Adolescent Ambrose Craves Scrabble and Mentorship in Word Nerd

When I was in college, I decided to go to a meeting of the local Scrabble Club. Pretty much since I could read, I’ve been playing Scrabble with friends and relatives, and more often than not, I emerge victorious from these matches. It was a little disconcerting, then, to go up against players who were able to so thoroughly trounce me without breaking a sweat. I only attended one meeting, and while it was partly because the group met way across town and getting there wasn’t very convenient, there were other reasons just as strong keeping me away. I was intimidated. And I didn’t like going from Scrabble champ to Scrabble chump.

In Susin Nielsen’s Word Nerd, 12-year-old Ambrose has the same initial reaction to Scrabble Club. He takes the initiative to go, cornering his neighbor, ex-con Cosmo, into driving him there, but he soon discovers that all that practice beating his mom hasn’t served him quite as well as he expected. He’s still a novice. But Ambrose keeps going to the club, partly because he’s bored out of his mind at home, where he spends the vast majority of his time, and partly because Cosmo has a major crush on club president Amanda and is now the one pushing for them to return.

I checked Word Nerd out of the library after reading Dear George Clooney, Please Marry My Mom by the same author. It took me about halfway through the book to realize that the two are connected beyond just the author and the Vancouver setting. Amanda and Cosmo, while not as prominent in that book as this, still have a fairly significant role in Dear George Clooney, especially Amanda. Mostly, though, these are two entirely distinct stories.

When I started reading this one, I hoped that I might like the narrator better this time around. Instead of a mean-spirited girl with divorced parents and little sisters, we have a geeky boy with a widowed mom and no siblings. In some ways I do like Ambrose better; he’s not nearly so angsty, and of course I can relate to his fondness for Scrabble. But he’s also a twerp who, as Cosmo says as one point, doesn’t have a filter. He just says whatever pops into his head, and since we’re spending an entire book in his head, sometimes we’re getting stuff we’d really rather not. Or at least that was my experience.

Though the publisher’s recommendation suggests this for ages 9 and up, I probably wouldn’t go any younger than 12, and I’d advise parents to leaf through it first, especially if girls are going to be reading. Puberty is a subject that seems to come up in quite a few books involving girls in their early teens, but I can’t say I’ve read a lot that delve into the male experience in much detail. Ambrose doesn’t shy away from describing his changing body and his embarrassing reactions to especially buxom women. Frankly, I don’t think this adds much to the book, except perhaps to emphasize that he could really use an older guy to confide in about such topics. Nielsen also includes a fair bit of profanity, presumably to give a greater feeling of realism. That is to say, she includes censored profanity, just the first letter and a dash, so it’s rather like watching an R-rated movie on TBS. Additionally, she broaches mature topics like drug use, theft and the death of a family member.

Ambrose and his mom are a team. Since his father died 12 years earlier, it’s been the two of them against the world, and Ambrose adores her. However, he hates the fact that they move frequently, never giving him the chance to really connect with anyone else, which is a difficult enough prospect already since he’s so socially awkward. Vancouver seems like it could be the loneliest place yet, since a trio of bullies, in a move reminding me very much of a classic episode of Freaks and Geeks, decide it would be hilarious to put his allergy to the test by sticking a peanut in his sandwich. Ambrose nearly dies, and his mother enrolls him in cyber-school. He’s not getting picked on, but the days stretch endlessly. His only diversion comes in the form of Mrs. Economopoulos, the warm-hearted Greek landlady who lives upstairs. She and her husband invite him over for delicious home-cooked meals and treat him kindly, but even that friendship is threatened when their 25-year-old son Cosmo returns home from jail.

Ambrose’s mother is deeply suspicious of Cosmo from the start, while Ambrose is intrigued. After a few surreptitious encounters, he latches onto Cosmo, not only going to Scrabble Club with him but learning self-defense from him and joining him on outings with Amanda. He continues to hide their friendship from his mother, afraid that she will become fearful and decide to move again, leaving him back at square one. This fear only increases once he begins to make friends in Scrabble Club as well. Ambrose has never had friends, and now that he does, he wants to keep them, even if they are unconventional in terms of age.

I mostly enjoyed Word Nerd. Parts of it are quite funny, and I like the gradual development of Ambrose and Cosmo’s friendship, which benefits them both. I also like that each chapter begins with a jumble of letters, followed by a series of words that can be made from those letters, followed by the chapter title proper. It’s a fun way of keeping Scrabble a more organic part of the book. Nielsen also includes several tips and tricks that Scrabble players use and warns of the dangers of becoming too caught up in the game, to the exclusion of all else. I think that anybody who enjoys playing Scrabble would find these aspects of the book interesting.

Ultimately, I’m not sure whether I prefer Word Nerd or Dear George Clooney. Both novels feature narrators who are startlingly worldly for their ages, and as a result, much of the content isn’t very appropriate for young readers. However, both books involve sympathetic characters in fractured families, and it’s touching to see their understanding of family expand. With the Scrabble connection, I might also recommend this to older readers who are interested in immersing themselves in intensive Scrabble competition. I don’t think I’ll ever be a prize-winning Scrabble player, but I am a word nerd. If you are too, then perhaps it’s time you met Ambrose.

