Stories With My Songbird

Dear Friends and Fellow Readers,

Stories With My Songbird is moving to a new web address!  I welcome you to follow us there . . . please be patient while the blog is under construction.  I welcome your thoughts on the new format!

storieswithmysongbird.com

In peace,
Megan

I Love You . . . for Seventy Mental Reasons

“I love you for sentimental reasons . . . I hope you do believe me, I’ve given you my heart ."

Throughout my childhood and teenage years, my father and I regularly danced to this song.  Not just at weddings, but veritably every weekend, when, at some point, I would put on Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable, turn it to track 11, and extend my hand to him as he sat on the couch reading.   He would spring up, give a tug on his pants at the knees, and for the next 4:30 minutes of our lives we would waltz around the living room like it was nobody’s business . . . a regular Ginger and Fred. 

We have long since stopped dancing except at the occasional wedding, yet the song remains a part of my repertoire of expressions in more ways than one.

After my daughter was born, I marveled at the tiny wonders that filled my day, my arms.  My attention was grounded in the small details of her and the environment that we moved through; the perpetual pout of her lips, the copse of veins behind her eyelids, how when she was REALLY angry, she cried without making sound for nearly 10 seconds before a shriek exploded forth.    

In these long, wonderful hours I became aware that whatever else love is — biological, chemical, sentimental — it is an active celebration of the idiosyncratic in another person, the idiosyncratic in ourselves when we are with them. 

“I love you for sentimental reasons. . .” meet “I love you for seventy mental reasons.”

In Rob Reiner's classic New York romance When Harry Met Sally, when Harry professes his love to his long time friend, he does so by way of naming her idiosyncrasies:

I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

It’s a great moment in a great film . . . the boy gets the girl with whom he should have been all along . . . AND realizes at the get-go that her neuroses, fears, and habituations are not merely tolerable or endearing but part of the whole whatness of who she is. 

Carolyn Jevelian, a fellow poet whom I met and worked with last summer up in Door County, wrote a beautiful elegy to her late husband Stephen using the same technique.  She  celebrates her love by naming the exquisite beauty of his quirks:

Little Things

He took pills without water.

He ate his morning cereal with a large spoon  to save time.

He drank half coke/ half water.

He was thrilled making all the green lights on his commute.

We celebrated when the odometer turned over another hundred thousand miles.

Now there is no one to tell when I make all the green lights

or when my odometer reaches a historic number.

And now I use the big spoon.

I account it on being raised in my particular family that Carolyn's poem, as well as the film, are especially truthful expressions of love.  At a very young age I was immersed in a culture of celebrating the idiosyncratic . . . even to this day, conversations with my parents and extended family still regularly turn toward playful anecdotes that highlight the quirkiness of our personalities, our characters.  By choosing to focus on the folly, the fanciful in one another and in the most absurdly funny aspects of our relationships, it is as if to say in a resoundingly affirming way  "I see you and enjoy you just the same!"

This year, as Valentine’s Day approaches, our family is actively recording the seventy mental reasons why we love each other. 

Each night following dinner each of us takes a post-it note and writes at least one little detail about someone else in the family (or the quality of their time with someone else in the family) that they appreciate. (Mom and Dad ask three year old Pads, and record what he says. . . which is fun enough given some of his answers!)  It doesn’t matter how silly or irreverent the detail is . . . in fact, the more absurd the better.  Having written them down, we fold them up and place them in Valentines boxes we’ve decorated for ourselves.

No matter what we find when we open up those boxes on Valentines day, the outcome of our reflection will be two-fold with each person having been given not one, but two invaluable gifts:  a testimonial of seventy strange or not so strange reasons why we are loved, as well as a stronger attention to the ways in which each others' presence have been mapped through our lives.

  

Listening With The Body

“Moffsen, Mama? Blewstreen blang comar?”

