When I was six years old, we had a small Casio keyboard that we'd gotten
for Christmas, and one night I decided to try to coax out of it
something more musical than a bossa nova beat under a series of yappy
dog barks. It didn't take me long to pick out the melody of the Sesame Street
theme song. It was then that my parents, impressed by my meager ability
to play by ear, suggested piano lessons. I figured that if I could
learn how to play a song so quickly, it wouldn't be long before I became
a master musician. There were just a couple of problems with this.
First of all, playing the piano - really playing it - was a lot
harder than I'd suspected. Secondly, all I had to practice on at home
was a tiny keyboard without enough keys for a proper two-octave range
and without any way to achieve the desired dynamics of a song. Each note
played at exactly the same volume and for exactly the same duration. I
needed a piano.
My own early musical experience is the most
obvious reason that I relate so strongly to Zoe Elias, the narrator of
Linda Urban's outstanding debut novel, A Crooked Kind of Perfect.
Instead of a pygmy keyboard, aspiring concert pianist Zoe has a clunky
Perfectone D-60 organ. It has more range than my Casio did, but it's
hardly the elegant instrument she dreams of playing. Still, it's hers,
and she's determined to make do with what she has, to take advantage of
the free lessons that came with the organ, to travel the roundabout road
to Carnegie Hall. She will not let her dream deferred dry up.
Nonetheless, her young life is littered with disappointments. Her mom
is a workaholic who rarely seems to take time for her daughter. Her
dad's extreme anxiety keeps him cooped up in the house most of the time,
and if it's up to him to get her somewhere, chances are that she won't
be able to go. The teacher who comes with her organ is not the
beneficent maestro of her imagination. Her "best friend" Emma has
selected a new best friend more compatible with her social status. It
isn't easy being a 10-year-old.
A Crooked Kind of Perfect
is a middle-grade novel, written for the 8- to 12-year-old set. Most of
the chapters range in length from one to three pages; they're not
numbered, but each has a title, which sometimes is the funniest part of
the whole chapter. And oh, is this book funny. Part of the humor comes
from Zoe's matter-of-fact observations. For instance, after reading her
organ's enthusiastic instruction manual, she advises, "Never trust an
exclamation point." Good advice in general, hilarious in context, and an
early indication of the book's theme that appearances aren't
necessarily an indication of quality. The writing tends to be terse,
with the occasional paragraph-length sentence illustrating a chaotic
situation. She makes every word count, so it's a breeze to read.
Urban offers as stinging an indictment of elementary school groupthink
as I've ever seen. Like Zoe, I never felt as though I fit in very well
with my peers, and I was baffled by some of the trends that were
supposed to be an indicator of coolness. I suspect that Emma was given
the last name Dent intentionally, as an illustration of the following
sentiment expressed by Zoe's hero, pianist Vladimir Horowitz:
"Perfection itself is imperfection."
While Zoe may be made to
feel like an outsider, she is hardly alone in the world. My favorite
relationship in the book is her bond with her dad, a man of many
idiosyncrasies whose affection and knack for finding fun in every
situation make up for his crippling social phobia. He fills his days
with courses from an online university, classes with funny names like
Golden Gloves: Make a Mint Coaching Boxing and Roger, Wilco, Over, and
Cash! Learn to Fly Like the Pros. Zoe and her dad fulfill the classes'
requirements together, having a blast along the way, and once in a
while, something comes along that actually has practical applications.
At school, Zoe finds an unexpected confidante in class clown Wheeler
Diggs. When he starts following her home - something Emma never did -
and taking up baking with her dad, she realizes that there's a lot more
to him than meets the eye. He's rough around the edges, but he's
somebody she can genuinely have fun with. Later, Perform-O-Rama brings
her into proximity to Mona, a girl who demonstrates that sometimes, that
which glitters is gold. Mona reminds me very much of my class's
valedictorian in high school: extremely intelligent and accomplished and
still unfailingly kind to those around her.
Of course, with
the narrative shaped around Zoe's six-month journey from the acquisition
of her organ to her participation in Perform-O-Rama, her organ
instructor is crucial to her development. At first, Mabelline Person
seems like a letdown, but she turns out to be a diligent and encouraging
teacher. She's a brusque, no-nonsense sort of woman with a subtle
sarcastic streak, and she peppers her speech with colorful
composer-inspired colloquialisms like "Great mother of Mozart" and
"Tchaikovsky's checkbook." Perhaps her most important lesson is this:
"You have some talent and you work hard. I'll take that over prodigy any
day."
The book's extended metaphor for the titular concept is Neil Diamond's Forever in Blue Jeans.
Ironically, Zoe chooses the song as her piece for Perform-O-Rama
because Diamond's name reminds her of the tiara she envisions wearing in
her Carnegie Hall debut. I was tickled about her song selection because
I became a Diamond fan not too long after I started playing the piano,
and this was one of the songs that won me over. But it wasn't until
later that I realized how incredibly appropriate it is for her
situation. It takes her even longer, since it isn't until nearly the end
of the book that she hears the words to the opening verse for the first
time. Up until that point, she fills in her own lines, revealing
herself to be a budding lyricist and making the song an even better fit
because this book is all about making your own kind of music. Zoe comes
to discover that elegance as an end unto itself is of little value and
that a true friend respects the things that make you unique. The final
sign of how she has grown over the past six months? The first chapter, a
gauzy vision of crowds enraptured by her glistening presence at
Carnegie Hall, is entitled How It Was Supposed to Be. The heading of the last chapter, whose beauty is of the much more ordinary variety, is How It Is Supposed to Be.
I would heartily encourage any school-age child taking up a musical instrument for the first time to read A Crooked Kind of Perfect,
but I certainly don't restrict my recommendation to that specific
demographic. This book could be equally valuable to children embarking
on any sort of endeavor, whether it's sports or art, not to mention
navigating the twisty hallways of elementary education. And I know I'm
not the only adult to find this book thoroughly endearing; I picked it
up on the strength of an endorsement from my friend Beth,
and I've since encouraged my parents and a couple of friends to check
it out. I suspect I will read it again soon. But first, I have a piano
to dust off.
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