Silly? Serious? It's Something Extraordinary!

 Stuntboy, In-Between Time by Jason Reynolds and Raúl the Third (Knights Of, 2023)

Portico was being silly (he really wasn't being silly, he was being serious, but his serious was silly, seriously). 

(p. 105)

There's something extraordinary going on in Jason Reynolds' and Raúl the Third's Stuntboy series and I couldn't put it more eloquently than in that one line quoted above. 

Open the most recent Stuntboy novel and straightaway you'll appreciate an illustrator and a writer working in tandem, to tell a story with all the hyperactive brilliance and breathless energy of a Loony Tunes cartoon. The pace never lets up. Far from exhausting, the experience of reading about Stuntboy's adventures leaves you excited to read more (and, as with the first book, there's a 'To be Continued...' panel at the end!). 

Look a bit closer and the interplay between text and drawings will remind you of the best graphic novels. The zipping around between storyline and popular culture references (being an 80s kid, I particularly enjoyed the invocations of Beetlejuice and  Garbage Pail Kids trading cards) combine to become much more than the sum of their parts. Words and pictures jostle for attention, bounce off one other, merge together in a perfect kind of counterpoint. It seems 'silly' to the untrained eye, but it is 'seriously' so far from that. When Stuntboy invokes one of his special moves - the 'Stare Well' - for example, Raúl the Third's illustration has him literally 'looking daggers' with actual knives flying from his eyes towards his enemy! 

At the very heart of the book, the 'what is actually going on' is two storytellers who just 'get' what it is to be children in a confusing world. Here, 'real world' issues of anxiety, bullying and parental separation are explored deeply, but are never shoehorned in, or fall back into didacticism. The story is these issues (the subtitle of the book is positioned as such towards the end of the novel) though the whirling exuberance of the telling makes you think you are enjoying a slapstick comedy...one that keeps you turning the pages, faster and faster, to the very moving end. 

 

I mentioned the vocabulary and language the authors draw on in my review of Book 1. Anyone who (dare) claims that books like these with a lot of pictures, a lot of panels, and a lot of speech bubbling are more 'fun' than 'proper' reads, should really take a much closer look. (And yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. But-are-graphic-novels-really-as-good-as-a-'normal'-book!)

I'll explain. And for the sake of space I will simply provide a few examples in the form of...

The Mini "Stuntboy-Inbetween-Time" Dictionary

"a courtyard right in the middle of your hair" - bald

"a Firetruck Full of Apples" - a very special shade of red 

"Cheddar Cheese in Florida" - a super-particular shade of orange

"meditation retreat" - running with your eyes closed (deriving from 'retreat': to run, and 'meditation' exercises involving closing one's eyes to focus inwardly)

"tenderized" - Gran Gran's description of the difference between a couch (tenderized) and a sofa (not tenderized)

You see what I'm getting at? 

There was a far too brief mention of this in my review of the first book (In the Meantime) but it must be noted that the blink-and-you'll miss it language here is even more virtuosic. The extraordinary skill at work is that everything ends up making perfect sense, especially to the intended audience, as the playful quality of the writing matches exactly those improvisational words and phrases with which children are very familiar. It's staring us grown-ups in the face when Portico and Herbert comment: 

"Roman probably ate his parents out of house and home."

"What's that mean?" Portico asked. 

"I don't know but my mother always says I'm doing it," Herbert said.  

(p. 67) 

As Herbert points out here so pithily, what makes sense to us adults isn't always the best way to describe something, and certainly not always understood. The Second Most Important Thing, I'd argue, that children want from their books is a story that speaks to them, in their language. Whilst reading Stuntboy In-Between Time, I actually gave up making a note of the times that this happened as I had to keep stopping on every page. Yes, the book does it that well; as I said at the beginning of this review - it's something quite extraordinary. 

By means of summary, in case you were wondering,The First Most Important Thing that children want - actually need - above all else when reading (for me, at least), is to be entertained. And it should be clear by now, that I couldn't recommend, on any level, a better book to do this than Stuntboy In-Between Time. 

***

Stuntboy, In-Between Time is published on August 29th 2023. With thanks to Courtney Jefferies of ed. Public Relations for sending me a copy for review and for helping in the preparation of this blog.

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