Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Bayport Public Library | YA FICTION MUR | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.
Harsh words indeed, from Brian Nelson of all people. But, D. J. can't help admitting, maybe he's right.
When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.
Stuff like why her best friend, Amber, isn't so friendly anymore. Or why her little brother, Curtis, never opens his mouth. Why her mom has two jobs and a big secret. Why her college-football-star brothers won't even call home. Why her dad would go ballistic if she tried out for the high school football team herself. And why Brian is so, so out of her league.
When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.
Welcome to the summer that fifteen-year-old D. J. Schwenk of Red Bend, Wisconsin, learns to talk, and ends up having an awful lot of stuff to say.
Author Notes
Catherine Gilbert Murdock was born in Charleston, South Carolina and grew up on a small farm in Litchfield, Connecticut. She attended Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania. She writes young adult books including Princess Ben, Dairy Queen, The Off Season, and Front and Center.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Horn Book Review
(Middle School, High School) Tall and strong from tossing bales of hay on her Red Bend, Wisconsin, farm, D.J. Schwenk also has a practical, understatedly humorous voice that drives this first-person memoir of her fifteenth summer. D.J. has shouldered the work of running the family dairy farm since her dad got injured and her brothers went to school on football scholarships, but her routine gets a jolt when she's offered the chance to coach Brian Nelson, quarterback for rival Hawley High School, in a summer fitness program. Gradually, it dawns on D.J. that she is intensely attracted to Brian, self-centered and privileged though he is. Jazzed by her coaching success and tired of doing what's expected of her, D.J. tries out for the Red Bend football team and wins a place as a defensive linebacker, which means she'll face Brian on the field. The tale's grounding in Midwestern practicality contrasts agreeably with D.J.'s ongoing epiphanies -- about her laconic family and her especially taciturn brother, her best friend's coming out, her role on an all-male team, her relationship with Brian, and her future plans. This extremely likable narrator invites readers into her confidence and then rewards them with an engrossing tale of love, family, and football. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7-10-After her father is injured, 15-year-old D.J. Schwenk takes over the lion's share of work on her family's small Wisconsin dairy farm. Between milking cows, mucking out the barn, and mowing clover, this erstwhile jock takes on training Brian, the rival high school's quarterback. A monster crush and a tryout for her own school's football team ensue. D.J., a charming if slightly unreliable narrator, does a good deal of soul-searching while juggling her grinding work schedule, an uncommunicative family, and a best friend who turns out to be gay. Savvy readers will anticipate plot turns, but the fun is in seeing each twist through D.J.'s eyes as she struggles with whether she really is, as Brian puts it, like a cow headed unquestioningly down the cattle shoot of life. Wry narration and brisk sports scenes bolster the pacing, and D.J.'s tongue-tied nature and self-deprecating inner monologues contribute to the novel's many belly laughs. At the end, though, it is the protagonist's heart that will win readers over. Dairy Queen will appeal to girls who, like D.J., aren't "girly-girls" but just girls, learning to be comfortable in their own skins. The football angle may even hook some boys. Fans of Joan Bauer and Louise Rennison will flock to this sweet confection of a first novel, as enjoyable as any treat from the real DQ.-Amy Pickett, Ridley High School, Folsom, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Finally, a football book a girl can love. With wry, self-deprecating wit, D.J. Schwenk narrates this story of her 15th summer. With her older brothers at college on football scholarships, and her father nursing a bad hip, most of the grueling work necessary to keep a small dairy farm running has fallen on D.J.'s broad shoulders. She had to quit basketball halfway through the season, and neglecting her homework earned her an F in sophomore English. Now, in addition to mucking out the barn and bringing in the hay, a family friend who coaches the rival high school's football team, has asked D.J. to train his talented but lazy starting quarterback, Brian Nelson. Brian may have brains, money and looks, but he's going to learn the meaning of hard work from D.J. And he, in turn, will teach D.J. how to communicate. (The way D.J. internalizes his observation of her, "You're like a cow," provides an ironic thread throughout.) This is Romeo and Juliet in Wisconsin, with cows, but it's more comic than tragic. Teens will readily identify with D.J.'s struggle to articulate her feelings of anger, confusion and romance within a family where silent, stalwart self-reliance is valued above all else. Murdock takes no cheap shotsevery character she creates is empathetic: the electively mute younger brother, Curtis, the jaded best friend, Amber, even cranky, cold Dad, who finds his place (in the kitchen) when injury sidelines him. With humor, sports action and intelligence abundant, this tale has something for everyone. Ages 12-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Gr. 6-9. D. J.'s family members don't talk much, especially about the fact that 15-year-old D. J. does all the heavy work on their Wisconsin dairy farm since her father broke his hip and her two older brothers left for college. Nor do they talk about why D. J.'s mom, a teacher, is so busy filling in for the middle-school principal that she's never home. And they never, ever discuss the reason why her brothers haven't called home for more than six months. So when D. J. decides to try out for the Red Bend football team, even though she's been secretly training (and falling for) Brian Nelson, the cute quarterback from Hawley, Red Bend's rival, she becomes the talk of the town. Suddenly, her family has quite a bit to say. This humorous, romantic romp excels at revealing a situation seldom explored in YA novels, and it will quickly find its place alongside equally well-written stories set in rural areas, such as Weaver's Full Service (2005), Richard Peck's The Teacher's Funeral (2004), and Kimberly Fusco's Tending to Grace (2004). --Jennifer Hubert Copyright 2006 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A painfully funny novel takes readers into the head of D.J. Schwenk, frustrated dairy farmer-cum-football trainer-cum-star linebacker. D.J. comes from a football family: Her two older brothers were legends in high school; her father used to coach. But ever since her father took out his hip, the responsibility for the farm has fallen on her shoulders, causing her to quit basketball and track and to fail sophomore English. When a family friend who coaches the rival team sends her his cocky quarterback for training over the course of one grueling summer, she learns more about her own capabilities and desires than she thought possible. This sounds like any other coming-of-age novel, but D.J.'s voice is hilariously introspective, the revelation that she lives life like a cow--"I just did what my parents told me, and my coaches, and [my friend], and [my dog] even. . . . I was nothing but a cow on two legs"--guiding both D.J. and readers through her growing friendship with the obnoxious quarterback and her decision to do the unexpected: play football. A fresh teen voice, great football action and cows--this novel rocks. (Fiction. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
