Mister Posterior and the Genius Child

by Emily Jenkins

A Barnes & Noble's Winter Discover New Writers pick!   Woodstock was over. The Beatles had just broken up. Sesame Street was new. And people in Cambridge, Massachusetts were getting in touch with their feelings. It was 1970, the year Vanessa Brick was picked as a Super Duper Speller for the Cambridge Harmony School. In this novel from a brilliant new voice in fiction, a now-grown Vanessa looks back on a time that was less innocent than it seemed€¦   I remember how it was to be eight. I remember the playground rhymes, the fierce cliques, and the girls we called €œThe Fu**ers.€ That year was the year my mother adopted an unprecedented number of cats and dated an ardent nudist. I f

Genres: Fiction, Coming Of Age, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Chick Lit, Humor, Book Club

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2002

About the author

Emily Jenkins is the author of many books for children, including the recent picture books Tiger and Badger, illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay, and Princessland, illustrated by Yoko Tanaka. Her chapter books include the Toys series, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky; she is co-author of the Upside-down Magic series. Emily Jenkins lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mooning - the act of displaying one's bare buttocks. It can be done to express protest, scorn, disrespect, or provocation, but can also simply be done for shock value or fun.*

Vanessa is a fairly content third-grader when Marie, the new girl who smells like minestrone, makes fun of Vanessa's sandwiches, squeezes her shoulders, and pushes her against the wall before mooning her.

This is the Vanessa's first "mooning," but oddly enough, not the last. Soon, a strange pair of buttocks are wiggling around outside her bedroom window at night.

What can it all mean?

This is Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1970. Couples meet at ashrams. Men have huge, walrus-moustaches. Vegetarians are running wild, and teachers are wearing braids and sandals.

Vanessa attends a "progressive" private school where children make individual choices and develop at their own personal growth pace. Things used to be okay, but since the mooning incident, nothing seems quite right. Suddenly, her best friend is acting strangely. Her mother won't stop collecting cats. Her babysitter treats her like an agony aunt, telling her tales of orgies and teenage lust. Somehow, that ass on the other side of the glass now seems like the most stable thing in her life.

It all comes to a head when Vanessa volunteers to write a play for the Super Duper Spelling Group. In an attempt to reflect current events, AND use as many "impressive" spelling words as possible, she dreams up characters named Mister Posterior and Mrs. Hindquarters. One of them has a collection of cats named Syphilis, Gestate, and Homosexual. Precocious? Yeah. She's all that and a bag of chips. Vanessa is soon persona non grata with the P.T.A., and the girl none of the moms want their daughters to play with.

There are more surprises in this fun, quirky book, including the revelation of who owns the mystery heinie. The author has done a great job of capturing the secret lives of young girls. I grew up around this time period, and her descriptions are pretty darned accurate...right down to the sinister-sounding jump-rope rhymes. I will state right now, however, I was never mooned.

More's the pity, perhaps.


*Wikipedia

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always been fascinated with the 60's.
This book seems to me to accurately use
that time as a backdrop for the story, to
truthfully show the sixties as a time of
deep confusion about values. Vanessa,
the narrator, is a great mix of both
childlike simplicity and adult perspective,
so that we readers can view the sixties in
both ways at once. Some of my favorite parts
were the House of Terror at Fright Night,
Luke and Vanessa playing Peter Pan, and
all the conversations between Vanessa and
her "mouse-sitter". It was in dialogue that
I thought the author best caught the time,
working out, in all its nuances, what is right
and what is true. Quirky. Fun. Recommended.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who's on an E. Lockheart/Emily Jenkins kick? Me! That's who! Told from the perspective of Vanessa, a third grade girl at a private school called Cambridge Harmony, it was so chock full of solid detail and observations it immediately transported me from my summer vacation, right back into the school year that had just ended. I felt like I was back at work again. Yet I persisted. This book was funny, in a "safe for public transportation" way meaning you will smirk, but the guffaws will be kept to a minimum. I also loved the adults' reactions to Vanessa's actions and comments as they tell you much more about what the adults are wrapped up in. This was a really solid novel.

