Into the Wild Nerd Yonder, by Julie Halpern
Halpern, Julie (2009). Into the wild nerd yonder. NY: Feiwel and Friends. 256 pages.
Fifteen-year-old Jessie has always suspected that she is, at heart, a nerd: an ace in all the advanced classes at school, Jessie occasionally sits in on drums for her older brother’s punk band but attributes her ability to her math skills. Somehow her best friends, the outrageous and charismatic Bizza and the gorgeous follower Char, have not only accepted Jessie since elementary school, they have also obscured her nerdiness with their friendship. At the beginning of the girls’ sophomore year, however, things change. Bizza and Char decide to “go punk,” adopting the style of dress and inviting themselves to hang out with Jessie’s brother’s band. When Bizza hooks up with Jessie’s longtime crush, however, it’s the last straw, and Jessie attempts to find herself in a social world with out Bizza and Char.
I found Halpern’s second novel (the first of hers that I’ve read) to be a genuine and quirky read. I’ll admit it: I was concerned about the “my-best-friends-are-punk-posers” plot and feared that the book would disintegrate into a cooler-than-thou diatribe against Hot Topic and increasing citations of old school (and therefore cooler) bands. Fortunately, this didn’t turn out to be the novel’s focus or even raison d’etre. In fact, I don’t think that any bands were name dropped at all in the book’s 200 plus pages! Instead, the novel’s plot turned on Jessie’s growing disillusionment with her friends and her subsequent involvement with (gulp) a group of Dungeons and Dragons players.
As far as I’m concerned, even though I’m not a D and D player, anyone who glorifies D and D and punk rock in the same book and with no shame or (worse) irony, has got it going on. Into the Wild Nerd Yonder is one of few books that doesn’t simultaneously reify tropes associated with the portrayal of “punk” in teen novels while attempting to establish the extra-textual coolness and authority of its authors. What a breath of fresh air.