rachelmanija | Face the Dragon, by Joyce Sweeney

In this YA novel published in 1990, six fourteen-year-olds face their inner dragons while they're in an accelerated academic program which includes a class on Beowulf.

I read this when it first came out, so when I saw a copy at a library book sale, I grabbed it to re-read. It largely holds up, though I'd completely forgotten the main plot and only recalled the theme and the subplot.

My recollection of the book was that the six teenagers are inspired by class discussions on Beowulf to face their personal fears. This is correct. I also recalled that one of the girls was a gymnast with an eating disorder and one of the boys was an athlete partially paralyzed in an accident, and those two bonded over their love of sports and current conflicted/damaging relationship to sports and their bodies, and ended up dating. This is also correct.

What I'd completely forgotten was the main plot, which was about the narrator, Eric, who idolized his best friend, Paul, and had an idealized crush on one of the girls in the class, who he was correctly convinced had a crush on Paul, and incorrectly convinced Paul was mutually attracted to. Paul, who is charming and outgoing, convinces Eric, who is shy, to do a speech class with him, where Eric surprisingly excels. The main plot is about the Eric/Paul relationship, how Eric's jealousy nearly wrecks it, and how the boys both end up facing their dragons and fixing their friendship.

Paul's dragon is that he's secretly gay. The speech teacher takes a dislike to him, promotes Eric to the debate team when Paul deserves it more (and tells Eric this in private), and finally tries to destroy Paul in front of the whole class by accusing him of being gay! Eric defends Paul, Paul confesses his secret to him, and the boys repair their friendship.

While a bit dated/historical, especially in terms of both boys knowing literally nothing about what being gay actually means in terms of living your life, it's a very nicely done novel with lots of good character sketches. The teachers are all real characters, as are the six kids - all of whom have their own journeys. The crush object, for instance, is a pretty rich girl who's been crammed into a narrow box of traditional femininity, and her journey is to destroy the idealized image that Eric is in love with and her parents have imposed on her - and part of Eric's journey is to accept the role of being her supportive friend who helps her do it.

I was surprised and pleased to discover that this and other Sweeney books are currently available as ebooks. I will check some out.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This sounds like a good book, but if I'd read it as a kid I would have been deeply disappointed that the dragons were a metaphor and there weren't any actual dragons.

Argh, as a kid determined to read every book in the public library about dragons, and library books that didn't always retain the cover text on hardcovers, a bit of a Schrodinger's dragon to pick up books with dragon in the title. Lawrence Yep was the author that got me more than once as a child because sometimes the dragons in the title were literal like "Dragon of the Lost Sea" and sometimes they were metaphorical like "Dragonwings".

You eloquently describe my exact struggles!! Schrodinger's dragon indeed.

I was so annoyed by L'Engle's Dragons in the Waters and The Young Unicorns. Because from her, you expect actual dragons and unicorns!

The crush object, for instance, is a pretty rich girl who's been crammed into a narrow box of traditional femininity, and her journey is to destroy the idealized image that Eric is in love with and her parents have imposed on her - and part of Eric's journey is to accept the role of being her supportive friend who helps her do it.

That's very good.

(In 1990, I would also have blown a fuse at the absence of actual dragons.)

Man, I wish I'd known about this a few days ago when I was arguing with somebody about whether or not people were allowed to publish YA books with LGBTQ themes in the 1990s.

(It was a stupid argument, he was wrong, I was right, and he just would not admit it.)

Also: Which of those two boys is the narrator? Is it the one gazing forcefully out of the cover, or the other one who looks like he might be checking out the other one's butt?

The narrator is the straight boy, but the gay boy is not in love with him.

I mean. Occasionally one would slip by. But in general, people were not. Books with LGBTQ themes were getting aggressively suppressed pre-publication well into the 2000s. Ask me how I know!

Oh, definitely! And if all he was saying was that it was more difficult to get published, to get sold, to stay in print then I would've agreed. I mean, obviously!

But no, he said it was literally impossible, and when I pointed out that I could name a few such titles he said that they must have been done by the indie press, and when I went ahead and named them and said "no, they weren't" he said "Well! I never heard of those! And I grew up in a liberal enclave with a bookseller uncle! And I'm gay!" and - well, I don't know about him, but I still managed to at least stumble across Weetzie Bat and Deliver Us From Evie on ordinary Borders bookshelves as a kid. (And The Shuteyes, but I didn't realize that was about gays until I was an adult. In retrospect, that allegory is not subtle.)

He was very annoying.

I just feel it devalues the very real struggle to get those books published back then by then turning around and claiming that nobody managed it at all. And in his case, when he said "literally impossible" I think he didn't mean "very difficult", I think he actually meant "it never could happen ever".

(Actually, I lie, I got The Shuteyes from a Scholastic book order. Given that the author, under her other pennames, wrote YA LGBTQ lit and lesbian pulp fiction I think that somebody involved in the publication of her middle grade fiction knew that they were also about gays.)

I think it was actually easier in the 1990s than in the 2000s. It's like there was a little wave of recognition and affirmation coming out of the HIV/AIDS era, and then the right wing moved to crush that.

Hm. I'd have to have way more detailed information to have an opinion.

...also, I feel like I should add that the context is he was trying to say that maybe JKR is transphobic but not homophobic (like that's better?) and she could not possibly have added explicitly gay characters to HP at any point even if she'd really really wanted to, therefore... something?

Not quite a ban, but in the UK Section 28 had basically the same effect - if school libraries and public libraries were afraid to buy your teen book, the market suddenly became very limited. I suspect it's why Jacqueline Wilson didn't touch the subject until the 21st century; she got round every other social problem.

Absolutely! We were both talking about the USA market, and to be clear, I definitely understand and believe that it was more difficult than it is today to get those published, and that it's not so easy today either.

But the number published every year of the decade is more than 0. That's literally all I was trying to say to him, and oh boy he was not having it. (There's actually surprisingly more than I realized - I complained on my journal and people spent some time reminiscing. I'm not counting the ones where a person or a couple is obviously queer-coded but you can't prove it, though they're there too.)

Oh wow I'd totally forgotten that novel. I had it on my shelves for eighth graders, without the (then) director, who was conservative, knowing, then later found out she wasn't nearly as conservative as the conservative parents thought she was. All I remember now was a couple of my eager readers asking if there were actual dragons in it.

Technically, there is an actual dragon. In the book they read.

I vaguely recall that, but it wasn't a dragon story of the sort these particular 13 yr olds wanted!

Hope you gave them Dragonsong or Talking to Dragons.

They BURNED through those. Well, the Wrede. I had to replace it a couple of times over the years. For some reason the McAffrey wasn't as popular, especially as time went on. Ditto THE HOBBIT, though Cornelia Funke's was a hit, and also ERAGON, when that came out--also JEREMY THATCHER, DRAGON HATCHER.

Oh wow, I remember this book! I liked it, for the reasons you discuss. (Also enjoyed the little Beowulf nods throughout--the test which placed the six of them into the advanced program was the GEAT, and the evil speech teacher is Mr. Drake.) I remember fondly a line near the end, in which Eric thinks something like "...it was actually pretty nice to be with a girl who could sit there in a prom dress and really stuff her face," although I've forgotten the specifics.

That is EXACTLY the line!

I also really enjoyed the Beowulf bits, but totally missed both the nods you mention! Those are great.

Face the Dragon, by Joyce Sweeney

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