Joeph Bruchac Writes Scary Stories
Oct. 18th, 2010 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanguinity posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
50books_poc28. Joseph Bruchac, Skeleton Man.
One day Molly's parents didn't come home. Nor the next day. Nor the day after that. Eventually one of Molly's teachers figured out that her parents were missing and called social services. And social services placed her in the home of a man she had never before met nor heard of, but who claimed to be her uncle.
On the one hand, very definitely a creepy story, and effective in its creepiness. Molly is brave and clever and resourceful, and absolutely a heroine to be proud of.
On the other hand, the major plot point of being placed into someone's legal guardianship, and thereafter not being taken seriously that you don't know this person, that this person scares you, that this person is mistreating you? And that the people who do believe you can't help you because the law says they're not allowed to? That is not just a creepy story; that's some people's lives. And consequently, some people, like myself, will find it very difficult to sit back and enjoy this as a pleasantly creepy story.
29. Joseph Bruchac, Return of Skeleton Man.
After the first, I didn't have much desire to read the second, but it was already in my hands and I had enjoyed aspects of Bearwalker (reviewed below, and yes, I'm reviewing them in the order that makes sense, not in the order I read them) so much that I decided to give Return a go.
And I am very glad I did.
This is very much not a retread of the first book. Molly has been reunited with her family, and for the past year they've all been working through the trauma of the events of the first book. And right there, I'm already in love with this book. I adore her parents, and I very much like the way everyone has been trying to cope, heal, and move on. There are a number of nuanced little things that Bruchac does here -- I especially like how he handled Molly's mother taking self-defense courses: she's doing it to regain confidence and to assure herself that this will never happen to her again, but in no way does Bruchac even hint that she was responsible for failing to stop the first attack.
The other thing I like? Molly's parents listen to her. So when Molly's dreams change from standard issue reliving-the-trauma nightmares, to her spirit guide (the one who saved her the first go-round) warning her that the Skeleton Man is back, and Molly tells her parents about the change? They believe her. And agree that they, too, have been getting little signals that things are off. And then they all put together a set of plans for making sure they get through whatever is coming alive and together. Sensible plans, even. Not foolproof, no (because then there wouldn't be a book!), but sensible.
As in Bearwalker, Bruchac does some cool deconstruction of standard horror tropes: in this case, the action takes place around Día de los Muertos, but instead of the holiday being billed as creepy-creepy-exotic-ooh-creepy, Bruchac frames it as an indigenous holy day, and one that ultimately helps Molly and her family in their resistance against Skeleton Man.
There are more things I like, too. I'd recommend this even as a stand-alone, especially since Bruchac seems to recap most of what you need from the first book.
30. Joseph Bruchac, Bearwalker.
I fell all over myself with joy for most of the book. However, I do think Bruchac made a serious misstep at the end, so warnings for ablism, specifically (skip spoiler)
On to the review...
And that, right there, is a big part of why I was so excited about this book. There's a lot of social commentary going on throughout. Some is foregrounded (Indian graveyards, above), some is backgrounded (no Indians east of the Mississippi, above), and some is woven into the action (for example, the way zero-tolerance anti-violence policies tend to make things more violent for victims of aggression, rather than less). One of the social subtexts in this story that I particularly enjoyed is that the elderly characters, even while being physically frail, were people to be reckoned with. They had been invited to camp with the plan that they would become victims; in fact, their presence is a good part of the reason that the dastardly plan fails.
There are also a lot of rich details in the way Baron's Mohawk identity is portrayed. Skeleton Man and Return of were much briefer in their depictions -- Molly's Mohawk identity mostly came through in her knowledge of the traditional stories and the virtues and strategies they highlighted. Baron's world has many more NDN and specifically Mohawk markers in it: there are references to steelworkers, military service, basketball, clan membership, Mohawk language, and more. And there's cool stuff going on with overlapping and interlocking communities, too.
Basically, much coolness! I could list the coolnesses for quite a while. Which made the misstep at the end that I alluded to above that much more disappointing. Discussed behind the spoiler-cut (with black-outs, so people can comment without fear of spoiling themselves)...
The first time you see the man who (very obviously) turns out to be the out-to-kill-everyone of the piece, he is described like this:
Later, the menacing-probably-no-longer-human-man is telling a campfire ghost story about a kid at that very camp who had been bullied, and who then became the killing rampaging monster that haunts the camp to this day. One of the ex-directors of the camp tells him to "Stop right there!":
(skip spoiler)
So, yeah. I can't wholeheartedly recommend Bearwalker. Even despite all the awesome in the first parts of the book. I wish I could! I really, really wish I could. :-(
(additional tags: Mohawk characters, Abenaki author, scary stories, middle grades)
One day Molly's parents didn't come home. Nor the next day. Nor the day after that. Eventually one of Molly's teachers figured out that her parents were missing and called social services. And social services placed her in the home of a man she had never before met nor heard of, but who claimed to be her uncle.
On the one hand, very definitely a creepy story, and effective in its creepiness. Molly is brave and clever and resourceful, and absolutely a heroine to be proud of.
On the other hand, the major plot point of being placed into someone's legal guardianship, and thereafter not being taken seriously that you don't know this person, that this person scares you, that this person is mistreating you? And that the people who do believe you can't help you because the law says they're not allowed to? That is not just a creepy story; that's some people's lives. And consequently, some people, like myself, will find it very difficult to sit back and enjoy this as a pleasantly creepy story.
29. Joseph Bruchac, Return of Skeleton Man.
After the first, I didn't have much desire to read the second, but it was already in my hands and I had enjoyed aspects of Bearwalker (reviewed below, and yes, I'm reviewing them in the order that makes sense, not in the order I read them) so much that I decided to give Return a go.
