The Glass Cafe: Or the Stripper and the State; How My Mother Started a War with the System That Made Us Kind of Rich and a Little Bit Famous

Tales to Tickle the Funnybone #4

by Gary Paulsen

THE STORY IS all true and happened to me and is mine.

Tony’s mom, Al, is a terrific single mother who works as a dancer at the Kitty Kat Club. Twelve-year-old Tony is a budding artist, inspired by backstage life at the club. When some of his drawings end up in an art show and catch the attention of the social services agency, Al and Tony find themselves in the middle of a legal wrangle and a media circus. Is Al a responsible mother? It’s the case of the stripper vs. the state, and Al isn’t giving Tony up without a fight.

Once again Gary Paulsen proves why he’s one of America’s most-beloved writers. The Glass Café is a fresh and funny exploration of motherhood, art, and the wiles of storytelling—all told by Tony, in his own true voice.

Genres: Young Adult, Realistic Fiction, Fiction, Teen, Contemporary, Family, Middle Grade

112 pages, Hardcover

First published June 10, 2003

About the author

Gary James Paulsen was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction, best known for coming-of-age stories about the wilderness. He was the author of more than 200 books and wrote more than 200 magazine articles and short stories, and several plays, all primarily for teenagers. He won the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1997 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens.

Reviews

[JohnnyBear · Rating 1 out of 5]

Strong 2 out of 10

Terrible. I am a moderate fan of Gary Paulsen's work, having read some of his books such as Lawn-Boy, Hatchet, and Mudshark, but I was shocked at the complete tonal shift from this book from his previous books, and how much of a downgrade in quality this book is.

I have no idea how this book got published. This book is from the perspective of a twelve-year-old, and I get that Paulsen was trying to dumb down the narrative to try to get you in the head of a child, but this book would have been a lot better from a narrator's perspective. All the sentences in this book ramble on and are massively clunky. This mess of words made it really hard to read, and took me out of the experience/story that Paulsen was trying to tell, because of the irritating way the book was written. For example...

THE STORY IS all true and happened to me and is mine.

This is how the entire book is written...



Also, the characters! The main character is painfully dull, and so is his mother. I was also baffled by how inappropriate this book was. WHY WOULD YOU LET YOUR TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GO TO YOUR STRIP MALL? I don't understand. What a concept! I'm not sure who this is marketed toward, (children?), (adults?). I haven't read such a mess of a book in a long time.

No redeeming qualities of this book, couldn't recommend it in the slightest. I will proceed to put my feelings about this book into a series of gifs.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dear Mr.Paulsen
1. The premise of this story is unbelievable and bad. Mostly just bad.
2. TOO MUCH FORESHADOWING.
3. I know that run-on sentances are hilarious and fun, and you're pretending this book was written by a (mature but rather daft) 12 year old; but this is just ridicuous.
4. 12 year olds know bad words. They don't refer to them as "one of those words I heard the biker man say". This kid is allegedly 12, not 7. Very inaccurate depiction of age.
5. It was a bit of a stretch to believe that the character Miles FAINTED sometimes from the goodness of shakespeare. Is is utterly impossible for me to fathom that Al fainted because Dicken's is so good. NO ONE HAS EVER FAINTED DUE TO THE EXCITEMENT CONTAINED IN A DICKENS NOVEL. Falling aleep due to boredom does not count as fainting.
6. Congrats, Paulsen. You actually wrote a worse book than Hatchet. Though, I guess this was actually less lame because it was so short. It's like 100 pages and will take like 20-40 minutes to read.

Basically, this book was unbelievable, contrived, boring, inane, and utterly pointless.

This book is the epitomine of bad YA literature. I hadn't read a YA book in ages and this made me wish I hadn't bothered.

[Josiah · Rating 2 out of 5]

To readers only familiar with Gary Paulsen's wilderness classics such as Hatchet and The Haymeadow, his comedy novels can be jarring. Yet they are integral to Paulsen's legacy, a genre he returned to over and over. The Glass Cafe introduces twelve-year-old Tony Henson, a scatterbrained kid living with his single mother, Al. Tony does his best to survive school, including an often unsuccessful romantic pursuit of Melissa Davidson, the girl he likes. Al works at the Kitty Kat Club, a strip joint, but it provides a solid income and Tony doesn't mind…until her career lands them both in hot water.

Tony takes an interest in art when his teacher, Ms. Klein, shows the class some creative drawings. For a school art project Tony asks Al for permission to visit the Kitty Kat Club and sketch the dancers; Al hesitates, but Tony knows the ladies like family and obviously has no untoward motives. His drawings of the dancers are thoughtful and sensitive, good enough that Ms. Klein asks to post a few in a local gallery. That's when the situation falls apart.