With her consummately tiny voice, Miss S. spent hours practicing the art of conversation . . . long before she had a comprehensible vocabulary.   At the age of two she could sit on a park bench at the playground for hours, forgoing the jungle gym in order to talk to me in this otherworldly pre-language.  As she squared her frame toward my body and leaned in to our summer confidence, I found it uncanny the way she held me in full regard, intonating her statements with such perfectly cued facial expressions and body language.  At times I believed I just was not hearing her right . . . that surely there were discernable words in her speech. 

Listening eagerly, I leaned in with attentive silence; through body and voice, each of us offered up our speech with as much joy as if we had been speaking the same language.

As we took a bike ride today I was reminded of these early confidences we had, of how they have become more rich with time.  On topics ranging from the prevention of cancer, to a silly thing one of her peers said at school, to a memory of the mosquitoes she encountered on a trip to India, to the plot of her friends’ current school-yard game, the trip around the neighborhood was laced with an unending string of her anecdotes, queries, memories, concerns, to which I listened attentively, but offered little.

“I’m so joyful right now,” she said with a small sigh, walking her bike as we neared the house. 

“I know,” I replied, smiling. 

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Because I am listening to you with my whole body.”

Listening with the body.  In one of the most beautiful passages in Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, the geisha Sayuri speaks of the love and attentiveness involved in this process:

Usually when he first came, the Chairman talked for a time about his workday.  He might tell me about troubles with a new product, or about a  traffic accident involving a truckload of parts, or some such thing.  Of course I  was happy to listen, but I understood perfectly well that the Chairman wasn’t telling these things to me because he wanted me to know them.  He was clearing them from his mind, just like draining water from a bucket.  So I listened closely not to his words, but to the tone of his voice; because in the same way that sound rises as a bucket is emptied, I could hear the Chairman’s voice softening as he spoke.  (422)

Sometimes listening with the body requires a silent attentiveness; sometimes it requires questioning; sometimes it requires affirmation; in all cases it requires an utter and complete attention to the other, a practice that Mikhail Bakhtin identifies as love.  

There are people with whom I cultivated such a listening, people with whom the space of conversation habitually opened up into moments of deep recognition; yet even the most spiritual of these were not immutable against the forces of death and busyness, a misplaced desire to protect, distractions, the loss of trust.  

Over time, I forgot the value of nurturing my own capacity to listen with the body, to foster it in my most valued relationships.  My children, with their need to be seen and fully recognized, have reminded me to my better self.

After spending what seems like an eon in the fluorescent purgatory of the quasi-competent, I have spent the past two years slowly relearning the art of loving conversation so as to listen to my children with my whole body, being present to them in what they say and what they do not say, and honoring a space for dialogue each and every day, no matter whether that dialogue is spoken or silent. .  . 

It’s a process that works best, as one could anticipate, when we are alone. . . which is why I am rather glad the holidays are over.  It seems strange to say that the time I spend with my kids is more rich and meaningful when their school term is in session, but those three hours we have alone together after full days apart are pure gold. 

Ask Three Questions, Have Some Turkey, and Call Me in the Morning

Unfortunate the aliens who someday stumble into the stratosphere over the United States during Thanksgiving and attempt to understand our national feast day by tapping into the media:

 “Countdown To Thanksgiving: Your 5-Day Emotional Cleanse”

“How to Survive Thanksgiving and Actually Enjoy Family and Food”
“Sticky Goo Makes Mess of Thanksgiving Holiday Travel Kickoff”

“95 Percent of Opinions Withheld on Visit to Family”

Given such spin, intergalactic ambassadors just might think the holiday involves something akin to gladiator warfare, sport, espionage . . . or a combination of all three.[1]  Yet within any hyperbolic statement there is at least an ounce of truth.  Someday techies may come out with an OVER/UNDER app for managing the pressures of the season — over-cooked turkeys, underprepared travel, overtired children, under-motivated shopping, overbearing in-laws, overextended finances and undermedicated hangovers . . .

until then, there’s a book for that. 

