Anyway by Arthur Salm, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4424-2931-4; 182 pages, $6.99.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO–Arthur Salm is the former book review editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, so you really have to admire his courage, putting himself out there. In that position, he must have made many enemies, not only of the authors whose books he panned, but also of the ones whose books he declined to even review. Now he’s sending out his own book to other reviewers, and hoping that they will fairly judge his work by what’s between the covers.
If they do, as I have tried to do, they will tell you that Salm has done a wonderful job getting inside the head of a talkative ‘tween’-ager, who sometimes gets so lost in his digressions that he has to begin many of his sentences with “anyway” just to get back on track. To keep the digressions in bounds–and to permit author Salm to get back into his true persona and to comment on exaggerations, footnotes and other incidentals that writers care about– there are 138 footnotes in a type font that looks like handwriting, but really is a type font.
Anyway, we know this tweenager, whose name is Max, is a Jewish boy because his parents own a ladies garment store, which sells clothing that really might be very nice, but nevertheless is referred to by the Yiddish word, shmattes, meaning “old rags.” I can relate: my late father, Marty, was in the shmatte business but he was on the men’s side of the trade.
Anyway, Max sometimes works in his parents’ store, occasionally being required to dress the mannequins in the store window, which can be terribly embarrassing when you are 12 years old and one of your friends might see you. For that matter, almost everything can be embarrassing when you’re 12, like talking to girls, or not making it to the big boys team of the Little League, or feeling that the guys you hang out with are a lot cooler than you, or not knowing how to dance, either fast or slow.
Anyway, Max tells us this story as he is heading to a summer camp, with his parents, and is deciding that he is going to change his personality. Instead of being the overly self-aware nervous nebish that he thinks he might be, he will go to camp as a much cooler kid with a commanding personality. By faking it, he figures he will be able to attract friends. And, he does. He’s given the moniker “Mad Max” and through the camp session he gets to hang out with teenagers whom others might think are cool However, he learns when you try so hard to impress people, there is a price to pay.
The novel is written for children 8 to 12, but being 60 years beyond the more junior of those ages, I am not too embarrassed to tell you that I laughed out loud while reading it, remembering some of my own misadventures as a kid, although I don’t recall ever sitting on a plate of spaghetti.
Anyway, the acid test will be when my grandson, Shor, 12 returns home from his own summer vacation in Israel and I casually pass it to him with the suggestion that he might like this book. I’m never really sure what Shor will want to read. He went through the entire series of Harry Potter books in what seemed like no time at all–but other books that I think he’ll just love still linger on his book shelves.
Anyway, someone in your household, whether a child or an adult, will enjoy the book because Salm seems to truly like and understand kids of that age.
He must have had an interesting childhood.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com