rachelmanija | The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, by Gene Kemp

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The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, by Gene Kemp

What did the cross-eyed teacher say?

"I can't control my pupils."

All the chapters start with this kind of kid joke, which is something Tyke loves. Tyke Tiler is a mischievous, athletic kid whose best friend is Danny, who has a severe speech impediment and a learning/developmental disability.

The ostensible plot is that Danny is going to be sent to a different school unless he can pass a test, but mostly it's an episodic story about two kids raising hell and being loyal to each other. The tone is similar to the William books by Richmal Crompton, if anyone's read those, but less farcical. It's fun.

I had a very weird experience reading this book. Since I knew there was a big twist, the instant I read the back cover, I was positive that Danny and Tyke were the same person.

Spoiler: Danny and Tyke are absolutely not the same person, as is extremely obvious almost immediately, but I was so convinced they were that I kept thinking up absurd explanations for why teachers might address them by two different names and people talk about them to each other.

Eventually I decided that they had to be separate people, and the twist would actually be some kind of cement truck tragedy.

Spoiler: There is no cement truck tragedy.

So I stopped looking for a "it was this all along" type of twist, except for a brief interlude in which I was absolutely convinced that Tyke had been dead all along due to a mention of joining Tom, who is very much alive but whom I misremembered as being a long-dead soldier.

Spoiler: Tyke is not dead all along.

As two of you clever readers guessed, the twist is that...

Tyke is a girl. Not a girl disguised as a boy, just a girl whose best friend is a boy, who has an androgynous nickname, and who doesn't conform to gender stereotypes. In general, no one has a problem with this.

No one ever calls her a boy or, in retrospect, does anything to indicate gender one way or another. The only reason readers assume she's a boy is what they bring to the book: either all the other books they've read starring characters like Tyke in which they're always boys, or their own assumptions about what girls can be like or whether girls and boys can be friends. It's very neatly done with zero preaching.

So that was a surreal reading experience. If you ever want one for yourself, take any random book which is primarily about the relationship of two people, and start reading it under the impression that they are either the same person, or one of them is a ghost.

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That sounds like a fascinating reading experience and I'm almost sad that I can't reproduce is, now that I know Tyke and Danny ARE two separate people.

I don't think I've ever had this exact experience, but I know there have been books where I went in convinced that they were genre X and became VERY confused (and sometimes alarmed) as the evidence mounted that they were genre Y... Of course I can't remember any titles right now. I know this sometimes happens to people who go into, say, Wuthering Heights expecting romance by the modern definition.

I know this sometimes happens to people who go into, say, Wuthering Heights expecting romance by the modern definition.

I did this. Sort of. As a wee X-Files fan, I heard the song lyric "American Heathcliff, brooding and comely" in the song David Duchovny by Bree Sharp and ran out to read Wuthering Heights. I was expecting to fall in love with Heathcliff the same was I was in love with Mulder at the time. It...did not work out for me that way.

Hah, wow, what an odd choice of comparison in the song lyric!

My high school assigned us a copy of Wuthering Heights with an entirely pink cover featuring a painting of a windswept, sad, delicate, very innocent-looking girl. I expected to hate the book, because I had no interest in any kind of romance, especially nothing so extremely pink, so I was actually delighted when it turned out to be what it is. But similar to your experience, I was certainly not set up with appropriate expectations!

I know, right?! I still like the song in a nostalgic kind of way, but that lyric makes no sense to me. Unless it's making Mulder out to be a Byronic hero? Which, okay, yeah maybe, but it's still a stretch to compare those two.

I always get a kick out of hilariously misleading covers. Check out this edition of Northanger Abbey that suggests it's an actual Gothic horror instead of...pretty much the opposite of that.

I wound up annoyed by Freedom and Necessity because of this. The back of the book promises a "magical conspiracy;" it would be more apt to say there is an occult conspiracy, i.e. something involving a secret society doing occult things, but not the overt fantasy I kept expecting and not getting. I loved so much else about that book, waiting for something that was never going to come ended up grating like a rather sharp pebble in my shoe.