With one family member gone on vacation, last week was preternaturally quiet around our home, which opened up time for the rest of us to indulge in pleasure reading.  Somehow, appropriately enough, the picture books and poetry we pulled off the shelf spoke to the very essence of what it takes to enter a holiday with a modicum of grace.[2]   

The Three Questions was one of these books.  Loosely based on Leo Tolsoy’s “Three Questions,” it tells the tale of a young boy named Nikolai, who wants to know, as many thoughtful children do, just how he should behave to be a good person. 

“When is the best time to do things?” the little philosopher asks his animal friends as they walk the strand, “Who is the most important one? And what is the right thing to do?”   The beautiful heron Sonya, the acerbic monkey Gogol, and the lovable dog Pushkin have their ideas, but the preternaturally sensible little boy is not satisfied by their answers.  He decides to seek out the wise tortoise Leo for advice.

A little adventure ensues as the boy helps the ancient sage dig his summer garden, saves a mother panda and finds her lost child.  Yet through all these labors at the service of others, Nikolai discovers that Leo has evaded answering him.

“But your questions have been answered,” the old tortoise replies at the end of the story, surprised.  “There is only one important time, and that time is now.  The most important one is always the one you are with.  And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side.”

From Jesus’s admonishments to Martha, to Zen koans, this important message reappears again and again in various proverb traditions . . . but never in such an approachable way for children. 

Written and illustrated with beautiful watercolor paintings by award winning artist and author Jon Muth, The Three Questions is a lovely picture book to give as a gift, or to pick up at the library in order to read with your children in the next several weeks.   Frankly, you might even pick it up just to read it in a quiet moment; as one celebration passes and preparations for others gathers force, this simple children's tale reminds us of our best selves, and of our own greatest desires for the extended holiday season.

 

---

[1] A set of conclusions charged with irony — after all, doesn’t the bizarre ritual of mercenary shopping on Black Friday look just like this?

[2] The origin of the word Holiday is “holy day.’ 

Halloween's Unsuspecting Heroes

Halloween should be reframed as the holiday of the unsuspecting hero.  It's time its mascots -- the monsters, witches, mummies, and jack-o-lanterns whose images haunt our houses and yards the whole month of October -- were replaced with images of the overlooked kids we know and knew: the anti-social, the pathologically shy, the sensitive, the awkward, the socially marginalized. 

Think of planting a cutout of Steve Erkel in the garden bed near your front door, or of finding an inflatable figure of Don Knotts to dance in the yard, illuminated, and you'll know what I'm getting at.  Halloween is a celebration of the deliciously awkward, the unsuspecting heroes in us all.

It may seem to be a random suggestion, but it's not.  After all, who are the best beloved heroes of children's Halloween literature?  There's Charlie Brown of course, whose epic search for the Great Pumpkin was plagued with all sorts of disappointments, starting with his disasterous holeyer-than-swiss-cheese ghost costume. . . and Sam from Frank Asch's Popcorn, who in his attempts at being a gracious host to all of his friends at his Halloween party, buries his house in popcorn!  Also, who could forget Casper and Georgie, those sensitive ghosts who just couldn't pass muster in the haunting business. . . being, well, just too friendly and polite!

My favorite of the unsuspecting heroes of Halloween, though, is a little daschund named Oscar, who as the hero of Dav Pilkey's The Hallo-weiner is 'half a dog tall and one and a half dogs long."  Vertically challenged, soft eyed and sleek as he is, how he longs on Halloween to run with the big dogs . . . to embrace his inner canine with an appropriately threatening costume:  A mummy comes to mind  . . . or a dog catcher. 

But no.  Fate would have it otherwise.  As he arrives home on the eve of Halloween prepared to fashion himself into some sort of wonderfully scary thing, his loving mother calls her little vienna sausage over to her and unveils the Halloween masterpiece she has for him to wear:  a hot dog costume, replete with mustard. 

Poor Oscar.  Condemned by the fates of filial justice to wear such a ridiculous costume on such a potentially transforming night as Halloween.  He leaves the house sure that this hot dog combo will throw his social life, and any hope of respect among his classmates, straight to the dogs. 

