Boys Like Girls

Lets all be real honest for a second.  Nobody likes to say this but I promise you it is true.  Boys like girls (ok so that's not a shocking revelation but stay with me).  More than that boys will do almost anything to please a girl-especially a girl that they like.  In Virginia Hamilton's M.C. Higgings The Great, this point is made abundantly clear when M.C.'s father says, "never try to beat a thirteen year old with a crush." Boys like girls.  M.C. couldn't name the feelings he had for this mystery girl but he knew he wanted to protect her, to teach her things, and to make her laugh.  Boy's like girls.

This book is tricky.  It spends the first several chapters describing the sameness.  Not that everyone acts the same or everyone is the same but that things in the mountains have been done the same way, there are codes for living that have been the same for generations and the first chapters pull you into that sameness.  Then 2 strangers come, one with a tape recorder (a man looking for voices) and the mystery girl that M.C. falls for.  These two strangers disrupt the sameness.  Because of the man with the tape recorder M.C. starts to think maybe one day he could leave the mountain-maybe he won't live here forever.  But the girl changes everything.  She challenges every social norm, daring M.C. to come with her.  Of course he does.  Why?  Because boys like girls.

But the book is tricky, you don't realize what its about until the very end and even then you're left wondering.  This isn't a book for a quick lesson, this is a book to ponder, a book you come back to when your mind is wandering. A book filled with so many layers of meaning but the only one you can quickly grasp and walk away with is boys like girls.  Which they do, but this isn't a book about love.   This is a book about change.

Falling for a girl, letting yourself change...that's kids stuff.