The magic is definitely more subtle/in the eye of the beholder than I was expecting when I first read it. TBH I can never quite follow the plot, especially why the villains are doing anything, but the characters and writing are terrific.

The thing that made me wince in that book was someone writing a letter with a very detailed sex scene, and she wrote it to the sister of the guy she slept with! I sure would not want someone to describe to me in detail how they had sex with my sibling…

I think this is the biggest pitfall in epistolary novels. I failed out of one that was extremely my jam because it began with "Remember that time in our childhood we [describes entirety of mutual childhood to the reader]" which. Is not particularly how letters are written?

I managed to read an entire historical mystery novel absolutely convinced that it’s twist was going to be that the main character was a vampire. This did not turn out to be the case, it was an entirely un-supernatural historical murder mystery, but I was going “okay so now he reveals he’s a vampire?” up until about the last ten pages. I ended up with this mistaken impression because I’d thought a vampire book loving friend had recommended it to me (they had not) and because the book spends a long time dwelling on the main character’s ‘unnatural yellow eyes’, and ‘unsettlingly sharp senses’, and ‘unbelievably fast reflexes’ which all fit my vampire narrative. I was very disappointed when no-one turned out to be a vampire.

Hahaha, yes, that would be weird!

Interestingly, I don't remember experiencing that as a twist, though I assume I did at the time. But in my head of course Tyke is a girl, she's always been a girl. I've never reread it, though.

I vividly remember the twist, and the sheer revelation that I had brought that assumption and the author had let me. It must be at least 30 years ago, so it certainly stuck with me!

Oh! That's actually cool.

It was fun reading this and seeing all your guesses foiled. And the book itself seems really sweet (in a non-cloying way).

It is sweet.

I am really amused by your ideas for what the twist was going to be.

What a lovely twist it turned out to be!

Hee!

Did you read the middle grade book "The Mark of Conte"?

No, never heard of it. Does that also have a gender reveal?

Its twist is not really a twist as it's revealed in the first chapter -- the school bureaucracy has given the hero two identities, and he tries his best to inhabit both. It was quite fun to read. One is Conte Mark, and one is Mark Conte.

I remember this title but nothing about the book.

Its twist was revealed in the first chapter -- the hero has inadvertently been given two identities by the school bureaucracy, and he tries to live both!

I loved Mark of Conte! (or Conte Mark) Especially when his projects get increasingly elaborate as he attempts to make them fulfill multiple requirements (I think he ends up sleeping in a pyramid?)

He does; he uses it to (a) do sleep experiments and (b) earn money by letting other kids use it for its supposed 'powers'. I have a copy, an ex-library book, it's very good. His idea is he can combine the two identities' results [70s computer tech!] and graduate early!

The only reason readers assume she's a boy is what they bring to the book: either all the other books they've read starring characters like Tyke in which they're always boys, or their own assumptions about what girls can be like or whether girls and boys can be friends.

I would love to know if this effect works with generations of later readers, who may have been trained differently by other kinds of book.

Me too. It completely fooled me, partly because in addition to thinking there would be a completely different type of reveal, I had also thought the book had been written much earlier than it actually had been.

I had also thought the book had been written much earlier than it actually had been.

I looked up the book just now to check the date and saw the author herself had a gender-ambiguous name.

She sounds great.

It reminds me of that "brain teaser" of my childhood, you know: a man and his son are driving somewhere and have a terrible accident. The man is killed and his son is gravely injured. The child is rushed to the hospital and into surgery and the surgeon comes out and looks down and says, "I cannot operate on this boy, he is my son." How is this possible?

Kids these days are really confused that this is a puzzle. The answer is supposed to be "the surgeon is his mom," but sometimes they go with, "the surgeon is the other dad."

The answer is supposed to be "the surgeon is his mom," but sometimes they go with, "the surgeon is the other dad."

This is the best thing I have heard all day and I thank you kindly for sharing it.