And I am very glad I did.
This is very much not a retread of the first book. Molly has been reunited with her family, and for the past year they've all been working through the trauma of the events of the first book. And right there, I'm already in love with this book. I adore her parents, and I very much like the way everyone has been trying to cope, heal, and move on. There are a number of nuanced little things that Bruchac does here -- I especially like how he handled Molly's mother taking self-defense courses: she's doing it to regain confidence and to assure herself that this will never happen to her again, but in no way does Bruchac even hint that she was responsible for failing to stop the first attack.
The other thing I like? Molly's parents listen to her. So when Molly's dreams change from standard issue reliving-the-trauma nightmares, to her spirit guide (the one who saved her the first go-round) warning her that the Skeleton Man is back, and Molly tells her parents about the change? They believe her. And agree that they, too, have been getting little signals that things are off. And then they all put together a set of plans for making sure they get through whatever is coming alive and together. Sensible plans, even. Not foolproof, no (because then there wouldn't be a book!), but sensible.
As in Bearwalker, Bruchac does some cool deconstruction of standard horror tropes: in this case, the action takes place around Día de los Muertos, but instead of the holiday being billed as creepy-creepy-exotic-ooh-creepy, Bruchac frames it as an indigenous holy day, and one that ultimately helps Molly and her family in their resistance against Skeleton Man.
There are more things I like, too. I'd recommend this even as a stand-alone, especially since Bruchac seems to recap most of what you need from the first book.
30. Joseph Bruchac, Bearwalker.
I fell all over myself with joy for most of the book. However, I do think Bruchac made a serious misstep at the end, so warnings for ablism, specifically (skip spoiler)
the Axe-Crazy trope: the bad guy is not a supernatural monster (as had been foreshadowed), but a schizophrenic patient from the local mental hospital. :-(
On to the review...
"You know," Willy says, "Camp Chuckamuck was built on an old Indian graveyard."
Now I roll my eyes. It always comes back to that. Every spooky place in America, it seems, was built on an old Indian graveyard. I'm as sick of hearing that as I am of being told that the only real Indians live west of the Mississippi.
And that, right there, is a big part of why I was so excited about this book. There's a lot of social commentary going on throughout. Some is foregrounded (Indian graveyards, above), some is backgrounded (no Indians east of the Mississippi, above), and some is woven into the action (for example, the way zero-tolerance anti-violence policies tend to make things more violent for victims of aggression, rather than less). One of the social subtexts in this story that I particularly enjoyed is that the elderly characters, even while being physically frail, were people to be reckoned with. They had been invited to camp with the plan that they would become victims; in fact, their presence is a good part of the reason that the dastardly plan fails.
There are also a lot of rich details in the way Baron's Mohawk identity is portrayed. Skeleton Man and Return of were much briefer in their depictions -- Molly's Mohawk identity mostly came through in her knowledge of the traditional stories and the virtues and strategies they highlighted. Baron's world has many more NDN and specifically Mohawk markers in it: there are references to steelworkers, military service, basketball, clan membership, Mohawk language, and more. And there's cool stuff going on with overlapping and interlocking communities, too.
Basically, much coolness! I could list the coolnesses for quite a while. Which made the misstep at the end that I alluded to above that much more disappointing. Discussed behind the spoiler-cut (with black-outs, so people can comment without fear of spoiling themselves)...
The first time you see the man who (very obviously) turns out to be the out-to-kill-everyone of the piece, he is described like this:
...Like it's all a disguise. He's pretending to be something that he is not. Not just pretending to be Indian. Pretending... to be human.The description, when it happens, appears to be fine, because there's been foreshadowing happening all over this place that this character is from one of the stories Baron references, and thus is not actually human. (Or not recently human. The same relationship to human as a vampire has: was once human, but hasn't been human for a while now.)
Later, the menacing-probably-no-longer-human-man is telling a campfire ghost story about a kid at that very camp who had been bullied, and who then became the killing rampaging monster that haunts the camp to this day. One of the ex-directors of the camp tells him to "Stop right there!":
"...No! You will not tell that story. What happened to that boy at this camp was a tragedy. I will not abide it being turned into a grisly tale to terrify young people."And I was all, "Yes! Turning these things into campfire horror stories dehumanizes people! It's nice to see a story in this genre acknowledge that, and then lay out a partial ethic for choosing subject matter for scary stories!"
(skip spoiler)
...except, as it turns out, that the man who was telling that story is the kid -- all grown up now -- who the story was about. And the story he was going to tell, the text informs us, is mostly true. The in-text explanation for why he became a rampaging murderer who haunts the camp to this day is that he's schizophrenic. (Which, I feel compelled to point out, is not a sufficient explanation. As we should all know, schizophrenic =/= axe-murderer.) Also, for more ablist tropes: he's escaped from the local mental hospital (because that's not a problematic trope). And if that wasn't enough, as Baron tells us above, this schizophrenic murderer is only pretending to be human. :-/
So, yeah. I can't wholeheartedly recommend Bearwalker. Even despite all the awesome in the first parts of the book. I wish I could! I really, really wish I could. :-(
(additional tags: Mohawk characters, Abenaki author, scary stories, middle grades)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-10-19 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-20 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-19 05:25 pm (UTC)I too was a little uncertain exactly how dark Skeleton Man was supposed to be - the tone is "spooky story," but the implications are very, very dark, and in a disquietingly plausible way.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-20 03:07 am (UTC)Yeah, I don't read enough of the genre to really know what to make out of the stuff with social services and the teacher not being allowed to meaningfully assist. Because my basic reaction is "that's too real to be used for this purpose." But is that just me not really getting the genre? I dunno.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-20 03:12 am (UTC)