In this edition of Canadian children’s publishing news: a picture book jumps from the page to the musical stage; a gay eighth-grader learns about himself through unexpected body-swapping; and the true story of a former Chechen refugee who will represent his adopted country at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
‘Lester’s Dreadful Sweaters’ Brought to Life as Musical Adaptation
As a kid, were you ever given a hideous piece of clothing as a gift from a well-meaning older relative? That’s the premise of author-illustrator K.G. Campbell’s picture book Lester’s Dreadful Sweaters, published in 2012 by Toronto-based Kids Can Press. The book has now been given new life as a live musical (running until April 24), in an adaptation at Chicago’s Lifeline Theatre.
The project was the idea of Aly Renee Amidei, the show’s adapter, co-lyricist, and costume designer. A fervent knitter herself, she says she heard music in her head the first time she read the book in a bookstore. Amidei was also a fan of Campbell’s illustrations, which she describes as having “an Edward Gorey dark streak to them.”
“I really wanted to honor K.G. Campbell’s glorious illustrations and make the sweaters look exactly the way they did in the book,” she says.
The book tells the story of Lester, a very particular boy who likes things just so. When Cousin Clara comes to visit, she knits Lester a sweater – but unfortunately, it’s just dreadful: “shriveled yet saggy, it had holes where it shouldn’t and none where it should. It was a less-than-pleasant yellow and smothered with purple pom-poms.” No matter how many times Lester destroys the sweaters, Clara keeps knitting him new ones. Eventually, he introduces Clara to a clown troupe that appreciates her particular style, while Lester himself learns to be a little more open-minded.
Amidei has now brought those sweaters to life in an hour-long musical, directed by Lifeline Theatre’s Heather Currie, that she says is as much fun for parents as it is for kids.
“Lester has to go on a journey and learn something about himself – he learns to be more flexible,” says Amidei. “By the end he’s learned to embrace life’s changes and accept himself. And the music’s really fun and catchy.”
A Magical Body Swap
The latest novel from award-winning author Richard Scrimger, called Lucky Jonah (HarperCollins Canada), is a Freaky Friday-style fantasy story about an eighth-grader who can switch bodies (up to 12 times) with people thanks to a magical disposable camera. But for Jonah, in addition to walking a mile in other people’s shoes, the experience allows him to find out, for the first time, how other people really see him. He’s a sloppy dresser, has an awkward sense of humor, and he makes a realization that there’s something different about him: he’s gay.
He has always admired his cute, athletic (and straight) best friend, Magnus, but an afternoon inhabiting the body of Magnus’s girlfriend convinces Jonah that this is a full-blown crush. Meanwhile, things spiral out of control as each body swap gets Jonah into more trouble, including a run-in with the police.
“The idea of keeping Jonah on course, whereby he gets to experience the weird day and the different lives, and at the same time to keep him on his quest, his journey to self-understanding, that was the thing that I paid the most attention to,” says Scrimger.
Scrimger wanted to run the story by someone of the younger generation, to make sure the scenes seemed believable. He wrote on his blog: “I’ve shared time and space and intimacy with gay men and women, but I’m straight. And I grew up a generation ago. My best gay friends are old or dead. Being gay is still a struggle but it’s easier now – at least in the urban secular first world. I needed someone young and gay to vet the story.”
So he got his grown daughter’s friend to read it, and it helped. Scrimger tweaked a few scenes based on that feedback, but Jonah’s personality, which Scrimger describes as “a loser with a sense of humor,” is still based largely on the author himself.
“My story is for the quirky kid, the kid who’s a little bit different, the kid who doesn’t quite fit in; that’s my audience. For me, the overarching theme for a lot of my books has to do with the position of ‘other’. Who you are in relation to other people and how you don’t fit in – many of my characters don’t fit in, and they are OK with that.”
From Child Refugee to Olympics-Bound Athlete
Arthur Biyarslanov was just a preschooler when he and his family fled Chechnya in 1999, amid the violence of war. After only a few years living in Azerbaijan, his family migrated to Canada to try to make a better life. And today, at age 20, this young refugee has become an up-and-coming boxer known as the Chechen Wolf. He won a gold medal for Canada in the 2015 Pan Am Games, and has just found out he’ll be competing in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
First-time author John Spray has written about this journey – which involved a promising start as a soccer player, before a leg injury led Biyarslanov to try boxing — in a middle-grade biography called Next Round: A Young Athlete’s Journey to Gold (Pajama Press). The book, coming out in July, features black-and-white and color photographs from throughout Biyarslanov’s personal life and athletic career.
“This is a very inspirational book,” says Spray, who was involved in amateur boxing when he was younger. “He almost gets killed, he has to run from country to country, and he ends up as a champion. I think that boys need that role model.”
Spray adds that for athletes such as Biyarslanov who have not yet gone pro, it’s a hard road — they have to pay for training and travel, and receive very little money in return. Because of that, Spray is giving all of the proceeds from the book to Biyarslanov, to support his training for this summer’s Olympics.
“I thought this was a story that needs to be told,” says Spray. “He’s a refugee and a Muslim. Those people are having a really hard time with the Donald Trumps of the world.”
Biyarslanov’s win at 2015’s Pan Am Games (in the junior welterweight category) was Canada’s first gold medal in boxing in 40 years. And now, after the athlete’s turbulent childhood, Spray looks forward to watching Biyarslanov pursue the next round of his boxing career.
