{"id":357,"date":"2009-09-19T22:46:08","date_gmt":"2009-09-20T03:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rainbowlist.wordpress.com\/?p=357"},"modified":"2009-09-19T22:46:08","modified_gmt":"2009-09-20T03:46:08","slug":"magic-and-misery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glbtrt.ala.org\/rainbowbooks\/archives\/357","title":{"rendered":"Magic and Misery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"magicandmisery\"<\/a> Marino, Peter.\u00a0 Magic and Misery<\/em>.\u00a0 Holiday House, 2009.\u00a0 978-0-8234-6. $17.95.\u00a0 Grades 8-12.<\/strong><\/p>\n

James\u00a0 transferred into Mungers Mills High School during his junior year and ate by himself in the cafeteria until Toni Jo–TJ–got up the gumption to introduce herself one\u00a0 day when she found out that it was both of their birthdays.\u00a0 She describes her feelings for her stunningly beautiful and\u00a0 incredibly\u00a0 pithy new friend as being “fago” a Pacific Islander word that means ” the feeling of both affection and worry for someone at the same time.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 From their very first lunch together,\u00a0 TJ and James become great friends.\u00a0\u00a0 An example of the humor in this book is that\u00a0 after James comes out during their science\u00a0 class he adopts the nickname, Pan, which is short for Pansy.\u00a0\u00a0 After coming out, two bullies from the football team attack Pan physically and verbally, but he adamantly refuses to report the incidents to any of the adults in their lives.\u00a0\u00a0 TJ worries about Pan,\u00a0 especially after a softer-spoken, more thoughtful and less stereotypical member of the school’s football team, Casper,\u00a0 asks her out and they start a relationship that excludes Pan from her life.\u00a0 Magic and Misery<\/em> deals with a number of teen issues, including the jealousy that arises when one’s best friend gets a boyfriend or a girlfriend.\u00a0\u00a0 The gay character in this book is portrayed in a very positive light, although it was troubling to me that he never reported the bullying that\u00a0 he was experiencing to the school or to the police.\u00a0 His response to the most violent and humilating attack was to take matters into his own hands and beat the bullies with his tennis racket, causing him to be expelled from school and being transferred to another school.\u00a0 The family dynamics are diverse and realistically portrayed.\u00a0 Even though the situations are often tense, the humor really shines through making it easy to care about what happens to the characters.
\n–Arla Jones
\nLawrence, Kansas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marino, Peter.\u00a0 Magic and Misery.\u00a0 Holiday House, 2009.\u00a0 978-0-8234-6. $17.95.\u00a0 Grades 8-12. James\u00a0 transferred into Mungers Mills High School during his junior year and ate by himself in the cafeteria until Toni Jo–TJ–got up the gumption to introduce herself one\u00a0 day when she found out that it was both of their birthdays.\u00a0 She describes her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[156,194],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","tag-magic-and-misery","tag-peter-marino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glbtrt.ala.org\/rainbowbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glbtrt.ala.org\/rainbowbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glbtrt.ala.org\/rainbowbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glbtrt.ala.org\/rainbowbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glbtrt.ala.org\/rainbowbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glbtrt.ala.org\/rainbowbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glbtrt.ala.org\/rainbowbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glbtrt.ala.org\/rainbowbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glbtrt.ala.org\/rainbowbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}