Sean Beaudoin's Blog - Posts Tagged "wise-young-fool"
Starred Review From Booklist For Wise Young Fool
Wise Young Fool
By Sean Beaudoin
August 2013/ Ages 14 and up/ $18
ISBN 978-0-316-20379-3
ebook 978-0-316-23510-5
Smash your Stratocaster, pop the devil horns, and bite the head off a bat—this headbanger is so right-on with passion and detail that you’ll be smelling the garage-band funk and feeling the bass rattle your teeth. Eighteen-year-old Ritchie Sudden is stuck in juvie and tasked with journaling how he got there. In short: girls, music, and some bullshit trauma that Ritchie doesn’t even want to talk about. It starts, as always, with best bud Elliot Hella, he of the shaved head and thick muttonchops, whose go-nowhere life hinges upon winning a big-time battle of the bands. El Hella and Ritchie have the requisite crappy equipment and sloppy chops to make hardcore history—all they need is a drummer, a singer, and a bad-ass band name. (“Sin Sistermouth” ain’t cutting it.) Beaudoin is the Fred Astaire of comic writing, translating each sentence into a manic dance routine of half-invented jargon (“chewing the profunda-cud”) on his way to blessedly non-cloying coming-of-age glory. The book is hugely generous: in sex, in violence, in attitude, and especially in heart, as Ritchie gets it through his thick skull what “punk” really means. And the performance scenes? Dude. If you can’t grok the monster energy of these glorious idiots flailing around on-stage, you’re already dead.
Booklist, August 1, 2013
By Sean Beaudoin
August 2013/ Ages 14 and up/ $18
ISBN 978-0-316-20379-3
ebook 978-0-316-23510-5
Smash your Stratocaster, pop the devil horns, and bite the head off a bat—this headbanger is so right-on with passion and detail that you’ll be smelling the garage-band funk and feeling the bass rattle your teeth. Eighteen-year-old Ritchie Sudden is stuck in juvie and tasked with journaling how he got there. In short: girls, music, and some bullshit trauma that Ritchie doesn’t even want to talk about. It starts, as always, with best bud Elliot Hella, he of the shaved head and thick muttonchops, whose go-nowhere life hinges upon winning a big-time battle of the bands. El Hella and Ritchie have the requisite crappy equipment and sloppy chops to make hardcore history—all they need is a drummer, a singer, and a bad-ass band name. (“Sin Sistermouth” ain’t cutting it.) Beaudoin is the Fred Astaire of comic writing, translating each sentence into a manic dance routine of half-invented jargon (“chewing the profunda-cud”) on his way to blessedly non-cloying coming-of-age glory. The book is hugely generous: in sex, in violence, in attitude, and especially in heart, as Ritchie gets it through his thick skull what “punk” really means. And the performance scenes? Dude. If you can’t grok the monster energy of these glorious idiots flailing around on-stage, you’re already dead.
Booklist, August 1, 2013
Launch Party
Wise Young Fool is now fully live and onstage and ready to rock. Or at least on your favorite indie bookseller's shelves!
I feel like I have given birth. Mostly because I have.
I feel like I have given birth. Mostly because I have.
Stella's Art Project
So I wrote this essay about a series of photographs I took with my daughter over the course of the last year. It's sort of like a love letter, except I am way too enigmatic and emotionless for that.
http://goodmenproject.com/arts/hesaid...
http://goodmenproject.com/arts/hesaid...