Yet as he discovers through the course of the book, there's a blessing to be had in being just one half a dog high and one and a half a dog long. . . and one even to be had in wearing a bulky hot dog costume.

I won't give it away why.  Suffice it to be said that Dav Pilkey's The Hallo-Weiner is a great Halloween story to share with your children today, and everyday.  Or to just enjoy by yourself: in true Pilkey style, the language in The Hallo-weiner is playful and punning, a delight to the ear and eye of all!

In fact we love the story so much, I've bought three copies already -- one to replace the first copy we had, which was wore out by the time Pads came home . . . and one for the kids to give to their Auntie Weinie, my oldest and dearest friend, who at the age of six, and through no fault of her own, was rebaptized with the name by my mother.

The most memorable heroes of Halloween are those, like Oscar, who look forward to Halloween as an occasion to be transformed from their socially awkward selves through the mystic magic of the night.  It is only in their unforgettably humorous failures that they, and we, discover the strength of character they have possessed all along.  And that is seriously funny stuff.

Introducing Elegic Poetry to Children

Autumn graces our presence once again.  As the days have become (too) short, and the nights have become clear with cold, we hail the familiar salut! of the geese as we overturn the spent garden, and bid them a good migratory journey.

Inside later, nestled together in footie pajamas and flannels on the couch in our den, we read some wonderful seasonal elegies (n.b.  Not to be confused with seasonal allergies!) from Christina Rossetti’s 1893 volume of nursery rhymes, titled Sing Song:  

Fly away, fly away

 

Fly away, fly away over the sea,
Sun-loving swallow, for summer is done;
Come again, come again, come back to me,
Bringing the summer and bringing the sun.

Twist me a crown

Twist me a crown of wind-flowers;
That I may fly away
To hear the singers at their song,
And players at their play.

Put on your crown of wind-flowers:
But whither would you go?
Beyond the surging of the sea
And the storms that blow.

Alas! your crown of wind-flowers
Can never make you fly:
I twist them in a crown to-day,
And to-night they die.[1]

As with any well wrought seasonal elegy, these poems both commemorate something temperate — a bird, a flower chain -- and treat its passing as a phenomenon taking part in a larger cycle — of departure and return, of life and afterlife, of childhood fancy and adult rationality. 

Now is the time of the year for elegy . . . a time to commemorate the joy of the past summer, and the lush beauty it brought to our senses.  A time to set it in a broader cycle--the story of our lives, our collective memory.

After reading these poems together, I have used them to frame several conversations, and subsequently, activities.   Immediately following the reading of the first poem, for instance, we trying to imagine each speaker and her dramatic occasion in more detail:

• Why does the speaker in “Fly away” tell the swallow to fly away?  What does the speaker want the swallow to bring back? How does the speaker feel about the swallow’s leaving?

After discerning that the speaker observes summer’s passing in the migrating swallow, we draw the dramatic occasion for the poem into context with our own lives, thinking more specifically about the plants and animals whose presence in our lives changes at turn of the season. 

• How do you feel about the end of summer?  What will you miss the most?  What are you looking forward to in the year to come?

• What signs in the environment make us aware that summer is coming to an end?  What “sun-loving” creatures in our own yard are saying goodbye to usas they curl up and become dormant, burrow, or fly away?  Which creatures are already gone?  How do we know?  What trace of themselves have they left in your memory?  In our yard? 

Then, we take a walk through the yard, ambling along our favorite hiking paths with little purpose other than witnessing the passing of a season, the start of another one. 

I set the children to the task of listening to the silent speech of the ‘sun-loving’ creatures in our environment that are saying goodbye for winter.  They take photographs of the plants making their "farewell speeches", some of the images of which are presented here. 

Then, the children write their own elegies in the spirit of Rossetti.  Here are two examples of the elegies that they have written:

Summer, fall, winter, spring, come in time. 