Critical response to Tony's artwork is positive, but now Mrs. Preston, a social worker, is investigating Al for child endangerment. Mrs. Preston and her policeman escort are aggressive with Tony, and their attitude causes the moment to boil over. Criminal charges and recriminations fly; community members take sides, mostly with Al and Tony. Al contends her striptease work is artistic, a form of storytelling. It also allows her a generous income to care for her son. Will her lawyer turn this madcap trauma into a financial windfall that could permit Al the flexibility to quit exotic dancing after all?

The comedy is okay, but The Glass Cafe's strength is its portrayal of hapless government bureaucracy. Mrs. Preston knows nothing about Tony and has no personal stake, but she harasses his hardworking mother anyway. The Kitty Kat Club isn’t an ideal setting for a kid, but everything gets worse as the state clumsily intervenes. On a side note, Tony's infatuation with Melissa is reminiscent of Amos Binder's with Melissa Hansen in the Culpepper Adventures, a comedy book series by Paulsen in the 1990s. The Glass Cafe might be an excellent story if it had more depth, but as is I'd consider two and a half stars. The message makes for a memorable little novel.

[Tori · Rating 1 out of 5]

I get the impression that Gary Paulsen cannot write, and that is why he pretends to write from the perspectives of twelve-year-olds.

[Greggory]

The book I choose for this book review is called the Glass Cafe. The author of the book is Gary Paulsen. It starts off with the boy named Tony who is 12 and he starts off with saying what he likes. Tony lives with Alice who is his mother they live in a apartment. He has many friends at school and has an crush on a girl. He also liked art and was a very good painter.


I thought this book was good. I say this as it told a lot about the boy and his life. It was like the book was really told from him. I also liked it as if you're younger you could learn a thing or to in the book. With this it gets very interesting towards the end as there is a lot of action involving many characters in the book. One of the things I disliked is we didn’t find much out about his mother if she had real dreams. The book made it seem like she wanted to be a stripper I thought.

[Pawlowskierik]

The Glass Café

By Gary Paulsen



The Glass Café is about a twelve year old boy, Tony Henson, and his single mom Alice, who everyone calls Al. Tony's mom Al is juggling raising her son and going to school to get her doctorate in English literature but meanwhile makes a living as a "provocative dancer" at the Kitty Kat Club to pay for her schooling. Tony doesn't have a problem with this; actually he thinks it's pretty neat. He has always been a very skilled drawer so one day when he asks his mom if he can draw some of the dancers and the Kitty Kat Club, she has no problem about that. One day when he's at school, he shows Ms. Klein, his art teacher, some of his sketches. She thinks they are absolutely outstanding, so she decides to enter them in a contest. One day while getting ready for work, Alice receives a call from the state government. The Social Services Agency has seen her son's pictures and accusing her of letting Tony draw pornographic pictures of women. A few days later, she is arrested. Will she be proven innocent or be proven guilty and be sent to jail? Read The Glass Café to find out.

[Stacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

It might be true that a single mom could earn more money stripping than she could with a masters degree in English, but there is no way this over protective educated mom would bring her pre-pubescent 12 year old into the dressing room of the strip club to draw still-life art of her naked co-workers.

[Lara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delightful and fresh.

[Rogandia Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very humorous. Even though its short, it makes a lot of since.

[Richie Partington · Rating 5 out of 5]

07 May 2003 THE GLASS CAFÉ (or THE STRIPPER AND THE STATE; How My Mother Started a War With The System That Made Us Kind of Rich and a Little Bit Famous) by Gary Paulsen, Random House/Wendy Lamb Books, June 2003, ISBN 0-385-32499-5

"So you know my name is Tony and I am twelve and my mother who is named Alice except nobody calls her that, they all call her Al, like she was a guy only she isn't, is a stripper, only it's called exotic dancing, at a place called the Kitty Kat, except that everybody calls it the Zoo on account of an animal act they used to have but don't anymore because the humane society said it was wrong to use snakes out of their "natural element" although Muriel, who danced with a seven-foot boa named Steve, swore that the snake slept through the whole dance except I know Steve who lives in the dressing room in a glass case and I can't tell if he's sleeping or not because he never closes his eyes."

THE GLASS CAFÉ (or THE STRIPPER AND THE STATE; How My Mother Started a War With The System That Made Us Kind of Rich and a Little Bit Famous), is such a captivating read aloud--truly a performance piece--that I have half a mind to return this morning for my third day of the IRA (International Reading Association) Convention and take a group of teachers (preferably middle school teachers) hostage so that I can have another audience with whom to share it. Fortunately, we have free nighttime minutes on our cellphone--Shari woke me up a little past midnight my/Orlando time (9:00 PM her/California time), which is when the free minutes begin, and like a jack-in-the box I bounced up out of bed, switched on the light, scooped up the book, and read twenty pages with nary a breath. This review will end shortly since, if I hurry, I can reach the Convention Center as they begin queuing up for the 9:00 opening time of the Exhibition Hall and corner a small crowd.

