Couple of years ago I couldn’t spell ‘young adult author.’ Now I are one.

I appeared at ten public high schools and middle schools during my recent trip to Chicago:

• One Chicago middle school (Thurgood Marshall) invited me back as “Writer in Residence.” For a week in late March, I’ll be teaching seventh and eighth graders how to write narrative.

• Another (Montefiore Special School) has invited me back for a presentation to three schools — Montefiore and two other nearby elementary schools.

• And a third (North River Elementary) has asked me to consider being commencement speaker.

I am deeply gratified and, frankly, stunned. When asked about being commencement speaker, my first reaction was to laugh nervously and blurt something like, ‘Oh, SURELY you can do better than me.’ And ‘Writer in Residence’? Holy moley.

There’s more. The Chicago Public Schools have taken a strong interest in TO LOVE MERCY, my first novel. An autographed copy has been hand-carried to Rufus Williams, the president of Chicago Public Schools, and the wheels are now turning inside CPS headquarters. I don’t know what will come of this, but fingers, toes and you-know-whats are crossed. (Eyes, fool.)

Add to that, we sold or handed out close to 450 copies of TO LOVE MERCY during my 2 1/2 weeks in Chicago. Most of these copies were bought by the schools where I appeared.

What fascinates me is this novel’s appeal down to seventh grade. As I’ve said before, I didn’t think I was writing a young-adult novel; if anything, I thought I was writing an OLD-adult novel. TO LOVE MERCY contains a little language, plus references to pederasty and murder, and the historical references will sail right over most kids’ heads. But it’s also a book about kids, with kids as protagonists … and boy-type kids, at that; it’s written in words of one and two syllables (”Fog Index” = 4th grade); and its themes of race and religion, conflict and reconciliation are just what schools want kids to be thinking and talking about. Plus, with its strong Chicago setting, it’s especially appealing to Chicago schools.

I have no problem with kids as readers. If a good book can change a life, it’s likelier to change an open young life than a jaded older one. Face it, the world wants us all in cubbies of some sort; I’m comfortable enough in this YA cubby, as long as I can continue writing what I want to write and not be asked to talk down to readers.

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Regarding my last blog (”Boys and books, Part II”), Rich Weinfeld asked me to clarify that, although both his grade-school-age sons confirmed the statistics about homophobic insults, the stats were drawn from SMART BOYS by Sanford Cohn and originated in a study by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Network. Also, the assertion that men and women differ genetically at about the same 1%-2% rate that humans differ from chimpanzees, comes from Rich’s book HELPING BOYS TO SUCCEED IN SCHOOL, not Michael Gurian’s; Rich found it in a Washington Post article that cited an MIT study.

Last word on getting boys to read goes to Son Sam, who comments: “There needs to be a way that boys see that girls like smart, well read guys. Man, when I figured that out is when reading really started becoming exciting.”

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com