Ha, yes, I tried this one on my nephews and they were confused because what was the puzzle? They second-guessed themselves that there was time-travel involved because they thought "it's his mum" was too obvious.

I love the time-travel scenario.

Ha! That is delightful.

I remember being puzzled by that and then being incensed with myself for not getting it, as in fact my mother was a doctor (though not a surgeon, she was an anesthesiologist, so in surgery a lot).

I'm 32, so not really a later generation, but I recently read The Boy At The Back Of The Class, a recent MG book set in London, which does a very similar thing (and it's unfortunate that there's literally no way to name the book in the context of the discussion without also making the twist clear!) In this case, it's a first-person POV of a protagonist who's about ten befriending a boy who's arrived as a refugee from Syria and speaks no English. I now can't remember the protag's name, but it's something like Alex, who has a close friend group already of two boys and a girl. And I definitely defaulted to assuming they were a boy without even thinking about it! Again, neatly done. And then in the chapter or so after we found out the narrator was a girl, it also becomes clear she's Brown, and yeah, it definitely made me think about the assumptions I'd brought to it. (It's a book I would recommend overall very much to children, but there were some things (not about the narrator, other stuff in the plot) which as an adult I found rather too over-contrived even accounting for MG Book Logic.)

Oh hey! That is actually what I would have guessed if I hadn't seen your post when I was on my phone (I hate typing a lot on my phone), except I would have also thought the book was too early for that kind of thing -- mostly because I assumed the book would have to use pronouns for Tyke, which either gives away the twist or indicates as trans. But it sounds like it just dodges the pronouns?

The book itself is in first person.

Tyche was the ancient Greek goddess of chance, similar to the Roman Fortuna. I wonder if that is what inspired the writer’s choice of name.

It's British slang, means something like 'rascal'.

Didn't know that, thanks! I was only familiar with the American meaning, which is just "little kid," without negative connotations.

I remember as a k8d being very intent on unraveling the sex of a first person narrator and being disoriented when I guessed wrong (i do think I settled the narrator of the Great Brain books as a girl and would get confused the character was referred to as John but then i would be like 'in the old days were girls called John?' I did eventually accept it but I think I related to that character and wanted him to be a girl.

By the way this whole setup makes me think of Taylor Swift's song 'Betty,' a story song in which the first narrator sings to Betty about a convoluted high school romance for 2 verses and 2 double choruses and then halfway through the third verse someone addresses the narrator as 'James' at which point all right thinking people are like TWO LATE, TAY, THIS IS A GAY SONG AND YOU KNOW WE KNOW IT!!

I am fascinated that most of us were wrong, and also really intrigued by the twist! I'm pretty sure I've hit that specific form of "gotcha!" at least once in adult fiction as well, although I don't remember what book it was .... though I do remember vaguely that I guessed very early and was annoyed that the book treated it as a big reveal when I had figured it out as soon as I noticed the book was dodging pronouns. However, I wasn't distracted by thinking that one of the characters was unreal or dead, which sounds like an extremely unique reading experience!

It was so hilarious in retrospect.

I pretty much always enjoy "she was disguised as a man all along" reveals. This one was unique in that there was no disguise, either by the character or in any obvious way by the author. It's first person and you're completely free to assume a gender or not.

Oh yeah, that's what I mean - I've run across another book where it wasn't a disguise, it was just that the book avoided pronouns and let you come to your own conclusions until actually pulling the reveal. But I don't remember what book it was.

I do generally enjoy "disguised as a man" plots also; it's one of those tropes I will never get tired of.

I recently read "In Concrete" by Anne Garreta, an odd little experimental French novel, and while reading reviews for it, I was UTTERLY puzzled by a review that referred to the narrator as a boy. Read another review, it referred to the narrator as a girl. Went back to the book and realized for the first time that I had absolutely no reason to assume either way. I know there are a bunch of other books with characters without a specified gender, but I was surprised to see it done in such a subtle way that I (and a bunch of reviewers) didn't even notice the lack of specified gender - we just made our assumptions and got on with the story.

The novella (rot 13) "Hapunegrq Greevgbel" ol Pbaavr Jvyyvf has the same sort of gender reveal, but I was spoiled on it when I read it, so it didn't have that effect.

THAT'S IT!! Thank you! That's the one I was thinking of!

I wasn't spoiled, but I thought it was obvious - at least obvious enough that I figured it out pretty quickly and then was annoyed that the author strung the reveal out so long.

Ybvf Qhapna'f Gur Gjvfgrq Jvaqbj does a very similar thing as a minor plot point: the main male character's best friend has an ambiguous name and does traditionally male things, and the narrative dodges pronouns, right up until the female protagonist meets said best friend, and they have this exchange:

"Lbh'er Wnzvr?" Genpl fnvq oynaxyl. “Ohg Wnzvr’f n obl!”

Gur tvey ybbxrq fhecevfrq. “Oenq gbyq lbh gung?”

“Npghnyyl, ur qvqa’g,” Genpl nqzvggrq. “V whfg nffhzrq—V zrna, ur xrcg gnyxvat nobhg guvf crefba, Wnzvr, jub jnf uvf orfg sevraq, fb anghenyyl, V gubhtug—”

“Ur jnf evtug, V nz uvf orfg sevraq,” gur tvey fnvq. “V nyjnlf unir orra naq nyjnlf jvyy or."

I confess, it was totally the "award-winning" which tipped me in the direction of guessing Dead All Along, as for some reason I remember reading quite a lot of books with things like that on the cover where that was the case, or someone died tragically halfway through! I'm glad to know it won an award for more cheerful reasons!

Ahhh, this reminds me of the time I read a book saw while browsing at the library, and grabbed and checked out knowing that I had heard good things about it -

You know, that book, it’s about two sisters, and it’s narrated in first person by the youngest sister, and there’s the word “Castle” in the title, and it’s set in rural England, or maybe New England? And it’s about these two sisters, and their life in a big sprawling house and their - dad? uncle? - and the youngest sister is a little ‘quirky’ but it becomes evident across the book and her narration that there’s something deeper going on with her…. but (I thought I remembered from the recommendation I’d heard) it’s a nice light coming-of-age story with a bit of whimsy and romance and some mild underage drinking, some adventures are had and it all turns out right in the end?

Yeah, I read the other one.

OOPS.

It was in retrospect a GREAT reading experience, as my brain was continually trying to find ways that this would all turn out to be a great jape, and ok the tone is a little different than expected but surely errrrrrrrr now the house is on fire

I read the other one recently, but because I kept mentally getting the names mixed up, I also read the one you were thinking of--except I didn't know they had that much in common, so it was a pleasant surprise!

Wait, underage drinking? I don't remember that being a prominent thing in either one.

I mean I think Cassandra is supposed to be 16 or 17 so it's just barely, but isn't there a jolly day out in London or "town" somewhere where she sneaks a glass of wine at the pub and feels very adult?

There's the cherry brandy at the pub in the village. I had the general impression that the drinking age in the UK was sixteen then, though (I was wrong, it was eighteen, though you could have some forms of alcohol with a meal at sixteen), and Cassandra's 17 at the beginning of the book and has a birthday at some point, though whether before or after the cherry brandy I cannot recall.

When I looked up the drinking age in England almost ten years ago because my high school son was going to a Latin camp, I was amused to see that the drinking age is lower than the age where you can buy booze. So OTHER PEOPLE can buy you drinks, and you can drink them, at about 16.

Ever since I read Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky, I've been suspicious of missing pronouns.

On the other hand, Sarah Caudwell gets away with it, because the ambiguous-gender character in those books is the first-person narrator.

This also has a first-person narrator.

So I often find myself browsing the wikipedia homepage when I'm bored at work, and the twist in this book was listed as a "Did You Know?" for recently added/significantly expanded articles the other day. :D Thanks for the writeup!

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The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, by Gene Kemp

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