Source of book: Audiobook from the library
This book is part of out not-particularly-systematic
exploration of the Newbery Award winners and honor books. Hello, Universe is the most recent winner, from 2018. In addition,
this book is part of my personal project as homeschool dad and aspiring decent
human being to introduce my kids (and myself) to books written by non-white
authors. Kelly is the daughter is the daughter of a Filipino immigrant mother,
and started her fiction-writing career rather later than many.
Hello, Universe is
a story told from four different points of view, those of four middle school
kids. Virgil Salinas comes from a rather sports-crazy Filipino-American family.
He is painfully shy, quiet, and unathletic, which makes him the odd kid out in
his family. Fortunately, his grandmother understands and supports him. Valencia
Somerset is mostly deaf - she can hear a tiny bit with aids, and can combine
that with lip reading to understand people, as long as they talk slowly and
look directly at her. She is smart and strong and familiar with the natural
world. But she has been dumped by her friends because they couldn’t be bothered
to accommodate her deafness. She puts on a brave face, but she is lonely. Kaori
Tanaka is an aspiring entrepreneur who fancies herself a psychic, although she
mostly seems to be a good listener. She is largely responsible for her little
sister, Gen, who follows her around and insists on being involved in
everything. Chet Bullins is the school bully, who torments Virgil and Valencia. He
has his own problems, though, with a dysfunctional mother, an uninvolved yet
pressure inducing father.
Virgil has been consulting with Kaori about his problem: he
is too chicken to say hello to the girl he admires in his study hall - namely Valencia.
Kaori, looking to expand her business without her mother stopping her, puts ads
at the store, one of which is seen by Valencia. Virgil and his pet guinea
pig set out through the patch of woods to visit Kaori, but is set upon by Chet,
who steals his backpack and throws it down an abandoned dry well. Virgil
becomes stuck in the well trying to rescue the backpack - and his guinea pig.
(In the “weird coincidences file: this is a parallel to The
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which I just read. Although Kaori would be
quick to assert “there are NO coincidences!”) Eventually, Kaori realizes that
Virgil has disappeared, and sets out with her new client, Valencia, and
Gen, to find him.
In addition to this main plot, there are, interspersed
throughout, stories from Filipino folklore told by Virgil’s grandmother. While
Virgil is stuck in the well, he is visited both by a malevolent creature, and
by the plucky heroine of one of the stories - his ancestor. In this sense, the
book contains elements of Magical Realism, although the book remains firmly
grounded in this world.
There are elements of this book which I really liked. In
general, the characters are interesting. Virgil is portrayed with the most
detail - one could say the book is mostly about him. It is his experience of
the Filipino legends and his internal struggles against the disapproval his
family and the cruel world fling his way are the core of the story. Even Chet
gets some nuance, despite being generally from the ACME villains catalogue. Valencia is
very relatable. She is naturally strong and tough, but has trouble admitting
that she is lonely and sad. Kaori is the comic relief a lot of the time,
although on her part, the comedy is unintentional. She takes herself just a bit
too seriously.
Also rather funny was the episode involving Chet and the
snake. We hike regularly, and have seen plenty of snakes, venomous and not, out
on the trail. Like Valencia,
and unlike Chet, we know how to treat snakes - with respect. (I appreciated
that Valencia’s
advice on snakes was accurate, by the way.)
The weaknesses of the book as I see them are twofold. First,
despite Chet getting to narrate, and getting enough backstory to be more human,
he never gets the chance to grow or develop. He gets a bit of a comeuppance,
but we are left without knowing if he learns anything from the experience. His
narration is the shortest of any of the characters, and it feels a bit out of place,
in my view. It would have been a better book had he been given some manner of
growth or at least a final word after the events to reflect on the meaning of
his experience. Instead, he just kind of fades away.
The second weakness is the abrupt and too-neat ending. We
are given the impression that Kaori and Valencia will be fast friends. And
we know that Virgil, having failed to even say thank you after the rescue,
finally screws up the courage to text Valencia. But it would have been
interesting to add a little to the story and see what happens next. I mean, you
have a big event that clearly had an impact on all the characters. The book
isn’t that terribly long. Why not add just a bit more and let us see the
aftermath and how the characters have changed?
I’ll end with the best line in the book. Valencia is
reflecting on the unpleasant way she was dumped by her former best friend. Valencia
actually likes the book, but the thought behind it bothers her.
“[O]n my tenth birthday, this girl
Roberta gave me a book called Famous Deaf
People from History. I would have never given Roberta a book called Famous Blond People or Famous People Who Talk Too Much.”
This is, in a way, related to another strength of the book.
The characters are diverse. Virgil is Filipino-American, obviously. Kaori and
Gen are Japanese-American. Valencia
is deaf. But as Booklist pointed out,
the diversity isn’t treated as a plot point. It just is a fact. I mean, in the
one sense, the deafness is important to the plot as it unfolds, but it is a
case where the character exists as a fact, and thus will respond to
circumstance exactly as she naturally would. The plot serves the characters,
not the other way around. (Actually, Kelly said that the book started with a
kid in a well, then found characters, and the plot flowed from there.)
Overall, this is a worthwhile book, and my kids found it
interesting.
***
The audiobook was read by two narrators, Ramon de Ocampo,
and Amielynn Abellera. I am not familiar with either of them, but apparently
they are veterans of television and audiobooks. They did fine, with Ocampo
clearly at home with the Filipino accent. (My father was born and raised in the
Philippines,
and I was involved in a Filipino-American church in Van Nuys for a number of
years as a teen. And, I can cook Pancit and Adobo pretty darn well.)
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