BY COLLEEN LUTOLF
Staff Writer
Author Chris Crutcher talks to journalism student McKenna Crilley and other journalism students during his visit to Brick Township High School. Below, Dan Gagliardi (c) listens to Crutcher talk about having his books banned from school libraries. BRICK – As novelist Chris Crutcher sat in the Brick Township High School library on Nov. 1, one might expect the students gathered there to be hanging on the acclaimed and controversial author’s every word. But as the 12 teenagers talked about books, writing and the merits of out-of-school suspension, it was Crutcher who was taking it all in.
This was, after all, raw material for the family therapist turned young adult novelist, who, fans say, has the uncanny knack of getting the teenage experience right.
“He’s just someone you know you can talk to,” said 16-year-old Stephany Kline, writer, actress and member of the school’s Booked on Wednesday after-school book club. “Talking to him, it’s not as an author but as just another person.”
It’s also that knack that gets the author’s books banned from school libraries around the country.
PHOTOS BY MIGUEL JUAREZ staff The themes Crutcher explores are those most parents would like their children to avoid – abortion, sex, issues of race and class, death, homosexuality, suicide – all things that most teens, sooner or later, will be faced with in their lives.
“Look why people ban books,” Crutcher told Amy Cancel’s class of journalism students later that day. “Because they don’t think you can handle it. I’ve been working with kids since I was a kid. It’s not anything you can’t handle because it comes from you. It’s crazy not to talk about this stuff.”
Take “Whale Talk.” A book dealing with racism and bullying, it has been banned repeatedly for Crutcher’s use of profane language. It’s also the book Crutcher recommends when he’s asked which of his books is best for students to read.
“You can’t miss with ‘Whale Talk,’ ” he said. “It’s almost as much humor as it is tragedy.”
Working as a child and family therapist in Oakland, Calif., Crutcher talks about “this stuff” all the time. After his fourth book, “Athletic Shorts,” Crutcher was able to sustain a living from writing and offer therapy to his clients for free.
It’s ironic that some of his books get banned for their content because some of the most bare-knuckled stuff he’s helped some teens deal with have never even gotten into the pages of his books.
“Kids in alternative school have amazing stories,” he said. “They’ve survived stuff I never could have survived, and that’s heroic in my mind. I don’t try to get banned, but I know I’m going to.”
“You guys could tell me stuff tougher than the things I’ve written,” Crutcher said. “When I touched somebody in Indiana, some place I’ve never been, then I know I got it right. I don’t get it right not talking about real issues. I mean, I’ve sat in a room full of pedophiles. It’s an obligation to tell the truth.”
Another Crutcher title popular for its frank account of adolescent life is “Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes” in which Sarah Byrnes, badly burned in a mysterious accident when she was young, has grown up deformed and nearly friendless except for Eric Calhoun, an obese boy who shares with Sarah the bottom rung of the high school social ladder. When Eric begins losing weight because he’s joined the swim team, he attempts to maintain his large stature by gorging food in fear that he’ll lose his only friend.
Last Friday, journalism student Dan Castiglione asked Crutcher if the author’s feelings get hurt when his books get banned.
“I’m still enough of an adolescent to think that it’s pretty cool,” said Crutcher, who turned 60 in July. “It’s a good fight.”
Crutcher’s visit was paid for with a $5,000 grant the library received from the OceanFirst Foundation.
Librarians Marianne Kerrigan and Cecelia Ruegsegger brought Crutcher to Brick Township.
“He really listens to teens,” Kerrigan said. “Our reluctant readers are typically male, and except for ‘Sarah Byrnes,’ most of his main characters are male. We thought possibly we could reach some people.”
Ruegsegger said the pair realized their goal.
“They were mesmerized,” Ruegsegger said about the assemblies in which Crutcher talked to students about his books. “And they’re the hardest to get to.”