Always.
Every season have fun, but when winter comes,
cold will arise from the dark starry night.
 
Goodnight, goodnight, firefly,

if you're near.

I'll miss your glow when winter comes

rolling from another country 

and wish you were here. 

I'll pretend a fire made of stones

is your light shining bright.

---

[1] This poem is a round, or a dialogue, and the dramatic occasion for the poem is easier to understand if one person reads the call out (stanza one) and another, the response (stanzas two and three)

We are well to remember, however insular our lives, that we do not just move through seasons; they in fact move through us, part of the intricate machinations of our own beings. Even adults have much to benefit from reading elegy now and then — if only to remind ourselves, as in Judaic wisdom, Gam zeh ya'avor , “this too shall pass” — be it joy, be it sorrow, be it summer, be it autumn, be it beauty, be it ugliness.

Among my favorite adult oriented elegies are Thomas Grey’s “An Elegy in a Country Churchyard”, Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Spring and Fall: to a Young Child”, and Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods.” The acuity of each of these poems as an act of perception invites us to actively commemorate our own passings, to locate them within a larger cycle of growth, of meaning.

Striving for Eudiamonia

When homework time makes
you feel like this, you need a
little Aristotle in your life.

“Am I done practicing yet?”
“Am I done with reading?”
“How many more minutes?”
“Am I done?”

Time is of the essence . . . especially for a child whose homework is assigned in time form.  Read for 20 minutes, dictates one assignment book, Play for at least 15 minutes a day, reads another.

“No,” I reply, feeling a transformation into Mr. Hyde coming on, “You still have a few more minutes.”

This repeated question day in and day out seems to take on that rhythmic quality of a metronome, but actually, I can feel it slowly mortifying my brain into blood-orange marmalade, just like those other great existential questions I have faced with increasing frequency since I took my first initiation rites into parenthood —

Are we there yet?

Why?
Why not?

                             “ . . .How ‘bout now.  Am I done yet?” 

Sigh.  Welcome to a new school year. 

The strange thing is, my irritation at the question actually masks an even bigger anxiety.  My fear is rekindled at the turn of every new year: when, if ever, will my daughter’s passion for a subject be ignited?  When will her motivation to wrestle with the problems set before her become internalized?  When will the process of learning become its own reward?

Last week, as the showdown between the clock and the homework, (not to mention my temper and my better judgment) began, I sensed Aristotle’s specter passing through the room wearing dark sunglasses and a solemn frown, shaking its head slowly as it passed through the garage wall. 

Aristotle (right)
and Plato (left) in Raphael's
The School of Athens. 

"Eudiamonia can’t be taught,” it said in a whisper, coolly touching my shoulder, “only self-cultivated in fertile soil.”

“I know, man,” I said under my breath without realizing it.  “I know.”

“Mom?” Both kids had looked up at me from their activities, half bemused, half concerned.  I could tell by their faces that they were wondering who I was talking to this time.

“Never mind,” I replied.  “This time I’m just communing with my favorite Greek philosopher.” 

Eudiamonia.  It roughly translates from Greek into the term flourishing — and was used by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics to name the state in which all human capacities are in perfect balance.   

The happy life, Aristotle argued, is determined by excellence in one’s activities, because "Excellent activities or their opposites are what determine human happiness or the reverse. […] no function of man [sic] has so much permanence as excellent activities (these are thought to be more durable even than knowledge)."

Excellent activities are not purely those with good ends, though of course doing good for its own sake is a noble activity.  But excellence is also a way of approaching the tasks one is faced with, a will to do the very best one is capable of for its own sake:

For the man [sic] who is truly good and wise, we think, bears all the chances of life becomingly and always makes the best of circumstances, as a good general makes the best military use of the army at his command and a shoemaker makes the best shoes out of the hides that are given him; and so with all other craftsmen.[i] 

And learners, too.  A couple weeks ago, when I asked my first year advisees to write an educational autobiography, two of them wrote histories illustrating Aristotelian excellence. 