"I like school where I get pretty good grades in everything except gym and sometimes math when it doesn't make any sense to me like when we have to figure out two trains traveling at different speeds and which one will get to a place called Parkerville first. There is never a place called Parkerville in real life and hardly any trains go anywhere anymore and why would two trains be trying to get to a place called Parkerville in the first place? It's just silly."

Tony, the twelve-year-old narrator of THE GLASS CAFÉ (or THE STRIPPER AND THE STATE; How My Mother Started a War With The System That Made Us Kind of Rich and a Little Bit Famous), lives in Los Angeles, has a friend named Waylon, a girl he likes named Melissa, a penchant for dogs (which aren't allowed in their apartment building), and is an aspiring artist who "draws every chance I get." As he tells us the tale of what happened to him and Al, he includes a number of asides, explaining to us what he is doing in regard to his English teacher's instructions about writing a story:

"I'll talk more about that later after I do what Ms. Providge the English teacher calls 'developing the structure and character of the story.'

And I expect that adults who grab this book for a look, suspicious of having their middle school offspring read something with "STRIPPER" in the title will be rather surprised to discover the reality of Tony's mother, a single mom from whom many parents could learn a thing or two about parenting.

"...and sometimes when it's the worst day of my whole life and maybe Melissa is talking about somebody else or math is kicking my butt or I have a cold and the smog is making it worse Al can just laugh, a deep laugh that comes from way inside and I can't but smile and think of something good. Which makes what happened because of the drawings really, really stupid.

What the drawings are all about and what happened because of Tony's drawings are something you'll just have to find out for yourself...unless you happen to be one of the people in Orlando who I'll be cornering in about fifteen minutes.

Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com
https://www.facebook.com/richiespicks/
richiepartington@gmail.com

[Jacob Brodjieski · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Glass Cafe
The glass cafe was a really good book, the book is all true what happened and one of the main characters tony is telling his story. Tony’s mom, Al, is a single mom who is a dancer at the kitty kat club, her son tony likes to draw and from being backstage at the club is inspired to become a artist. Tony learned that great artist do lots of human drawings so tony asked his mom if he could come in and draw the other dancers, so Al asked the dancers and they said it was okay so tony sat in the corner and started to draw the girls out, after a few days he thinks they look pretty good and decides to show his art teacher and compare his drawings to the book and the art teacher loved them and called later that night to talk to Al about putting them in a contest and she said that it fine with her but it's up to tony and he wanted to do it. Tony got letters saying he made it to top 20 then top 6 and then he didn't win but while they were being judged some women was offended but a 12 year old boy drawing nude women and sent in a complaint, The next day the law was at the door telling Al that she is not a responsible mother and cops would like to talk to her without tony in the room so a officer grabbed tony's arm to lead him to the other room and Al doesn't let anyone lay a finger on her son and she flips out and hits the officer over the head with a lap and he goes down when the other officer calls the swat team in for back up the swat team reprehends them and takes the to jail for the night and Al’s lawyer gets them released without charges, The press and news is going nuts over this that when the court day came the whole thing was out of control. The judge asked Al if she was a stripper and if that's a good place to take her son and she said no she's a dancer and that fact that she dancers without cloths is part of her uniform and tells the story just like the rope the judge has on is his uniform, she dances to make more money to support herself and tony and explains that her job is like the glass cafe where good story tellers put in money to hear a new story and they always stop at the part where you need to know what happens next to get storytellers to pay more and that when she dances she stops when people want more so they come back again so she keeps getting money but then she added that her dream is to go to school and get her masters degree in English so by the time this was all over Al got money to go to school so she doesn't dance anymore and tony became an artist and started to draw more and is getting better.

[Daniel Kleven · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Gary Paulsen's extremely broad oeuvre, there are some head-scratchers. This is one of them for me. Why would he choose this setting and these characters? I don't know, but nevertheless, this has all the hallmarks of a Paulsen book. Perhaps most fundamentally is the subversion of the reader's expectations--our stereotypes and prejudices--by getting us into the life of a character we wouldn't normally relate to. For example, "stripper"--what does that call to mind? Who do you imagine "does that sort of thing"? A single mom who would love to go to grad school, and reads Dickens to her son, but is "dancing" to make ends meet, and approaches it with the mindset of a literary craftswoman ("glass cafe")? I think there's still plenty to appreciate here, even if I'm left scratching my head sometimes. But then again, Gary Paulsen doesn't have to fit my expectations, prejudices, and stereotypes of a "YA Author" either.

