Scoop of the e-e-evening: Crunch

From the publisher:

Dewey Marriss is stuck in the middle of a crunch. He never guessed that the gas pumps would run dry the same week he promised to manage the family's bicycle-repair business. Suddenly everyone needs a bike. And nobody wants to wait.

Meanwhile, the crunch has stranded Dewey's parents far up north with an empty fuel tank and no way home. It's up to Dewey and his older sister, Lil, to look after their younger siblings and run the bike shop all on their own.

Each day Dewey and his siblings feel their parents' absence more and more. The Marriss Bike Barn is busier than ever. And just when he is starting to feel crunched himself, Dewey discovers that bike parts are missing from the shop. He's sure he knows who's responsible—or does he? Will exposing the thief only make more trouble for Dewey and his siblings?

Caleb, age 12
It was a very good book. There were lots of right-brainers in it, like Vince, who was creative with bikes and could take them apart and put them back together. I liked Boss Man (Dewey) too. He was cool. Before the crunch began, their parents were up north; then, all the pumps ran dry in North America, and everyone was stuck. Only bikers could get around, or if you had really long legs, you could walk. Their parents called every night to see how everything went that day.

Adeline, age 9
Lil, the oldest, didn't like adults helping them, so when Dewey's friend Robert came, she did not want him. She thought he was taking care of them. Sometimes he brought them bagels, which was a food they couldn't eat very much because of the crunch.
Henry, age 5
People were coming, there were lines to the end of the driveway, they were waiting to get their bikes fixed. Then the kids had a great big bike party and taught them how to fix their bikes. After a while, their mom and dad came home.

Noel
Waiting for Normal may have gotten lots of attention, but it didn't impress me; I'm glad I took a chance with Connor's next novel, though. After I read Crunch, I knew the kids would love it as a real-aloud. And they did. They empathized with each of the siblings, from the 5 year old twins to their biggest sister, Lil. The humor was perfect; jokes that had me rolling my eyes had them rolling with laughter. The plot was simple, but not uncomplicated, in a very true-to-life way.

However, reading it the second time, I was quite irritated by the language. Crunch's reading level is grade 5 and up, and the story appeals to even younger audiences, as mentioned above; yet there are uses of hell, oh my god, damn, even god-damn, by the older, stressed-out siblings. Since I was reading out loud, I could easily skip over the words, but handing the novel to a patron in the target audience's age group would trouble me.

It was not you who sent me here

By the time I was 21, my life was a lot like young Joseph’s.

I was writing my second children’s novel, with ideas for a third coming thick and fast; I frequently exchanged emails with internationally-renowned, award-winning authors for Novel Journey interviews; and, at the small public library which had employed me for four years, I’d been promoted, having earned the director’s respect, to handling a tidy acquisitions budget with complete freedom.

My God-given talents had found their calling—writer and librarian, esteemed by Egyptians, confident of future obeisance from sun, moon and stars.

But, as Andree Seu wrote in a recent WORLD magazine column, “having a talent for something is not the only measure of what it will be.”

Think Joseph, post-Potiphar.

Last year, I felt God leading me toward a temporary leave of absence from my library position, to volunteer with an agency that provides missionary families with short-term nannies. Bookmarking my life as writer and librarian, I flew to my favorite, oft-dreamed of European country. Then—unprecedented customs difficulties, and I was deported, without even meeting the family I’d come to help.

Had I followed the wrong leading? Disconsolate, I returned to my calling. Except, the library position, which I had held for six years, and which had been promised secure upon my return, was “no longer available.”

“God is not perverse,” continues Seu. “He gives gifts for a reason. But don’t be too quick to assume you know the reason.” She offers the example of an actor, for whom the Spirit opens doors all the way to Hollywood, and is there handed a compromising script. What does he do?

““So you say the actor should refuse the plum role and get washed up in his Hollywood career?” someone will object. But the question itself is wrong. It presupposes that the future is a predictable chain reaction in a closed system. The truth is we live in an open system, with God intruding at every point. And God knows how to lift up the humble and bring down the willful.”

Calling, says Seu, is not a function of talent, pure and simple. “His will unfolds in our pinpoint obedience to His minutest redirections of course...”

I eventually served as nanny in another European country, confused but sure of one fact—it was obedience to the next step in a raw, unexpected redirection of my life. I still ache every time I return a library book. But I’m working on my novel again, and opening emails from a few lovely authors; in three months, I’ll begin a new nanny position in California, with a family who desperately needs another set of hands.

What will be? I haven’t the faintest idea. But as Joseph found, and as Robert Frost wrote, “Way leads on to way.”

"We must attack the enemy's line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects --- with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round. Our faith is not likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But, if whenever we read an elementary book on geology, botany, politics, or astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defense of materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian. The first step to the reconversion of a country is books produced by Christians."

God in the Dock, "Christian Apologetics," C. S. Lewis

Debriefing

In case you missed the tumult of last week, scroll down a couple of posts. Or not.

Over the weekend, I've had a chance to digest my thoughts and reactions; this post is the result. Buzzwords are intentionally omitted, because these reflections are for myself primarily, and those who regularly choose to read my blog.

1) I do not think that people without an acceptance of Christ exactly like mine are not worth reading about. I adore books by dozens of authors whose characters aren't Christian. Perhaps my review was not clear enough on this point: my objection was to the author's deliberately crafted encouragement to accept a certain lifestyle as normal, directed at the publishing industry's most impressionable target audience. The fiction I value most is fiction that doesn't set out to educate. That's why I don't read much Christian children's fiction. There is always an educating moment. Obviously, an author's worldview will come out in their writing whether they intend for it to happen or not, but I really respect an author who holds back when it seems like it wouldn't do any harm to stick in an educating moment or two.

2) I do think that there are good people of many faiths, even if I feel that they aren't "right" or going to heaven. I know many such people who are sincere in their beliefs, yet, according to the Bible, unless they put their trust in Jesus, they're missing the truth. That knowledge makes my heart heavy with compassion for them, not hate or fear. And it certainly does not make me value them less as a human being.

3) I do believe that the Christian Bible is the only standard of truth and morality that has ever existed. If I didn't believe that, my review would have been 100% positive. Personal feelings are no justification for criticizing an author who encourages readers to accept a certain lifestyle as normal. Lots of people are smarter and more eloquent than me. Only on the basis that the Bible condemns that lifestyle would I write what I wrote, and continue to stand by it.

My sisters were watching Sophie Scholl last night, and I walked in on this scene.

I am not likening my recent visitors to the Nazi party. And I'm certainly not elevating my struggle to the level of a heroine like Sophie Scholl. But I am pointing out similarities in the principles behind each argument and the way those beliefs inevitably influenced their thoughts and actions.

"Why do you risk so much for false ideas?"

Because of my conscience.

Remembering...

Eva Ibbotson, who died October 20th, at age 85. I've always believed that her novel The Star of Kazan ranks among the greatest children's novels of the 21st century.

Read the obituary by Laura Amy Schlitz here.