Micah described how when he was in the third grade he worked long and hard on a portrait of his teacher.  With markers he “detailed every eyelash and pore” of her face, completely absorbed in making the image of her as wonderful as he thought she was.  When he showed his mom the final work, she pointed out that it lacked a neck.  Instead of being disappointed in her response, or angry in himself (or fate) for not doing it correctly, he turned right back around and started the portrait again from scratch.  “I wanted her to be perfect,” he said. 

Eudiamonia, baby. 

Caroline also told a personal narrative that would have earned her props from Aristotle. She had signed up for an A.P. English class fall semester of her senior year, intent on working harder than she ever had for a course, just to prove to herself that she could.  She wrote on Dostoyevsky, the final product being “a good paper. One of the best papers I’ve ever written,” as she told us.  The teacher gave it a failing grade.  “She didn’t receive it on the snow day it was due even though I had sent it, and considered it late.”  While formally challenging the grade through the rest of the year, Caroline didn’t become embittered or even feel the grade reflected her competencies.  “I showed it to anybody who was interested in seeing it, knowing it was good work.”

Aristotle is right, we cannot teach eudiamonia — only give it recognition it when it expresses itself in our homes and classrooms. 

. . . and as I become more fearful that my daughter may never experience the pleasure of hard work, may never cultivate excellence in her activities, or thereby reach eudiamonia, she undermines my slightly-over-the-top idealism yet again.
 
“Mom,” she says, having closed her homework folder. “Can we read some more of Elizabeth’s Royal Diary later?”

“Absolutely,” I reply, coming out of my reverie. We picked up several of The Royal Diaries last week, and had started reading about Queen Elizabeth I’s life in the 16^th century over the past few nights.  Although written for a slightly older reading group, Miss S. seemed to be enjoying them . . . asking as many questions as there were sentences in each entry, actually.

“Perhaps you can read a couple entries and then I can read some,” I suggest.

She looks at me quite solemnly.  “No Mom.  I want to read the whole thing by myself.”

From the garage (or is it my heart?) I can hear Aristotle's specter softly doing the jig.  "Sounds like a wonderful idea," I reply.

---

[i] Nichomachean Ethics lines 1105b-1130b.  The Complete Works of Aristotle. Jonathan Barnes, Editor. Volume Two.

Thirteen Reasons Why to Read this Young Adult Novel Whether or not Your Children Can (Part Two)

So true to the title of this blog, let me give you thirteen reasons you should pick up Asher’s book now. 

Reading this young adult novel can help us start thinking seriously about how to promote our childrens’ abilities to develop healthy relationships with their friends now, for the long term . . . and promote their abilities to develop a healthy relationship with their own selves, no matter what and who they become.

It can remind us that silence can be irrevocably destructive; as a parent, it is better to start a conversation, than to wait for it to happen.

It can encourage us to reflect on the cultural messages and images our children have access to in our homes and beyond, particularly (as is evident in this novel) those in which the objectification and sexualization of young women is a norm; as a consequence, the book helps us think about how to address, interrupt, and challenge those messages for and with our children.

It fosters really important considerations about how closely we listen when our children talk about their days and lives now, and to set better patterns of engagement . . . so that they know they can rely on those communication lines being open when they need them later. 

It helps us to start conversations with other people who we think may be addressing these issues right now — teens in our lives, parents and educators; it also enables us to start thinking seriously about how much we are invested in knowing and conversing with our childrens’ friends now, in order to build those communication lines we will seek out and rely on later.

It provides an invaluable opportunity to observe the subtle and diverse varieties of bullying that are happening, so as to normalize our discussion of bullying with our children.  If they can understand it as a social phenomenon, they can recognize it early.    

Reading the book can also provide an invaluable opportunity for our children to see us read.

Moreover, the novel can inspire us to start conversations with our children about the feeling of shame . . . about how their own felt sense shame when they break the cookie jar or lie can be destructive or instructive: destructive when they choose to suffer it in silence, instructive when they allow us and others who love them to help them address it and work through it.  It's a lesson that translates.

