I CRAWL THROUGH IT

King, A. S.  (2015).  I Crawl Through It.  New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

Stanzi is a biology genius and tries to hide her secrets under a white lab coat that she won’t take off, Gustav is a physics genius who believes he’s building an invisible helicopter, China communicates most through poems and believes she has swallowed herself, Lansdale’s hair grows every time she lies, and someone is sending bomb threats to their schools. 

These characters are coping with grief, surviving trauma, facing drama of high school, standardized test, intruder drills, bomb threats, and are neglected by their parents in one way or another.   Stanzi can’t tell anyone that her ex-boyfriend raped her, Gustav is in love with Stanzi, who is the only one who he believes sees his helicopter and knows what happened to her (everyone does), China has turned herself inside out, she throws up everything she eats, and Landsdale can’t stop telling lies about anything and everything, fact is she’s super smart, but doesn’t want the popular kids to know.   They have all this pressure and don’t know how to deal with it, and all they really want is a little acknowledgment from them, some attention to alleviate the stress.

This fiction novel by Printz Honor Author, A. S. King, is such an unusual book, I didn’t know whether to put it down or get mad for not understanding it, I didn’t do either, I just kept reading and turned out to be a fantastic read, very realistic.  It is a YA book, written in 1^st person, and I’m more than sure 18 year olds and up will enjoy this complicated to follow story as well.  It is full of metaphors for example, when China describes herself as the girl who swallowed herself, suggests that everything she eats, she throws up and doesn’t want to face what really happened to her because she thinks no one will believe her.  One of the themes of this story is that one shouldn’t be so quick to judge or don’t forget that there can be more going on with someone then we realize.

The setting takes place mostly at school and going to each other’s homes. At first I thought it was about kids and drugs, but it’s deeper than that.  Kids go through many different things in their lives along with their parents, but most of the time we as parents don’t want to upset them by asking questions, so we leave them be.  We shouldn’t.  China for instance, she was raped by her very popular ex-boyfriend and he posted pictures of the ordeal.  She changes the way she dresses and even writes poems about it, mom’s too busy playing dominatrix in the basement and dad is always working to notice.  She finally tells her mom, and it breaks my heart to think of how she must have been feeling, and to finally feel that someone believed her story. Reality is that we need to pay attention to our kids, teenagers especially, they deal with so many issues at school, it’s unreal.  This book is one from the list of authors who write for YA readers. 

'I Crawl Through It' Book Trailer by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo

You might also enjoy these books by A. S. King: Reality Boy and Glory O’ Brien’s History of the Future.