Every Day/David Levithan: Reflections

Last Friday evening I joined David Levithan, Eliot Schrefer, Jennifer R. Hubbard, and Ellen Hopkins for an evening of books and talk at Children's Book World, Haverford, PA.  That was then, celebrated here.

Today I'm celebrating Every Day, the new novel from which David read that evening.  You can tell from the way a writer reads how invested he or she is in the work.  David Levithan is fully invested. 

He has a right to be.  With Every Day he has crafted a book with an original premise, placed a likable narrator named A at its heart, and wondered what it would be like to wake up each morning in the body of another.  To be a boy, then a girl.  To be angry, then peaceful.  To be forsaken, to be depressed, to be the football king, to be his twin.  To be all these things on the outside, a succession of traits and 'tudes, while all along holding utterly true to the inherent A-ness of A.  To be an impermanent self falling permanently in love.  What would that be like?  And could anyone in the world love this body-swapping soul so much that appearances won't ultimately matter?

The plot carries forward.  Love is at risk.  One of the borrowed bodies gets a little miffed, exposing a raw seam in the universe.  Every Day is clever, but it's more than that. It is a portal—enveloping and philosophical.  It asks questions that have no answers and forces us to live with that.

Why is David Levithan so popular that he had to stand on a Friday night in a Main Line bookstore to see all the way back to the last row in the crowd?  Why do his fans know his birthday, in a snap, and tout his novels with religious fervor, and send the T-shirt makers into a LeviFan frenzy?  It has something to do with who David Levithan is.  It has to do with his transcending kindness, a quality that A believes (rightly) is so much more powerful than simply being nice.  David Levithan writes from a moral center.  He encourages his readers to think brightly, like this (the xxx's here to avoid spoiling anything for future readers):

Every person is a possibility.  The hopeless romantics feel it most acutely, but even for others, the only way to keep going is to see every person as a possibility.  The more I see the xxx that the world reflects back at him, the more of a possibility he seems.  His possibility is grounded in the things that mean the most to me. Kindness.  Creativity.  Engagement in the world.  Engagement in the possibilities of the people around him.

 Possibility.  It's almost political.

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The Fab Five: David Levithan, Ellen Hopkins, Jennifer R. Hubbard, Eliot Schrefer, (and me): our night at Children's Book World

We think it's pretty special out here when generosity, talent, humility, spark, and through-and-through writerliness live within one person.  The fact that all that (and more) defines David Levithan—Scholastic editor, mold-smithering author, and genuine conversationalist—explains, at least in part, his ricocheting popularity.

Last evening, at Children's Book World in Haverford, PA, David shared his stage with the wildly popular Ellen Hopkins, the delightful Eliot Schrefer, my new and powerfully talented friend Jennifer R. Hubbard, and me.  We each read briefly.  Eliot took our breaths away with baby bonobo photos.  A very generous CBW plied us with special treats, even customized cookies.  And writerly/readerly teens do what they do so well—let us into their world with questions and thoughts.

A.S. King, we're all coming right back there for you on October 30, to celebrate your much-anticipated new book, Ask the Passengers.  Please bring your duplicate.  We love her.  K.M. Walton, we are indebted, always, to your immaculate kindness and talent (and your photographs; thank you for the last one!; thank you, Heather of CBW, for the second to last!).  To my many friends (and client/friend!) who slipped into the crowd, thank you.

I have come home with some glorious new books to read.  I'll start with Every Day, David Levithan's newest.  Many times in the past few weeks I have had to stop myself from buying the book.  Sometimes waiting for that moment is worth it.

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