Freaky Monday, by Mary Rodgers and Heather Hach
Rodgers, Mary and Heather Hach (2009). Freaky Monday. Bowen Press (HarperCollins). 180s pages.
So I’ve long been a fan of Mary Rodgers’ trilogy of “freaky” books–Freaky Friday, Summer Switch, and A Billion for Boris–with smart, somewhat sly and genuinely funny narration and decorated with the art of Edward Gorey, these books didn’t get a whole lot of fanfare but were a lot of fun. I have always been disappointed by the movie versions of both Freaky Friday (both the Jodie Foster and the Lindsay Lohan editions) and Summer Switch (I saw it on cable as a kid), because they always seemed to go for the cheap laugh. See, what folks who have only seen the movies and never read the books don’t know is this: when kids and grown-ups switch places “magically,” it’s not all fun and games. The kid in the adult’s body remains relatively aware of the situation and is genuinely troubled by it and, after the obligatory experiments with the adult body and accoutrement, really tries to perform the adulthood that has been thrust upon him or her with aplomb. As a case in point: there is no waterskiing scene in the book version of Freaky Friday.
So, when I saw that Freaky Friday author Mary Rodgers had collaborated with Heather Hach (who, according to her bookflap bio, wrote the screenplay for the newest Freaky Friday movie and is responsible for the novel version of Legally Blond: The Musical, but I’m not judging here), I was hopeful but incredibly wary. Unfortunately, wariness turned out to be the most appropriate preparatory emotion, as Freaky Monday turned out to be everything I hoped it wouldn’t.
Eighth grade grind Hadley has come to terms with the fact that she will never be a superstar like her sister Tatum, a beautiful, talented and popular high school student and works to excel in the one area in which Tatum floundered: academics. Hadley is soooo high strung academically that when, one fateful Monday, she discovers she has forgotten to prepare for an oral presentation on To Kill a Mockingbird, she totally freaks out. As she stands in front of the classroom, she and her English teacher–the hippy-dippy Ms. Pitt–find themselves reading a passage from Harper Lee’s novel in unison and–suddenly!–the two have switched bodies. The switch allows Hadley to see herself (literally) anew and consider her obsession with academics and the hero worship of her sister while adopting some of the groovier aspects of Ms. Pitt’s style.
So it sounds pretty loser-ish already. I mean, switching places with a teacher does not exactly produce the same high-stakes and tension-laden situations that switching places with a parent does. Worse, when the supposedly smart Hadley has to play Ms. Pitt for a day, she suddenly turns stupid. I find it hard to believe that an extremely disciplined eighth grader (and much is made of Hadley’s discipline) can’t not use “teen slang” (like “I gotta blaze”) when dealing with the real Hadley’s school principal and Ms. Pitt’s boss. Furthermore, Ms. Pitt, who is described in the book as both 33 and 32 years old, suddenly turns into a fuddy-duddy when she enters Hadley’s body. And then there are the cheap and exploitative incidents of Hadley referring to herself (in Ms. Pitt’s body) as “Ms. Pitt” (instead of “I”) and of Ms. Pitt (in Hadley’s body) referring to herself as Hadley (instead of “I”). Also, whenever Ms. Pitt-as-Hadley interacts with the real Hadley’s crush, Hadley-as-Ms. Pitt is there, lurking around and inserting comments into their conversation in a really dorky way. While I understand the real Hadley’s interest in making sure everything goes OK, part of the conceit of plots like this involve the kid character recognizing the adult character as equally competent and human, something that doesn’t happen with Hadley fluttering around like a doof-ball. There wasn’t a cheesy waterskiing scene (or even a scene where the main character–newly switched back–finds her voice and sings with a band), but the whole book was a like a metaphorical one.
And, this book was only, like 180 pages long. Mary Rodgers’ solo-authored (and much richer, I maintain) novels all fell well into the 200s and used that space to color the adult characters with some much needed humanity.