[Lisa]

this book is damn funny. the tale is told through an 8-year old's eyes, yet with a voice of experience and large vocabulary words.

[Jailynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mister Posterior and the Genius Child perfectly marries the curiosity of children and the ignorance of adults. Some books put children in sexual settings and it just makes the reader uncomfortable, but Emily Jenkins writes Vanessa, an 8 year old girl, in a way that doesn't make the reader too squeamish when she starts learning about "adult" topics. For example, when her teacher teaches students how to spell fornication or when her male friend can't sleep in her sleeping bag with her and she doesn't know why.

Vanessa does things you yourself did as a child (pretend to be completely engrossed in your toys to overhear an adult conversation, eavesdrop on your babysitter, struggle to navigate the politics of the playground) and Vanessa was so innocent/naive that I was back in my elementary school mindset with her. So when Vanessa sees a bottom at her window (an experience you probably didn't have), I completely understood her and her absence of fear ("Everyone has a bottom.").

Emily Jenkins writes multidimensional adults without using paragraphs of narration to describe the character (my biggest pet peeve!). You learn bits and pieces of every character and have to infer their motives since the story is narrated by Vanessa and she isn't involved in everything. Any questions you have get answered so you don't get frustrated trying to piece everything together. The story has great pacing and keeps you wrapped up in this world. I did not want to put this book down just because I was so interested in these characters and the "mystery" flasher.

I recommend this book for anyone. I loved it for many reasons and it was fun to relate it to my own childhood experiences. Vanessa's logic, in typical 8 year old fashion, doesn't always make sense and is quite funny so the book stays relatively light. There are a large number of douchebag men though so beware of that.

[Gribblet · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's something childlike about this book - as if the author is herself a child telling a story that never ends. That maybe makes no sense; but here's something. I believed it wholeheartedly until I read the acknowledgements, wherin the author admitted that it was indeed a made up story, a lie, a novel, not a memoir. That's something like an achievement. While Emily Jenkis is not yet the best writer she can be, I will be reading more of her stuff because it will, I think, be a pleasure to watch her develop.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read on a plane from San Diego to NC. I think I had read it before but I didn't remember it well enough. not even all the stuff about BUTTS. it was super fun and fast to read and did the elementary school age girls really well. I also loved Vanessa's babysitter & her love life, & how the mom interacted with her parents. & of course, all the cats. I would like some antelope and lemon curtains too.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Told largely from the perspective of an eight-year-old girl, in Cambridge (MA) in 1970. There are a few moments of intrusion by the adult flashback narrator, but overall I think it's a lovely wonderful narrative voice that really captures what it's like to be *eight*. It's also damn funny.

[Kasandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cute but generally boring, though the last 20 pages were surprisingly good. The author's adult voice is far more believable than her child voice.

[Tyra Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goes in my top 5 . Found it out of no where, and greatful I did. I related so much to this little girl, navigating what it means to be a human.

[Deb Noack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird but compelling.

[Joy Feazell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stupid, silly book with no real plot.

[Denise Benoit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Debut novel. Set in Cambridge

[Chris Go · Rating 4 out of 5]

his is Emily Jenkins debut novel, and it is actually written for adults. It is set in the 1970s and most of the story is told by 8-year old Vanessa who is being raised by her divorced mother, Debbie. It does get a bit strange, but it was a different time. Vanessa attends a Montessori-type school called Cambridge Harmony on scholarship. Her best friend, Anu, is traumatized when she is mooned by a man on her way home from school. This leaves Vanessa to fend for herself on the playground. Meanwhile Debbie is dating a nudist and collecting cats. The problems really start though when Vanessa is asked to write a play using her spelling words which include many sexual terms thanks to the curiousness of her classmates and the school's policy to provide information when a student asks. To make things worse, Vanessa names her characters with clever bottom references. When the parents see copies of it, there is much debate over appropriateness and who is to be held responsible for this behavior.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a funny, sad, quirky book that will make you remember what it's like to be eight-years-old. Although it's specifically about Vanessa Brick, "the most notorious child in the history of the Cambridge Harmony PTA," Jenkins gets the universal details of growing up exactly right -- the vagaries of having a best friend, how little slights become hugely important, and how big events are too incomprehensible to take seriously. Because the story covers only about six months time, there's not a lot of plot; it's just a small story about all the incidents that contributed to Vanessa's becoming so notorious. Jenkins has a low-key style, a dry sense of humor, and doesn't ruin the narrative by neatly tying up all the loose ends as a lesser writer might have. Loved this book.

