Ten Miles Past Normal (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ten Miles Past Normal Deborah Stevenson Dowell, Frances O'Roark . Ten Miles Past Normal. Atheneum, 2011. [224p]. Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4169-9585-2 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4169-9587-6 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 6-9 Ninth grade isn't going well for Janie: though she used to love her family's crunchy-granola life on a self-sustaining goat farm, she's now finding everything about their earthy existence—up to and including the goat poop that Janie tracks onto the school bus—an embarrassment. Trying to find a different identity, she's drawn into jam sessions at school, where she's encouraged by a music-loving senior to take up the bass guitar; she's also delving into some local history, finding intriguing information about civil rights-era activities in the area and using that as the cornerstone of a school project. The subject of an adolescent girl's anxious attempts at individuation is established territory for Dowell (The Secret Language of Girls, BCCB 7/04), and she sails through it with ease and grace even if her protagonists can't always manage the same. Janie's narration gives a homey immediacy to her story, and its clarity helps synthesize the different aspects of the plot and the various facets of her personality. The result is a story that's authentic in the intensity of the lows (having no one to eat with in the cafeteria, getting called "Skunk Girl") and the highs (becoming known as a "the cute chick with the bass," getting cool cred from a friend's idolized older sister) while tacitly making it all seem survivable and even okay. Readers will recognize the daunting possibilities, both good and bad, with which Janie grapples, and they'll appreciate her eventual self-actualized conclusion that "normal . . . is vastly overrated." [End Page 326] Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois