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