Lastly, the novel encourages us to reflect on how we overlook and elide conversations with people who, in that moment, just may need us most.   

One thing the novel doesn't address is something for which we can turn to the suicides that have happened in the past year: how technology facilitates the bullying process.  Thinking about the forces of cyber bullying, in conjunction with Thirteen Reasons Why, can help us, as parents, to establish clear parameters for our childrens’ use of technology.  It can inspire us to have important and repeated discussions with them about the ethical and moral responsibilities that come with having access to phone, facebook, and video/audio technologies.  

This is a novel that inspires reflection, critical thinking, engagement.  It's a great read, and an important read to read now. . . and again with your children as they enter young adulthood.


Part One 

Thirteen Reasons to Read This Young Adult Novel Whether or Not Your Children Can

Several weeks ago I unexpectedly found myself with an extra 36 hours on hand and absolutely nothing to occupy them, having missed the flight that would get me home.   Though I sorely itched to get there, the layover ended up being a rather convenient inconvenience; I can’t remember the last time I had so much unabridged time to read.

The second of the three novels I had the chance to sweep through in Terminal G really left its mark. 

For several months, both on NPR and in bibliophile circles, I had been hearing about this sleeper hit — Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why.   When I hit Hudson Books and saw it on the racks, I picked it up eagerly.

While initially marketed as a young adult novel at its release in 2007, Thirteen Reasons has a much broader audience following the tragic suicides that made national headlines last year . . . young men and women such as Tyler Clementi, Phoebe Prince, and Raymond Chase, youth who killed themselves in response to the bullying that either slowly, or violently, eroded their self worth and their sense of hope in the future.  As bullying has once again became an topic of national discourse, so this book has started to help frame a dialogue for educators, parents, and young adults.

Thirteen Reasons begins as high school student Clay Jensen finds a package lying on his stoop.  Inside are 7 tapes, each one numbered in succession.  Curious, he goes to the garage, where his dad keeps the old boom-box with a tape deck.  He pops the first tape in.  Wafting over the air, he hears the unmistakable voice of Hannah Baker, a girl in his class who killed herself with an overdose of prescription drugs barely two weeks earlier. 

Before she actually did the deed, Hannah had decided for her death not to be in vain; in the days leading up to her suicide, she made thirteen recordings.   They not only recounted the events that played a role in her decision to kill herself, but identified the people who played a role.  As she states at the beginning of tape one:

“The rules are pretty simple.  There are only two.  Rule number one: You listen.  Number two: You pass it on.  Hopefully, neither one will be easy for you.”

The tapes were to make their rounds to each person involved in her death . . . to be listened by each person in their entirety . . .  or a second copy would be released to the public.

It was a guerilla tactic, perhaps, but one which creates a framing device for this novel, which recounts Clay’s struggle to make sense of his role in the affair — an interior monologue that runs parallel to the monologue Hannah has recorded on her tapes.  


As he moves through their town, a celebrant at the altar of all the sites in which she was slowly, silently degraded into despair, he becomes increasingly aware that the violences we are capable of committing to another person take all forms: carelessness, silence, rumor, emotional manipulation, objectification, outright aggression and, of course, passive aggression.

We readers become increasingly aware of them too.


This book made me reflect on my own adolescence: was this how it was when I was in high school?  I don’t know.  . .  to say I was oblivious of the goings on of high school is an understatement; I was an absolute social moron, and rather embraced it. 

Perhaps that saved me. . . more likely, I think now, it made me unwittingly part of the problem. 

Whether your children are 2 or 12, the time to read Thirteen Reasons Why is now.  Read it to prepare yourselves for thinking about the world that our children are entering into.  It is one where bullying takes extraordinary new forms: it is often sexualized, it often involves refined acts of psychological manipulation, and it all too often is a contagion, wholly inescapable for its victims, due to the powers of internet technology.

Part Two