Cons: some may be offended by the language (not me!)
The Bottom Line: The popular children's author dishes the dirt about growing up in the fifties while revealing the "real truth" behind some of his stories.
scmrak's Full Review: Chris Crutcher - King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill...
Once there was a boy - a clown, a misfit, a conundrum, a walking temper tantrum - but now he's a grown man. Adolescence lies four decades behind him; the ordeal of his teenage years is just a fading memory. Now he can look backwards along the line of his life with a new perspective.
Odd, isn't it, how someone else's autobiography can feel so much as though it's about your own life?
The Child Becomes the Man
That small-town Idaho boy spent his four decades becoming a real, grown-up therapist and author. For either of his professions, Chris Crutcher can draw upon both the humor and the angst of his adolescence, weaving the small detail of a misspent youth into a series of young adult novels (Stotan!, Ironman, and Athletic Shorts). After seven novels, Crutcher dishes the real dirt, publishing a life story he's been sharing piecemeal for a decade or so. The result is King of the Mild Frontier: an Ill-Advised Autobiography. For my money, "ill-advised" is way off base.
He was a typical fifties kid: the owner of an authentic Davy Crockett coonskin cap (which graces a now silver-tressed head in the author's photo); awkward wannabe athlete who made teams because there were more slots than students trying out; gullible baby brother; owner of a titanic temper. It's a wonder that Crutcher survived twelve years of school - but sometimes it seems a wonder that any of us survive that trauma. He regales his young readers with the saga of his foibles, his mischief, his idiocy; and every one's a lesson in life cleverly disguised as a funny tale about an often foolish boy.
Along the way, your young reader will learn "Crutcher's Theory of Relativity," the rules for eating Oreos, the futility of loving a Paula Whitson from afar (or from up close, for that matter), and the sordid details of Letterman's Club initiation rites circa 1962. The squeamish and fans of olives or oysters may wish to skip that last.
Who's The King?
In fourteen chapters that bounce willy-nilly from his sixth year to his college dorm room, Crutcher introduces his readers to a family, classmates, and friends and neighbors that might as well be their own. He pulls no punches - the citizens of tiny Cascade, ID, are there warts and all; although the majority of the warts seem to be on Chris himself. Playing boyish capers and childhood pranks or mooning with unrequited love, young Chris is the quintessential boy. And that's what makes this autobiography so special: it's the biography of "somebody just like me"!
Even though I read King of the Mild Frontier at fifty-two, I can still identify with Chris's sorrow and success, his urges and his fears. Since the book is aimed not at Crutcher's contemporaries but at his usual young adult audience, it must be all the more powerful to realize that not only does every kid have the same inner glee and turmoil, you're bound to survive it because Chris Crutcher did! Yeah, Chris is the King - and my hat's off to him.
Parting Notes
Crutcher touches on many an issue for the young - the first bloom of interest in the opposite sex, the first death in the family or among one's peers, dealing with (or being) a bully. No, he doesn't have anything to say about drugs or safe sex (though he does wonder where this country went wrong in re Columbine). All he does is lay out the facts: It's tough for everybody but you'll get through it if you keep your wits about you and have a good (and sometimes wicked) sense of humor. Crutcher's style is eminently accessible and clearly written, sprinkled liberally with humor and self-deprecation. It is, after all, an "ill-advised" autobiography.
Crutcher doesn't spare the bluenoses: his teenage and adolescent kids talk the talk they learn in the school bathrooms and from hanging around the local pool hall. There's a fair sprinkling of expletives (beginning with the letters F, A, S, H, and D) and some raunchy sections that might not sit well with the censors on your local school board (which is why Chris Crutcher's work regularly ends up on banned book lists around the country). But I think that if you hand this book to a confused teenaged boy (or maybe a girl) that you might make a reader out of him yet. If nothing else, he's gonna read it to get ideas for his next prank!
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