Chick Lit Chick

In an effort to get my 13 year old daughter to read the Twilight books (“They are too mainstream”) I told her that I would read Crank if she read Twilight.  She jumped at the chance to make my life miserable and immediately sat down with Twilight.  She is now a card-carrying member of Team Edward. 

 Written by Ellen Hopkins and published in October of 2004, Crank is the story of Kristina and her relationship with “the monster,” an apt name for crystal meth, or crank.  Kristina introduces the reader to her terrifying alter-ego Bree, a personality she invents to take the blame for her bad choices and lack of judgment.  Kristina was a loving daughter and model student from a middle class family who had the world at her feet.  She went to visit her deadbeat father for just one short week and met a sweet-talking Lothario who introduced her to the monster, and instantly, Bree was born.  Her lightening-quick descent in to addiction and criminal behavior is both heartbreaking and terrifying.

 Kristina’s story is not sugar coated.  Based on the author’s struggle with her own daughter’s addiction, it is edgy and stark.  The story is told from Kristina’s point of view, which gives it an authenticity that young adults are drawn to; there is something very compelling about a young girl desperate for love and attention and what she is willing to do to get it.  Parts of it are difficult to read and shocking.  I found myself hoping that these things aren’t really going on with young adults ill-equipped to deal with the avalanche of emotions that bury them in their angst-ridden teen years.  Unfortunately, this is the real deal. 

 I was originally apprehensive when my daughter brought home a book called Crank at 12 years old.  When asked what it was about, she said, “It’s about a girl who gets addicted to crank and starts stealing and gets raped and stuff.  Oh, and it’s written in poems and stuff.”    For me, this was a challenge; it is 544 pages and written in prose.  The visually appealing way the author shapes her words on the page creates a very quick cadence.  You can almost physically feel Kristina’s painful desperation to “feed the monster.”  The more desperate she is, the faster and more urgent the verse.   

 This book has become a cultural phenomenon and is an unfortunate sign of the times; it has a huge following even now, almost five years after its original publication date.  The book has a Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(novel), a page of questions on Ask.com http://www.ask.com/questions-about/Crank-by-Ellen-Hopkins and various fan websites http://www.librarything.com/work/189755.  According to my daughter, young people read it over and over again.  The writing style is quick and modern and it is a very fast read, which helps keeps the short attention span of younger readers.

 It turned out to be a pretty good bargain I made with my daughter.  She is reading Breaking Dawn and I am just about to start Glass, the sequel to Crank.  Crank should be read by every parent of a child about to become a young adult, by every parent who thinks it would never happen to them, not to their child.