Dairy Queen

Dairy Queen
Murdock, Catherine Gilbert, 2006.
Little Brother.
New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
288 pages, hardcover.
$16.00

ISBN 9780618683079.

Format: book
Rating: 4.0/5.0 stars

Plot Summary
DJ Schwenk is a 15-year-old, the only daughter of a small dairy farm family in Wisconsin. Her two older brothers are off to college on football scholarships, and her younger brother Curtis can be a nuisance, but comes through and helps with chores when she tells him.

With mom is too busy with her roles as teacher and acting principal, and her dad, a former football coach, hurt and unable to help, DJ takes on the bulk of the farm duties.

Like a typical family, if DJ wants her dad to know something she tells mom. She doesn’t bother trying to talk to Curtis because he’s usually unresponsive, and her best friend Amber spends so much time identifying all the people she thinks are gay that DJ has pretty much given up on communication.

As punishment, and to learn the meaning of work, Brian a quarterback for a rival football team, comes to help work on the farm. He is cruel at first, telling DJ she lives like her cows: never making choices, simply following a prescribed path and never questioning or really living.

Now, DJ’s goal is to change all that – starting with football, her one true passion. If she could play, if she could make the River Bend football team, if she could live her dream, then she wouldn’t be like some cow. Then, maybe Brian would see her for who she really is – and just maybe, he’d like her as much as she is starting to like him.

Critical Evaluation
In Dairy Queen, DJ is a lovable, courageous young lady, with a clear and true voice that is somewhat predictable yet acceptable because of her likability as our main character. Murdock develops this complex, though seemingly typical family dynamic where there is little to no communication, so that readers see the world only through DJ’s eyes and mind. Like teens are, DJ is a tad bit rebellious, lives out loud in her own head and readers are exposed to her sometimes sad and sometimes hilarious ideas and spin on those around her and for life in general.

Murdock’s creation of Amber’s character, who is struggling with her sexual identity with an attraction to DJ, seems to be heavy in the beginning and obvious to attentive readers. DJ shies away from Amber and begins to spend more time working and training with Brian, Murdock rewards readers with the real DJ, the one with hopes and dreams that are becoming seemingly possible.

Reader’s Annotation
Why, you ask, would a girl want to play football? Well, if you’ve ever sprinted down a pasture, and looked over your shoulder, seen the ball coming, and reached out to catch it – if you knew that feeling, you’d totally get it – you’d understand because it is the most perfect feeling in the world.

Information About the Author
Catherine Gilbert Murdock was born in 1960 and grew up in a small town in Connecticut with her sister Liz (author of Eat, Pray, Love), ran both track and cross-country in high school and has absolutely no skill when it comes to sports that require a ball. As an adult, for many years, Murdock enjoyed participating in triathlons: swimming, biking, and running.

While Liz was deemed the writer of the family, Catherine happily took her role as an avid reader to heart and was the “empress of our library’s four-shelf YA section.”

Dairy Queen was Murdock’s first attempt at writing since short story writing high school, as her years struggling as a screenwriter do not count, as they were not successful. However, the screenwriting attempts did prove fruitful in her learning how to master the art of storytelling. Dairy Queen began as a nugget of a premise from a dream Murdock had where a college girl was playing football against her dream boyfriend.

(Murdock, 2011).

Genre

Fiction: Contemporary – passions

Read-Alikes
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin
The Other Half of Me by Emily Franklin

Curriculum Ties
Dairy Queen ties nicely to a health study on communication skills, and the impact it can have on one’s overall health and well-being when they choose to stay silent for too long.

Booktalking Ideas
1) DJ sharing her passion to play football - a girl in an area where they usually only watch, wondering how to keep it a secret from her father, the former coach
2) when Brian shows up to work on the farm and says cruel, hurtful things to DJ

Book Trailer Links
Book Trailer by Reader

Reading Level/Interest Age
Grades 7 - 10 / Ages 12 and up

Challenge Issues
teen drinking, role reversal, girl playing football, silence and profanity, lack of parental respect, relationships, homosexuality

First, I would share some of the recommendations used as part of the selection process, including reviews from resources as noted below. Next, I would point out the value in allowing these types of materials to be optional reading as teens grow ever closer to adulthood and making their own decisions. Finally, following our school district’s policy #KEC, after explaining that our school district’s philosophy is that no parent or group of parents has the right to determine the reading matter for children other than their own, I would refer the parent or community member to the building principal, so that he/she can file a written complaint to begin the process of review.

Awards
Best Book for Young Adults
Borders Original Voices Award for YA or Independent Reader, 2006
South Carolina Book Award Nominee for YA, 2009
Abraham Lincoln Award Nominee, 2009

Why Title Included & Selection Tools
Dairy Queen is a fun read, where our main character, DJ, is seeking something atypical for a girl, and that makes it a tad bit more appealing to some readers. With the romance tossed in, it even appeals to those all about romance who would never normally read a ‘sports book’.

School Library Journal, Booklist, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Horn Book