, too) along with the four Brain Cells "saying the right grammar in a room / that seemed like the only room where it mattered." She believes in these kids. She's a realist who knows how the system works and yet she believes in possibility. In adaptation. In the evolution she can engineer in her own particular lab. "We're supposed to change...Our goal is lucidity...We will rise to the occasion, which is life."

Lots of pairs, contrasts and adaptations in True Believer, from the jacket and title straight through to the last page. Whatta book! Ginny

Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse at education.wisc.edu Cooperative Children's Book Center www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin Madison
Received on Wed 18 Jul 2001 02:50:46 PM CDT