I CRAWL THROUGH IT/A.S. King

At the Moravian Writers' Conference two weeks ago, she had it with her. Her second-to-last ARC of I Crawl Through It, the forthcoming novel (September/Little, Brown) that early critics have been stunned by.

I'm always stunned by King. She has made an art form of the intelligent unexpected. The unanticipated odd. The somehow-cohering strange. She has run inversions like a flag through a foggy battleground and come out the other side, victorious.

And here, more than ever, she does it again. Takes a story about psyche-battered teens, converts it into a surrealist coda, introduces an invisible helicopter, a walking digestive system, a liar with Hairocchio tresses, parents who have not been listening, an onslaught of bomb threats, and comes out the other side with a rallying cry for any who have been hit hard, live guilt, wonder if they will survive.

It's not ordinary. It is not, at first, easy. It's not supposed to be. It makes all the sense in the world. It is weirdness made synthetic and humane.

You're going to be hearing about this book. You're going to have to get yourself an early copy. You're going to sit and wonder afterward why you didn't (before) see invisible helicopters. You're going to see them everywhere hereafter.

You want to know more? I could type in here the jacket copy, but instead I'm going to leave you with some Rudyard Kipling. Part of the poem he called "If." It's everything you need to know about I Crawl Through It and King's latest masterpiece.

If you can keep your head when all about you
  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
  But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
  Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
  If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
  And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
  And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:  ...

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after being in the company of the rock stars of YA, I have a dream

Above? That's Libba Bray reading from her forthcoming novel (Lair of Dreams, due out in August) at Children's Book World in Haverford, PA—a scary little ditty that has Amy Sarig King and Gayle Forman shaking in their respective (albeit from opposing sides of the fashion world) boots.

Before them sit many of my neighborhood's finest writers. Also Sister Kim and her Little Flower students. Also bloggers and readers and enthusiasts and at least one bookseller from down the road and shall we go no further before we mention Heather Hebert, who makes it all happen, and with enthusiasm, and while I am at this, because heck, why not, can we locals all just pause for a minute and welcome Margo Rabb to our neighborhood, because she's here now, newly arrived from Austin, with her second YA novel (Kissing in America) due out in May.

(Seems like I might be reading with Margo and two other fabs from Round Here soon, but more on that to come.)

What a performance these three gave—Amy and Libba gamely (respectively) playing the parts of a stoner and a slick boy in a choral reading from Gayle's new bestselling book, I Was Here. Amy giving a thrilling preview of I Crawl Through It. Libba forcing everyone else into scare mode, then zapping the conversation with four parts hysterical ad lib and one part Barbara Walters. And then plenty of talk about the F word, by which I mean (of course) Feminism.

The doors were open at Children's Book World, to dispel all that animal heat. The skies were ripped apart with rain. I headed home among storm-imperiled drivers and then I fell asleep. At which point I dreamed I was still with the gang, only we had moved onto a Friendly's Restaurant (note: Friendly's, I lie not) and we were having high-calorie ice cream and nobody would speak to me. My offense, in my dream, was that I been me—asking too much, pressing too hard.

I woke just after I'd leaned over somebody's shoulder and read the texts that were circulating about me.

"Beth Kephart," they said, "is so annoying."

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