Return to story

MY LIFE AS '100 DOGS' AND A PIRATE

February 1, 2009 12:36 am

THERE CERTAINLY was no need for fur- ther evidence of the wussification of our nation's youths, but it appears that now even the hallowed Newbery Award for children's literature must answer to the thought police. Recent criticisms of Newbery Award winners have touched upon the prevalence of uncomfortable subjects, such as sex and death, and have also cited the fact that some of the books are just too darned difficult for our "gifted" kids to read.

It is a sad state of affairs for a number of reasons but mostly because somewhere in this great land of ours there is a person waiting to pounce on a book like A.S. King's "The Dust of 100 Dogs."

Forget that it's an intricate and sometimes very funny story (with pirates!). Forget that it is well-researched and carries the reader seamlessly from Oliver Cromwell's Ireland to a modern-day trailer park in a small Pennsylvania town. All of these memorable elements are mere window dressing when one considers that Ms. King commits the transgression of actually using the F-word at one point and implies that there was a time when men and women were enslaved, murdered and raped.

This is not to imply or suggest that "The Dust of 100 Dogs" become required reading for the SpongeBob set, but my hunch is that the young-adult audience it is geared toward has probably dabbled in a little profanity of its own and might even share the same anxieties and fears that Saffron expresses as she trudges through her senior year of high school.

Plus, Saffron carries the emotional baggage of having lived and died as a pirate named Emer and then as 100 dogs before her current re-incarnation that finds her bored to tears in suburbia. The modern teenager who has trouble navigating the drive-through at Chick-fil-A may not relate completely to captaining a galleon through the Caribbean, but the character of Saffron is the embodiment of an escapist fantasy that should be familiar to most teens.

Thirty-five years ago, the book "My Brother Sam is Dead" was published. It is classified as "young adult" but it was nominated for a National Book Award and it re-emphasized that literature, on any level, is meant to challenge and free the spirit. As the title implies, it deals with death and does so thoughtfully and touchingly. It would be a crime if teenagers were ever denied the challenges and fun that books like that and "The Dust of 100 Dogs" offer simply because the author employs language and themes that some adult deems inappropriate. Plus, this one has pirates.

Drew Gallagher is a freelance reviewer in Spotsylvania County.