My Most Excellent Year by Steven Kluger

[snugglekitty]

Title: My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park
Author: Steven Kluger
Genre: YA, GLBT, fiction
Pages: 416
Copyright Date: 2008
Cover: A baseball bat serves as the stem of a blue umbrella. There are pink sparkles all around it.
First line: "[Note to Ms. LaFontaine: I didn't mean to give you a hard time about the title of this assignment, but "My Totally Excellent Year" would have been like so 1995, we'd have been laughed out of Brookline if anybody found out."
Why it was in my hand: One of the many awesome things about my relationship with trouble4hire? We recommend and lend books to each other all the time. She really liked this one and I did too.
Best part: So, so sweet.
Worst part: The main characters are all ethnically diverse, well-off teenagers living in Brookline - and none of them are Jewish? For real? Nothing Jewish is even mentioned, which strikes me as weird if you know that part of town.
Grade: B+
Recommended for:
Related Reads: Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger, Hero by Perry Moore. This book really reminded me of one other book, but I haven't been able to think of it yet. I'll get there.

Augie and TC have been friends since childhood. At the age of eight they declared themselves brothers. Now in the ninth grade, another joins their circle - Ale, the ambassador's daughter. This book, in the form of journals, emails, and letters, is a happy mayhem of putting on shows, getting together and breaking up, baseball history, missing relatives, finding new relatives, grassroots activism, coming out in more ways than one, finding love, and finding yourself.

Highly recommended.

Comments

[starphire.livejournal.com]

I'll pass the rec on to my teen in Brookline, she might enjoy it.

My impression is that there aren't all that many Jewish kids in the Brookline schools, actually. Ethnically diverse, yes (mostly children of professionals and academics, so not class-diverse), but much of the Jewish community in Brookline moved to the 'burbs decades ago, and many kids in Brookline go to private schools.

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the comment. Yes, I bet she would.

Thanks also for sharing your impression of ethnicity in the Brookline school system. Clearly you know more about it than I do. I will change the wording of the next draft of this review.