Book Review: The Planet of Junior Brown

[osprey_archer]

Virginia Hamilton’s 1972 Newbery winner The Planet of Junior Brown is an exceptionally odd book. It begins with Junior Brown and Buddy Clark admiring the model of the solar system that Mr. Pool, the school janitor, has hung up in the secret back room that he has constructed behind the false back of one of the school’s broom closets.

I’m afraid that upon learning of Mr. Pool’s secret room for hanging out with junior high students, my instant reaction was, “Is Mr. Pool a child molestor?” He is not, and the book at no point expects you to see Mr. Pool as anything but a fine stand-up guy. Nonetheless I couldn’t get over the feeling that Mr. Poole was bad news, a feeling only exacerbated when it turned out that Buddy and Junior have been skipping school to hang out in this closet for the past two and a half months.

This is especially baffling because it’s apparently motive-less: Hamilton seems to consider sitting in a closet such an obvious improvement over school that it requires no explanation, and thus no explanation is offered. Junior and Buddy are not being bullied. (This is especially noteworthy because the book reminds us constantly that Junior is very fat, as round as the tenth planet that Mr. Pool added to the solar system and called “the planet of Junior Brown.”) They both get good grades, so they aren’t overwhelmed by the classwork. They might be bored in class, but as boring as high school classes can be, they are not more boring than sitting in a tiny closet all day.

(Hopefully you ask: “Are Buddy and Junior making out in that closet?” This would certainly give their closet-dwelling lifestyle an impetus, but Junior and Buddy’s friendship doesn’t give off that vibe at all.)

Near the end of the book, Junior and Buddy get caught playing hooky. Rather than return to class, Junior decides to run away from home. (Buddy is already living on the streets as part of a network of homeless boys, who run safehouses they call “planets.”) Buddy Clark, Mr. Pool, and the narrative all agree that this is the best possible course of action. Buddy assures Junior that his mother (who is prone to debilitating asthma attacks, especially in times of stress) will know that Junior is fine, even though there appears to be no plan in place to let her know that he is, in fact, fine.

Also, Junior is not, in fact, fine. He has started to hallucinate. His after-school piano teacher Miss Peebles has not let him play for months, because the relative who is visiting her can’t stand noise… but it turns out that the only two people who can see this relative are Miss Peebles and Junior Brown.

In a stunning moment of common sense, Mr. Pool says, “Junior needs help.” But this visit to consensual reality instantly collapses. Mr. Pool concludes that clearly the best way to help Junior is for Junior to run away from home to live on Buddy’s planet.

Buddy’s planet is a dark, debris-filled, unelectrified basement, only accessible by rope ladder. The rope ladder is too weak to bear Junior’s weight, so the only way for him to get down there is for Mr. Pool to construct a hoist. I sincerely hope that hoist is going to stay in the planet’s doorway from now on, because otherwise Junior will be trapped in the basement.

I am not convinced! Actually! That the nightmare basement is going to be the best thing for Junior Brown’s mental health! But apparently Hamilton thinks it will be just hunky-dory, because that’s where the book stops.

Comments

[adore]

I am just :O through all of this.

[osprey_archer]

The book is simply A Lot.

[oracne]

WHUT.

[osprey_archer]

It was the 70s! It was a strange time.

[kore]

Whuh. Virginia Hamilton? MC Higgins the Great, People Could Fly, Virginia Hamilton? Wha? ....maybe this is meant as a riff on Invisible Man or something?

Oh hey, she's in the LOA! That's nice. https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1907-the-pathbreaking-virginia-hamilton-and-her-liberation-literature?gclid=Cj0KCQjw08aYBhDlARIsAA_gb0dWsxrdGz-R2cxvwQT_h2n6KXCDcaqggSpvjobBs2iKwh6saRr6NF4aAv7BEALw_wcB

That made a movie of this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planet_of_Junior_Brown

[osprey_archer]

Yep, that Virginia Hamilton! My recollection is that M.C. Higgins, the Great and Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush are also very odd, but in a much less "what the FUCK just happened" kind of way.

[kore]

One of the Wiki links was to a 20-years-later Horn Book retrospective that concluded this book apparently wasn't that popular at all with actual kids, especially modern ones. :-/

[osprey_archer]

I read that Wiki link in an attempt to grasp why this book appealed to the 1972 Newbery committee (and also apparently the 1970s book reviewers in Horn Book), and I was not surprised to learn that the book has always been a hard sell with actual kids. A lot happens, but there isn't what you might call a plot, and the homeless scenes are too realistic to ping what you might call the "Boxcar Children" centers in the child brain, while also not being gritty enough to appeal to kids who like Grim Reality.

[kore]

Wait, didn't MC Higgins win the Newbury? Her site says she "was the first African American to win the John Newbery Medal" for that, and this book was Newbery Honor? Or are those the same thing? //confused

[osprey_archer]

The Newbery Medal is the big award; only one is given yearly. The Newbery Honor goes to the runner-ups, usually two to four books, although there are a couple years in the 1930s which have eight, which seems wholly excessive.

Hamilton won the Newbery Medal for M. C. Higgins, the Great and got Newbery Honors for The Planet of Junior Brown, Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (that's the one where the girl meets her hot ghost uncle), and In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World.

[kore]

EIGHT? Jeez.

Yeah MC Higgins would be much better!....well obviously I haven't read this book, but MC Higgins is really good. From what I remember, anyway. It was one of the books advertised with coupons in the back of the Dell paperbacks, which is where I got a lot of booklists from, altho the public library and school libraries often wouldn't carry the ~racier ones.

[osprey_archer]

I for one look forward to giving the library's beleaguered interlibrary loan office a workout as they struggle to find such gems as Agnes Hewes' Spice and the Devil's Cave for me as I pursue this Newbery Honor project to its bitter conclusion. How generous the 1930s Newbery committees were to ensure there would be many such Newbery Honor books to inflict on the interlibrary loan office!

[asakiyume]

Wow, they sure did love her in Newbery-ville.

[rachelmanija]

Whaaaaaat.

I have read some Virginia Hamilton books and they're all extremely strange. IIRC, one opens with a boy sitting atop a 50' polished steel pole with no explanation of how he gets up or down.

[osprey_archer]

Yeah, this is the fourth book of hers that I've read and they're all odd, but Nightmare Basement as mental healthcare for Junior certainly took the cake!

[cyphomandra]

I love Hamilton’s Justice series, but as a child I did start with the middle one where the psychic siblings travel into a post apocalyptic future, which was totally my thing. I found Junior Brown very hard to read by comparison!

[osprey_archer]

Hamilton had huge range! Psychic siblings traveling to the post-apocalyptic future is so different from Junior Brown.

[littlerhymes]

Not a single part of this went in the direction I expected it to go.

[osprey_archer]

This book was a JOURNEY.

[asakiyume]

And this not only got published but was a Newbery honor book?! I'm mind boggled.

I had to look up reviews to find out what people were thinking at the time... Kirkus ostensibly praises it but with a big dose of WTF.

The same reviewer went back to it in 2015 and reported, among other things, that the book was NOT popular w/young people.

[osprey_archer]

Baffling! This would have been the early seventies, which seem to have been kind of a weird time in children's literature, but even in context it's a very strange book.