On the Shelf

He stared at me. "She liked you, boy." 

The intensity of his voice and eyes made me blink. 

"Yes," I said. 

"She did it for you, you know."

"What?"

"Gave up her self, for a while there. She loved you that much. What an incredibly lucky kid you were."

I could now look at him. "I know."

He shook his head with wistful sadness. "No, you don't. You can't know yet. Maybe someday..."

                                                                     -Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

I took on a new book over Labor Day weekend. It's one of those books that's been sitting on my sister's shelf (my ultimate source for books) for ages. I knew it was good, but I just never read it. I though I knew what it was about, and I mostly did, but I wasn't prepared for how much I really loved it. 

It was Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli.

Stargirl is the tale of a junior in high school, Leo Borlock, and the girl who steals his heart. She's the new girl in school, a previously home-schooled sophomore, and she's anything but ordinary. Susan "Stargirl" Caraway is her name. She changes her name every once in a while, she plays the ukulele, she wears sweeping pioneer skirts, she carries a pet rat around with her, she is kind, sweet, and selfless. Absolutely selfless. 

Dropping her in the Mica High student body is like dropping a fish in desert. She couldn't be more out of place in the sea of conformity. The other students don't know what to do, so they worship her. They worship her until they don't. She's shunned by the entire school, except for Leo. He only wants to be with her, but he can't handle the pressure of going against the grain, so he forces her to do the one thing that can destroy her: normalcy. She conforms and they still don't accept her. 

Stargirl's transformation into the normal teen "Susan" is completely devastating. Watching the pilot light on the furnace of her originality makes you want to shake Leo and show him what he's really doing: stifling her, drowning her in the sea of conformity. All because he couldn't deal with the consequences of being with an outcast. 

Everyone's blind in this book. Leo blinded by selfishness and his need to be accepted. Stargirl blinded by love, selflessness, and her driving want to make everyone be truly happy. The entire school is blinded by their social expectations, their psychological need to fit the "norm" like a sad, boring puzzle pieces. 

Stargirl is a symbol for selflessness and individuality. I want to strive to be like her, we all should. If everyone was like Stargirl the world would be a place of loving, creativity, maturity, and honestly, spiritual awareness. We wouldn't all conform to one type of "Stargirl" because there is no one type of "Stargirl." The world would flourish. 

As usual, I'm probably reading too far into things, but that's just me. I'm taking away something special from this. Something as special as thinking that you might have heard a Moa. 

We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.