World-Weary Violet Navigates a Broken Life in Dear George Clooney, Please Marry My Mom

I love Epinions. One reason? It’s led me to a lot of great books. Sometimes the recommendation will come directly to me from a trusted fellow reviewer. Other times, I’ll stumble upon a review that intrigues me so much, I have to scour the library system in search of that title. It was the latter that led me to Susin Nielsen’s Dear George Clooney, Please Marry My Mom, a mid-grade novel narrated by Violet Gustafson, a cynical 12-year-old who is sick of seeing her divorced mom blunder her way through one bad relationship after another.

Violet and her affectionate five-year-old sister Rosie live in Vancouver with their 37-year-old mother Irene, a hairdresser who used to work in film and television. That’s how Irene met their father Ian, a philandering director who turned their world upside-down when he moved to Los Angeles with Jennica, the voluptuous young star of his latest series and soon-to-be mother of his twin daughters. That was more than two years before the beginning of this book.

In that time, Violet’s mom has focused most of her energy on trying to fill the void left by his absence, and Violet has had to grow up much too quickly. She’s tired of having so much responsibility on her shoulders and of dreading what her mom’s next date will bring. She wants to feel secure again, so she hatches an audacious plan to fix Irene up with the perfect man: George Clooney. After all, she had done his hair years ago, and he’d given her a photo with the message, “May Our Paths Cross Again.” Surely an earnest letter from this desperate word nerd will be enough to convince him that his true love awaits in Vancouver.

In some ways, the authentic- but precocious-sounding Violet is a very sympathetic narrator. Bullied at school herself, she is fiercely protective of Rosie, and generally she takes very good care of her. She has an important support system in the form of Phoebe, the calm, understanding girl who has been her best friend since kindergarten, and she often inclines the ear of her mom’s kind friend Amanda, the one person she knows whose romantic relationship gives her reason to hope that her mother might one day find happiness in that department. She wants the best not only for her and Rosie, but for her mom too.

But Violet is also a sulky, snarky child with major anger management issues. She resents being sent to counseling sessions that she sees as pointless. She is flat-out rude to Ingrid’s irresponsible friend Karen. She peppers her mom’s boyfriends with a barrage of sarcastic remarks and impertinent questions, hoping to nip one more train wreck in the bud. And she absolutely seethes in the presence of her father and Jennica. Her behavior toward them is often downright vindictive, and on one fateful occasion, her half-sisters get caught in the crossfire. Her extreme reluctance to apologize for her misdeeds is frustrating.

I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Jennica, despite her home-wrecking status. Now that Ian has clearly made a new life for himself, it’s apparent that Jennica wants to reach out to her stepdaughters, but Violet has nothing to offer but venom. Mostly, though, I empathized with Irene’s latest boyfriend, the one whose arrival sends the stretched-to-her-limit Violet into crisis mode.

Violet hates him instantly, declaring him a pudgy, balding, dorky punster who her mom shouldn’t even be giving a second glance. He owns a bath goods shop called Skip to My Loo. He wears kitschy hand-knitted sweaters. His name is Dudley Weiner. No, he won’t do at all. What she’s too stubborn to see is that while Dudley may not have supermodel looks or a suave demeanor to match, he does have something all of Irene’s previous suitors have lacked: the spirit of a gentleman. And Rosie absolutely adores him.

This aspect of the book reminded me very much of Much Ado About Anne, the second book in Heather Vogel Frederick’s Mother-Daughter Book Club Series. In that book, the girl in question lost her father in a car accident, and she deeply resents the intrusion of a mild-mannered accountant named Stanley who has inexplicably swept her mother off her feet. In both books, the contempt of the daughter is understandable, but it’s hard to see them act so viciously toward such guileless men.

Another book I thought of as I read was Leslie Connor’s Waiting for Normal, a beautiful mid-grade novel I encountered a couple years ago. Addie, the narrator in that book, had undergone unspeakable trauma in her first 12 years, yet she continued to embrace life with optimism and grace. I kept recalling her and thinking that Violet could stand to be a little more like Addie and a little less consumed by bitterness. Then again, letting go of anger is a big part of what this book is all about.

While I did struggle with Violet’s cruel streak, I mostly found this book very enjoyable. I like her sharp wit when it isn’t being destructively channeled, and in a book revolving around an attempt to connect with a movie star, it’s fitting that she fills her reflections with pop culture references. She talks of her compulsive need to alphabetize her mom’s video collection in a variety of ways; she compares a particularly bad day to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events; she uses techniques learned from Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy to conduct stake-outs at the homes of her mom’s boyfriends. And toward the end of the book, she learns that her dad is currently working on a show that Jennica describes as “a cross between LOST and Touched By an Angel.” Now that sounds like something I’d gladly watch!

Her friendship with Phoebe is touching, and there’s something undeniably sweet about her interaction with Jean-Paul, a soft-spoken classmate who seems to enjoy her company and causes her to reconsider her fervent vow never to fall in love. The book made me laugh many times, but I liked it best when it moved me as Violet’s carefully constructed fortress begins to crumble, allowing her to slowly accept the light of others’ love. This is a girl who has reason to be wary, but it’s heartening to see her gradually learn how to trust again. And what role, if any, does George Clooney play in this healing process? You’ll just have to read it for yourself to find out…