[Johna Van · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a sweet book and a fast read. I love books from a child's point of view, and it's being set in Cambridge about the time we lived there is a big plus. This story is about an 8 year old girl, Vanessa that is being mooned repeatedly in her bedroom window, and does not think too much about it, never mentioning it to anyone. When the truth is revealed through a sighting by the sitter, there is mayhem and people are terribly concerned about Vanessa's psyche and mental health. It is a story about maturing, childhood fantasies, and friendships in a era of pop psychology, gurus and food fads.

[Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was really great.

At times, the main character seemed a little too old and knew a little too much for an eight-year-old, even if she was living in a "liberal" household where no subject seemed too mature to discuss, it seemed unbelievable.

However, this author is a wonderful story-teller. It is easy to love Vanessa and her mother and their house full of cats. Every character, you could relate to and empathize with.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a weird little book that I checked out from the library because Emily Jenkins is the real name of E. Lockhart, one of my favorite YA authors. It makes sense that this wouldn't live up to the great Frankie Landeu-Banks or Ruby Oliver, but you can see some of Jenkins/Lockhart's amazing wit and wild creativity. I'll be interested to see if she ever goes back to writing for adults, but really, this one is only for E. Lockhart completists.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful quirky story. I grew up in roughly the same time period, but we were a little closer to the forced integration of the big cities than the touchy-feely world of this novel.

Vanessa is a wonderful 8-year old character and her observations and experiences are a lot of fun. I wondered where "Mr. Posterior" was going to come into the story, and his appearance was a highlight!

I enjoyed this story a lot.

[Libscigrl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. While not a literary masterpiece, it reminds me of growing up and being in elementary school. How stupid stuff is so big and important in your mind. This book is like reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing or Superfudge (both Judy Blume), but for adults (definitely don't want your kids to read this, unless your ready to have "the talk"! Nice respite from heavy, older, prose-y books :)

[The Mad Mad Madeline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just plain weird. The whole time I was bracing myself for a weird/uncomfortable sexual encounter which (fortunately) never quite came.

Vanessa is a delightful main character, and her point of view is important. Everything else about the book, however, made me feel icky and weird for lack of a better explanation.

[Cain · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a joy to read. It is by no means a literary masterpiece, but a wonderful light read. Told through the eyes of a child in a socially liberal household, it hints at the powers of perception. I laughed out loud more than once while reading this.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a GREAT first novel by Emily Jenkins. I found myself transported back to my own adolescence and couldn't believe how authentic the experiences were of the main character, Vanessa. This is a novel every woman, who was ever a little girl, should read. I devoured it!

[LeAnn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a sweet, charming book that makes you laugh. It is a fairly quick and easy read that is ideal for vacation or a long road trip. It's amazingly light-hearted even when dealing with some heavy issues. A lot of fun!

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came across this in looking for other books by the author of "Toys Go Out". I laughed out loud when it came to Mister Posterior part. Vanessa is a funny, Clementine sort of character, but dealing with heavier issues than Clementine does.

[Joan de Luce · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book. I got rid of hundreds of books that piled up on my shelf, but not this one. Only kept about 10, because there are very few books I can re-read, but this is one of them. I hope she writes more adult books in the future.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was such a strange book. Funny in some parts but so sexualized for a viewpoint of an eight year old, even for the 70s. I really began to wonder what the book was actually about once I finished it.

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed it - cute book!

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice light read. Actually had me giggling at some parts.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

a really easy, engrossing read. the protagonist is a little girl who is sassy, precocious, misunderstood. it's a great story -- the childhood narration is so believable and smart.