I felt shy this year. I felt sad. I missed the paintings by the first graders that they used to put in the hallways. I missed watchng the third graders at recess. So I was quiet, and I let other kids think they had a problem, not me. Maybe if the kids kew my dad was sick, they would be mean back me, as if they had been waiting for the right moment to attack.
Sixth grade has started out rough for Amalee; she feels like she’s becoming one of the “mean kids”, hypercritical of her peers but terrified of being judged by the smart girls whom she desperately wants to impress. She likes her English teacher, but she doesn’t think her English teacher likes her. And on top of all that, her Dad becomes deathly ill.
In her first novel, written for young adults, Dar Williams explores friendship and family through Amalee’s relationship to her father, her father’s group of quirky friends, and the teachers and kids at school. While Amalee feels friendless and fearful, her father has cultivated a group of friends who have helped raise her since her mother left when she was very young. When her father becomes bedridden, they step in to help: John cooks massive quantities of food, Carolyn paints an enchanted garden in her father’s room, Joyce takes on the job of keeping them emotionally grounded, and Phyllis steps up to defend Amalee when things get really rough at school. Through their example, Amalee comes to see that friendship isn’t about impressing people, and that kindness pays dividends that meanness cannot.
I have to admit that I was a little disappointed at first with Amalee. Dar Williams’ songs that touch on childhood–”When I Was a Boy”, “Are You Out There?”, “We Learned the Sea”, and especially “The Babysitter’s Here”–are poignant and powerful without being smarmy. And the wordplay and drama in her lyrics have always impressed me; some of her songs, like “Iowa” and “Spring Street”, are like tightly-crafted short stories. The prose in “Amalee”, though, tends toward the pedestrian; the flashes of brilliance I expected weren’t there. But as the situation in “Amalee” grew more difficult, the quirky humor in Williams’ writing emerged. The magic I expected wasn’t there, but this was still a solid little book that I’d gladly hand to a kid in the right age range.
It looks like there’s another Dar Williams “Amalee” book on the way–Lights, Camera, Amalee–and I’m willing to give that one a shot as well. She remains my favorite songwriter (I’m going to see her this summer at the Minnesota Zoo, and I can’t wait), and I have high hopes for her future in fiction as well. (Though I’d like to see her explore some of her themes of regret and hope for adults as well, perhaps in a collection of stories.)
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