Going+Bovine


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Libba Bray, 2009

=Morbidity and Hilarity = By LISA VON DRASEK Published: February 12, 2010 You could say that this year’s winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for young adult literature, announced last month by the __ [|American Library Association] __, begins with an off-putting premise. The narrator, Cameron, a self- proclaimed slacker (“I’m a drifter — right downstream and over the falls with the rest of the driftwood”), learns that he has contracted a fatal condition: Creutzfeldt- Jakob, or __ [|mad cow] __, disease (as it’s known in animals). Who wants to read a 480-page novel about a 16-year-old who has four to six months to live and suffers from progressive muscle weakness, dementia and delusions?  But Libba Bray, author of the best-selling gothic-fantasy-romance Gemma Doyle trilogy, manages to turn a hopeless situation into a hilarious and hallucinatory quest, featuring an asthmatic teenage dwarf, Gonzo; a pink-haired angel in combat boots, Dulcie; and Balder, a Norse god who is cursed with the form of a garden gnome. If Dulcie is to be believed, Cameron must find the mysterious Dr. X who is responsible for releasing dark energy that could cause the end of the world. If he succeeds, he may just save his own life. (Or, it’s all just a hallucination.) Despite the novel’s length, Bray doesn’t waste a sentence. With just one chapter heading (regarding “High School Hallway Etiquette and the Fact That Staci Johnson Is Evil; Also, Unfairly Hot”) she can neatly suggest an entire subplot. For readers who enjoy intertextual connections, there are “Don Quixote” references dropped in throughout, including windmills, Dulcie (Dulcinea) and trusty sidekicks. Everyone else will just want to see where this amusement park ride is taking us. Cameron does or doesn’t travel to New Orleans to see a trumpeter who comes off as a kind of oracle, get duped by a religious cult, explore parallel universes and realize that along the way, “It’s not all sand castles and ninjas.” Why keep reading, when we know our hero is still going to die? As Balder chides Gonzo during a scene involving a wizard and a burning pancake restaurant: “Cameron is our brother, our friend, and we do not abandon our friends. . . . This is a quest. I pledged my loyalty to Cameron back on the cul-de-sac. I shall see it through to the end.” Libba Bray not only breaks the mold of the ubiquitous dying-teenager genre — she smashes it and grinds the tiny pieces into the sidewalk. For the record, I’d go anywhere she wanted to take me.

//Lisa Von Drasek is the children’s librarian of the Bank Street College of Education.//

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