[Johnny Bennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Glass Cafe presents a unique narrative style, with Tony, the protagonist, recounting the events in his own quirky voice. Written as if Tony were composing the story himself, complete with his musings on writing conventions and deviations, the book offers a unique and somewhat successful perspective. Despite the unconventional approach, the story tackles mature themes with mild humor and insight. Tony's account of his single mother's legal battle against the state, sparked by his artwork catching the attention of social services, is both captivating and thought-provoking. Gary Paulsen delivers a tale that defies easy categorization, blending humor, introspection, and an exciting plot. While not your typical read, The Glass Cafe is quick, interesting, and ultimately entertaining, making it worth considering for those seeking something outside the ordinary.

[Brody Retzler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see exactly what this book wanted to do, and I believe it failed. It wanted to show the perspective of a kid in an adult situation he shouldn’t be in at that age. Paulsen does this by making the sentences structured how a child would write them, but in doing so it makes the book harder to read and feel drawn out even if it’s not a long book. It also feels like it doesn’t know it’s audience, I’m not an adult and this feels like it’s both for someone younger than me and older than me at the same time. It has so many adult themes that I wish it just leaned into those more, but instead it feels like it’s trying to dumb itself down. I wish the way we got to see through the lens of a kid was to make him not understand the world around him, instead of having a weird structure.

[Cassie Gardner · Rating 2 out of 5]

This title seemed like it came from a different author entirely than the one who wrote "Hatchet", but indeed, it is.

The story is written as if a little kid was trying to tell you a story all in one breath before passing out from lack of air. I didn't mind it too much, but it typically made parts seem hard to follow as the story line jumped around from his favorite color to the story, back to something that didn't necessarily have to do with the plot. I guess that's what was the aim?

It was a quick read, but I wouldn't recommend this story.

[Peggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short fun read, I'm glad I discovered this (better late than never!) Not one of his best, but I definitely enjoyed reading it. Granted, at times it's a bit of a stretch, but c'mon people, this is fiction. It's nice to read a realistic YA story with real issues that can make you laugh and not bury you in grit. Admittedly, sometimes I get worn out reading such heavy YA all the time. And as another reviewer noted, this would be a great read aloud! Thank you, Mr. Paulsen, for a bit of a fun ride.

[Veronica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this story! Paulsen captured perfectly the character of a twelve year old boy as his speaker. It made the novel very entertaining. The story was great and it was written well. The story is short and that was the perfect length. Nothing more was needed. Paulsen also made great points within the novel about life. Those points were put well across through the speaker. Great!

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably wouldn’t recommend this book to any of my students, but it was a tad bit funny and at least a little bit plausible. This is definitely NOT the Gary Paulson I am accustomed to reading, but I do love his story-telling ability and the way he develops his characters. A solid 3.5, but 4 stars is generous.

[kat f. · Rating 5 out of 5]

i remembered where this book was on a bookshelf in my middle school library but couldn’t for the life of me remember the title, author, plot, or anything but a vague recollection of a neon sign on the cover and it being close to a mass market paperback in size.

it was a cute story, im not sure why it’s placement on the shelf in that library stuck with me for so long.

[Dionysi Krinas · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5 stars; this is a book to teach story writing to students. Throughout the novel, the narrator/main character develops the plot and characters while simultaneously telling the reader how he is doing so. Quite clever!

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

unique book

Quick read, uneventful in plot. I feel it was ok but not earth shattering. Pretty cover which drew me to the book. Had trouble focusing since it was pretty dry. Strange plot family dynamic……Lisa M

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick read and very fun! I liked the author's asides to the reader. Quite a tale!

[Loree · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gary Paulsen, I have a massive reader crush on you!

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful reading, fun characters, and a believable storyline.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great book, love this author!!

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An impressive balance between having a real point and being funny. Paulsen managed to build a whole, adorable family relationship and world in a short story, and I wish it were longer.

[Troy Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book can't be used for american history but still a great book for English.

[Kenzie Gallaher · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.75

[Icarus Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute little story with lots of run on sentences. Still funny. You kind of have to read this book like you are that one character from all of the marvel movies who constantly talks.

[coffee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought this story was epic, very funny. It's written with a lot of run-ons which I thought was neat and it gave the piece a natural feel (because who speaks properly when telling a story, I know I don't). It makes you think about the difference between pornography and art, and about freedom of expression. It teaches us not to judge others and how tweaking a few words can completely change something. Huge misunderstandings that lead to a slippery slope of fun.