Jun

23

Book ‘Em: Drawn From Life.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

June 23, 2008 |

While she’s not as well known as some others, Betsy Byars is simply one of the best writers for young readers and teenagers around. She’s well-known for many of her books including The 18th Emergency and the Golly Sisters Series, but some of her darker novels do an excellent job of exploring the feelings of alienation and isolation that come with being a teenager. Her book The Cartoonist explores how those feelings are often self-created and self-imposed. Alfie is a cartoonist. Seeing himself as different from his family, particularly his mother who is obsessed with his older (and absent) brother Bubba, he withdraws into the attic to draw cartoons that reflect, in ways he’s not entirely conscious of, his own life. The first cartoon described is a caterpillar that eats everything, including the world, until finally it’s left alone and falling in space.

Alfie’s perceptions shape how he responds to the world, and this, in turn, shapes how the world responds, or fails to respond, to him. When his grandfather describes building a car, without an engine or windshield, and taking a glorious ride down a hill in that car, all Alfie can say is, “It wouldn’t run, though.” And yet Alfie’s hold on his own privacy is tenuous; in spite of wanting to master something, not even his cartoons are completely under his control, and his own privacy is threatened. It’s a sad, poignant story with no simple conclusions because that’s often how life is, especially for a teenager.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. James on July 2, 2008 2:50 pm

    OH WOW I read this book like decades ago for a school assignment. Very sad book when you look at what he drew was a reflection of how he felt.

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