Jedi Summer with the Magnetic Kid - Loss, Love, and Lessons Learned
I received this signed copy in the November 2020 "Haunted Harvest" Night Worms package.
I greedily devoured this short book. It is written in an easy, conversational tone that really spoke to me right away. I love the coming of age trope, but this one hit differently. It was painful, sad, and magical in a scary way. There were a few glimmers of shining hope present and I grasped onto them like they were lifeboats, but when I finished the book, I could only sit there aching for a while.
The story follows Johnny and Roscoe (which are actually the names of the author and his little brother, respectively). It is insinuated that the author is reflecting on a truthful, personal retelling of the summer that Star Wars: Return of the Jedi came to theatres and he got to see it with his brother. All of the events that lead up to that memorable moment are harrowing, odd, and gut-wrenching. There is a mystical element here that comes up frequently. One example is how the ghosts of the brothers' dead pets spend time with Roscoe. They follow him to school and he and an old lady (who is near death) down the street can see them. It is spoken of like it was just an oddity that was accepted in the family. There are some very brutal experiences that happen to the children. The kind that a lot of us have never actually experienced in our lives, but that seem to come in droves for Johnny and Roscoe. It toughens them up, hardens them to the world, and renders their outlook a bit different than others. I was horrified at a few of the things that these children witnessed.
John Boden writes, "If we'd known then what adulthood was truly like, we'd have savored every minute of every sun-drenched day for the sumptuous morsel it was. Being children, we scarfed them down, greedily, like so many potato chips or snack cakes. Never to be full." I think this line makes me hurt a little bit more because they saw some awful things, but childhood is childhood no matter what size or shape it comes in, and it has always got that element of magic. We may experience it differently from person to person, but the general consensus always seems to be that growing up means even more pain and loss than anything we experienced when we were young and the world was green and new. "Growing up was a shitty thing to do to someone."
I really liked this book. The parts that were a bit supernatural are not explained in any logical way, which was interesting and seemingly the point. Childhood, the things we once felt and saw, are not always logical, but we still experienced them nonetheless and that alone makes it real for us. This concept is brought to life in a touching and memorable way in Jedi Summer with the Magnetic Kid.
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