Carzy Eights

by Barbara Dana

Opposed to her family's plastic suburban world, Thelma Beldwin lashes out by setting a building afire and needs psychotherapy and meditation before she can begin to accept herself and deal with society

Hardcover

First published August 1, 1978

About the author

BARBARA DANA is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults. Her books include Zucchini, Zucchini Out West, Crazy Eights, Necessary Parties, Rutgers and the Water Snouts, Spencer and his Friends and Young Joan, a historical novel based on the life of Joan of Arc. Her new novel, A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson, is available March 1, 2009 (HarperCollins Publishers).

She is the co-editor of the recent release, Wider than the Sky: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily Dickinson. She co-wrote the television adaptation of her novel, Necessary Parties, for PBS.

Other screenplays include Chu-Chu and the Philly Flash, and T.G.I.F. Her first play, War in Paramus, premiered in New York in the fall of 2005 at Abingdon Theatre Company directed by Austin Pendleton.

She is an actor as well as an author, having appeared on stage, screen and television since the age of sixteen."

Reviews

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Crazy Eights is about 14-year-old Thelma. She hates her parents. She doesn't know them at all. She hates her sister. She's perfect and is marrying someone who doesn't love her. And she feels they hate her back. She loves her dog. She is depressed. But she doesn't get help until she does something destructive. Then she's sent to a school in the woods of Vermont where she sees a therapist three times a week.

The format is her writing in her therapy-required journal, so she often addresses her therapist. The deep sarcasm and sullenness and true unhappiness reminds me a lot of Paul Zindel in tone. Like, Thelma lies down on the floor and just doesn't get up. Her visiting relatives step around her and no one understands her, etc.

I liked it, even though it doesn't speak to me in the way it would had I been my fourteen-year-old self.

It also reminds me a lot of a heavy version of Sixteen Candles, without the romance.

[Susann · Rating 2 out of 5]

14-year-old Thelma is miserable and unloved in 1970s suburban New Jersey. After setting fire to a building, she is sent to a hippy-dippy reform school in Vermont, where she discovers meditation...and herself. As 1970s YA problem novels go, this one is seriously dated. Thelma's father is somewhat complex, but her mother and sister are one-sided stereotypes. But I enjoyed watching Thelma grow and, if there had been more action in VT and less in NJ, I probably would have given this three stars.
Fun note: Thelma has a crush on the actor Alan Arkin who, in real life, just happened to be married to the author.
Bought at Powell's.