March 26 MG Releases: The Size of the Truth + The Rambling [Review]

The Size of the Truth by Andrew Smith

When he was four years old, Sam Abernathy was trapped at the bottom of a well for three days, where he was teased by a smart-aleck armadillo named Bartleby. Since then, his parents plan every move he makes. But Sam doesn’t like their plans. He doesn’t want to go to MIT. And he doesn’t want to skip two grades, being stuck in the eighth grade as an eleven-year-old with James Jenkins, the boy he’s sure pushed him into the well in the first place. He wants to be a chef. And he’s going to start by entering the first annual Blue Creek Days Colonel Jenkins Macaroni and Cheese Cook-Off. That is, if he can survive eighth grade, and figure out the size of the truth that has slipped Sam’s memory for seven years.

★★½

• I picked up this book because I’d heard good things about Andrew Smith’s young adult novels (which I haven’t read) and was curious to see how he would do in middle grade. An older Sam, the main character in this book, appears in Smith’s YA book Stand Off. If you’ve read Smith’s other novels, please let me know what you think of them! I wonder how this book compares.
• The dads in this story read like caricatures. I found it difficult to take the challenges their sons (Sam and James) experienced with them (their dads) seriously because the problematic aspects of the dads were so exaggerated. I appreciate nuanced adult characters in my middle grade, but I don’t think that would bother kid readers.
• The narrative spends far more time in the well than I would have liked. I found these sections weird and boring and I skimmed them. Bartleby certainly annoyed me; I didn’t think he was funny at all – but maybe kids would find him amusing. Honestly, I probably could have skipped the well chapters entirely and just enjoyed the main story line. (This seems a good place to also note that ‘excuse me’ in place of swearing could have been a sweet quirk of Sam’s but made for awkward reading.)
• I didn’t get into the story until over halfway through (when the cook-off starts to come into play and when Sam and James begin opening up), but then I began to enjoy it. It seems I love stories where the main characters realize and overcome their own misunderstandings – even in contemporary fiction! It’s these parts of the story that prompted me to rate it three stars rather than two on Goodreads.

The Bottom Line

The chapters in the well seem like a strange insertion that distract from the strength of the present-day storyline, which does a great job at exploring family expectations and judging someone you don’t know.

This was information I was unprepared to deal with. James Jenkins had flunked eighth grade. He couldn’t possibly like to write. he had to have been messing with me. Maybe I was still a bit out of it after what had happened in Coach Bovard’s office. Maybe James Jenkins only really liked to write ransom notes, or instructions about where bodies were hidden, or cheerful little reminders to people telling them joyful things like You’re next.

The Size of the Truth, pg. 142

The Rambling by Jimmy Cajoleas

Buddy Pennington is headed to river country. He’s determined to find his daddy, a wandering soul and a legend for his skills at Parsnit, a mysterious card game of magic, chance, and storytelling. Buddy hopes his pop might teach him the game, or at least that he can catch some of his pop’s famous good luck. But no sooner are Buddy and Pop reunited than some of Pop’s old enemies arrive to snatch him up. Boss Authority, the magical crime lord who has held the rivers in his grasp for years, has come to collect on a debt. Now Buddy must embark on a dangerous rescue mission, learning to play Parsnit with the best of them as he goes. The stars are aligning for one last epic duel – one that will require a sticky-fingered ally, a fortunate twist of fate, and the hand of a lifetime.

★★★★

• I read Cajoleas’ debut middle grade, Goldeline, last summer. Unfortunately, I liked the cover more than I liked the book. Fortunately, The Rambling is a marked improvement over Goldeline!
• This story lives up to that marvelously eerie cover. If there’s one word I would use to describe this book, it would be ‘atmospheric’. Cajoleas excels at describing the setting. I could imagine the air changing around me when reading about Buddy and new friend Tally drifting through and hiding in the swamp. More than once I squirmed and had to stop eating a snack when Buddy described encounters with creepy crawlies. I feel like it’s been awhile since I read a middle grade book with such an evocative setting.
• The game of Parsnit is another aspect of the book that Cajoleas writes well. In Parsnit, two players take turns drawing cards from their decks. They ‘orate’ a story around the cards – the best storyteller wins. But as the story progresses, we learn that there’s more to Parsnit than just being a game. It took me awhile to realize Parsnit is based on tarot with a greater infusion of magic and storytelling. (If you’re familiar with the cards that make a tarot deck, you might catch on sooner). Parsnit games didn’t appear as often as I thought I would have liked. But once they do start happening – it was worth the wait. Cajoleas doesn’t take the easy way out by skipping over the actual orating that takes place during a Parsnit duel. Readers get to hear Buddy share his story as he plays Parsnit.
• The Rambling also features one of my favourite middle grade tropes – the young main character learning about his parents’ past and grappling with his feelings about it.

The Bottom Line

It seems to me The Rambling improves on everything Cajoleas was aiming for in Goldeline. If a creepy swamp setting or a magical storytelling game appeal to you at all, give this book a go.

We stayed dead still, Tally holding my hand, the two of us crouched and quiet in the bottom of the boat. The tree swaddled us with its moss, big limbs draped around us like a giant wretched mother’s arms, bony and gaunt, bugs crawling all over them. The water was grayer and murkier here, it swirled in a baby little whirlpool that kept bumping the skiff into the trees. The trees were something else too, bark, carved on by human hands, symbols and scratch marks like how you figure a witch’s spell book looks. Above us dangled bones clacking together like wind chimes, another daisy chain of digit bones, jawless skulls wedged between branches and in the knots of trees, gaping at us, all those empty eye sockets watching.

The Rambling, pg. 125