Drizzle
What's the Story?
Polly Peabody lives on a magic farm where the rhubarb tastes like chocolate, Polly's best friend is a plant, her house is a castle and you can't drown in the lake. Oh, it also rains every single Monday at one o'clock in the afternoon. Polly loves the farm but it also makes her uncomfortable. Why?
Because at school, stuff like chocolate rhubarb and rain every Monday doesn't make you unique, it makes you a freak. Some kids are jealous, some are fearful and some just want someone easy to pick on. Knowing kids motivations doesn't make any of it any easier for Polly, she still feels...different.
Then one Monday it stops raining. And then Polly's older brother gets sick. The crops start to wither, the lake recedes and someone offers the Peabody's a huge wad of cash for the farm. Polly's life is falling apart before her very eyes, but she's sure there's a solution for all of it. There seem to be clues that only Polly notices all over the farm. If she can just put it all together, and stop being such a fraidy-cat, she's sure she can bring the rain back and make everything all better. The question is, in a world of science, is there really a perfectly magical answer?
What Do I think?
If you're going to read fantasy literature of any kind there are certain elements that you have to accept or forget. In Kidlit for instance, you have to forget that everything that comes out of the mouth of a kid is written by an adult. How authentic are those words? How much do they sound like the words of real kids? Some authors (and most readers) don't seem to worry about it. Some authors create little adults and put them in kid situations and let it rip. Charles Schultz worked that approach in Peanuts and we all loved him for it*.
Other authors go for the nostalgic voice. They write smart dialogue that kids and adults want to believe they would say in the same circumstances. These approaches aren't extreme (or wrong), they're the standard. Most good children's literature is from one camp or the other. What's rare is kids dialogue that sounds like it's really coming from a kid. Kathleen Van Cleve has done that in Drizzle.
The entire story of Drizzle is told from 11 year old Polly Peabody's point of view in diary excerpts. What's cool is how smoothly Van Cleve weaves an invisible narrator in and out of the story--describing the action that would be boring to a real 11 year old--without slowing down Polly's personal dialogues. It's not a new approach but Van Cleve does it well
In Polly's diary we find she is a sad kid. Her grandmother died four years ago and she hasn't gotten over it. Because of this and a farm filled with unexplainable phenomenon she isolates herself at school. Basford, a nice kid Polly's age comes to live on the farm but she feels her life is so weird, she isolates herself from him as well.
Polly's best friend is Harry, a rhubarb plant who communicates with her using his leaves. (Think sign language/ Blue Man Group mash-up. ) This friendship with a plant leads to some tender and surprising moments in the story**.
The farm in Drizzle is really a character in the story as well. Though we get to know it as it's parts--the White House, the Dark House, the lake, the peace maze, the Cherry Blossom tree, the Umbrella ride, The Learning Garden-- those parts become way bigger than the whole, especially when it stops raining and we can see the effects on the crops and the lake, It's as if someone we know and like is sick, a theme driven home by the fact that Polly's older brother Freddy falls ill the same time as the farm.
Freddy is Polly's smart, athletic and socially active older brother who gets sick the same time it stops raining. The sicker the farm gets, the sicker Freddy gets and near the end, both are in dire trouble. Polly attributes it to the lack of rain, doctors at the hospital say it's faulty genetic soup. I say it was unneeded misdirection that stretched the dramatic tone really thin near the end of a great story. (BTW. someone could wring a doctoral thesis on the Peabody men-broken genes, Peabody women-enhanced genes thing. I'm just sayin')
Throughout the book Van Cleve continues to infuse the story with new mysteries and magic. Nearly every character in the book nudges Polly along on a mysterious quest. Add to that the many magical moments and you never know just who or what is going to try to help Polly out. Is Polly's Ipod going to rap to her? Are her shoes going to tap something out in Morse code during PE? The upbeat "anything can happen" vibe really keeps the story from devolving into Polly Peabody's Pity Party.
Speaking of a pity party, I noticed something about the pacing of this book. I read most of it a few chapters at a time and then had a marathon session to finish it. Polly is a kid who writes in her diary a lot, sometimes more than once in a day and she talks about how she feels. (If you're a guy reading this review, yes I did use the "f" word, there are feelings here. All I can say is suck it up and enjoy Drizzle's awesomeness.) The part I read in one sitting, felt like Polly complained a lot more than when I read it a few chapters at a time. Some books you chew, some you swallow whole. Chew on this one.
The farm itself deserves a place of honor among the truly magical lands in literature. Wonderland, Oz and Hogwarts are tempting but I would sell everything I own and harvest chocolate rhubarb at the Peabody Farm for the rest of my life if I didn't already manage the most extraordinary library in the world. Kudos to Van Cleve for reminding readers just how cool and important the family farm is.
I'd also like to give a shout out to Kazu Kibuishi cover artist of Drizzle and author and artist of the comic strip Copper and the Amulet series of graphic novels. I wanted to say that the guy on the front cover in the orange shirt with both hands in the air reminds me of Homer Simpson. Imagining Homer on the umbrella ride @ World Famous Rupert's Rhubarb Farm really makes me chuckle. Excellent job Mr. K.
Visit Kathleen Van Cleve's Drizzle Site here
*Okay not everybody loved him for it. Some people didn't like that Charlie Brown and company sounded like adults. The main character had a skull like a bowling ball and his dog walked on two legs and wore a WWI pilots helmet but adult dialogue was some folks big problem with Peanuts. Go Figure
**Let me crawl up on my soapbox and rave a little here. This is one of the many reasons why I love kid's fiction. Being a visual reader, In my mind I pictured the one leaf Harry used like a smile, I tried to imagine how I would express the things I knew if I were a plant and I did all that unconsciously. it wasn't a project or an assignment. I just did it. I created my own Harry. There aren't many opportunities outside of kids literature where I get to enjoy being a plant, but now all the rhubarb I see in the real world will always be "Harry" and it will make me smile. That's the power of kids fiction. How cool is that?
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