This whole enormous deal wouldn't have happened, none of it, if Dad hadn't messed up his hip moving the manure spreader. Some people laugh at that, like Brian did. The first time I said Manure Spreader he bent in half, he was laughing so hard. Which would have been hilariously funny except that it wasn't. I tried to explain how important a manure spreader is, but it only made him laugh harder, in this really obnoxious way he has sometimes, and besides, you're probably laughing now too. So what. I know where your milk comes from, and your hamburgers. I'll always remember the day it all started because Joe Namath was so sick. Dad names all his cows after football players. It's pretty funny, actually, going to the 4-H fair, where they list the cows by farm and name. Right there next to "Happy Valley Buttercup" is "Schwenk Walter Payton," because none of my grandpas or great-grandpas could ever come with up a name for our place better than boring old "Schwenk Farm." Joe Namath was the only one left from the year Dad named the cows after Jets players, which I guess is kind of fitting in a way, seeing how important the real Joe Namath was and all. Our Joe was eleven years old, which is ancient for a cow, but she was such a good milker and calver we couldn't help but keep her. These past few weeks, though, she'd really started failing, and on this morning she wasn't even at the gate with the other cows waiting for me, she was still lying down in the pasture, and I had to help her to stand up and everything, which is pretty hard because she weighs about a ton, and she was really limping going down to the barn, and her eyes were looking all tired. I milked her first so she could lie down again, which she did right away. Then when milking was over I left her right where she was in the barn, and she didn't even look like she minded. Smut couldn't figure out what I was doing and she wouldn't come with me to take the cows back to pasture--she just stood there in the barn, chewing on her slimy old football and waiting for me to figure out I'd forgotten one of them. Finally she came, just so she could race me back home like she always does, and block me the way Win taught her. Smut was his dog, but now that he's not talking to Dad anymore, or to me, or ever coming home again it seems like, I guess now she's mine. When I went in for breakfast Curtis was reading the sports section and eating something that looked kind of square and flat and black. Like roofing shingles. Curtis will eat anything because he's growing so much. Once he complained about burnt scrambled eggs, but other than that he just shovels it in. Which makes me look like I'm being all picky about stuff that, trust me, is pretty gross. Dad handed me a plate and shuffled back to the stove with his walker. When things got really bad last winter with his hip and Mom working two jobs and me doing all the farm work because you can't milk thirty-two cows with a walker, Dad decided to chip in by taking over the kitchen. But he never said, "I'm going to start cooking" or "I'm not too good at this, how could I do it better?" or anything like that. He just started putting food in front of us and then yelling at us if we said anything, no matter how bad it looked. Like now. "It's French toast," Dad said like it was totally obvious. He hadn't shaved in a while, I noticed, and his forehead was white the way it'll always be from all those years of wearing a feed cap while his chin and nose and neck were getting so tan. I forced down a bite. It tasted kind of weird and familiar. "What's in here?" "Cinnamon." "Cinnamon? Where'd you get that idea?" "The Food Channel." He said it really casual, like he didn't know what it meant. Curtis and I looked at each other. Curtis doesn't laugh, really--he's the quietest one in the family, next to him I sound like Oprah Winfrey or something, he makes Mom cry sometimes he's so quiet--but he was grinning. I tried to sound matter-of-fact, which was hard because I was just about dying inside: "How long you been watching the Food Channel, Dad?" "You watch your mouth." Curtis went back to his paper, but you could tell from his shoulders that he was still grinning. I pushed the shingles around on my plate, wishing I didn't have to say this next thing. "Dad? Joe's looking real bad." "How bad?" "Bad," I said. Dad knew what I was talking about; he'd seen her yesterday. I hate it when he acts like I'm stupid. We didn't say anything more. I sat there forcing down my shingles and doing the math in my head. I'd known Joe since I was four years old. That's more than three-quarters of my life, she'd been around. Heck, Curtis was only a baby when she was born. He couldn't even remember her noot existing. Thinking stuff like that, there's really not much point to making conversation. After breakfast me and Curtis disinfected all theeeee milk equipment and worked on the barn the way we have to every day, cleaning out the calf pens and sweeping the aisles and shoveling all the poop into the gutter in the barn floor, then turning on the conveyer belt in the gutter to sweep it out to the manure cart so we can haul it away. Back when Grandpa Warren was alive, the barn just shined it was so clean. He'd spread powdered lime on the floor every day to keep everything fresh, and wipe down the light bulbs and the big fans that brought fresh air in, and whitewash the walls every year. The walls hadn't been painted in a long time, though. I guess Dad was hurting too much these past few years to do any real cleaning, and I sure didn't have the time. So the barn looked pretty crappy, and smelled it too. Whenever I passed by Joe Namath I'd take a minute to pat her and tell her what a good cow she was, because I had a pretty good idea what was coming. When I heard a truck pull into the yard, I knew it was the cattle dealer come to take her away. I gave her another pat. "I'll be right back," I said, like that would help, and went out to say hello at least. Delay it. Curtis followed me out because we don't get that many visitors. It wasn't the cattle dealer standing there, though. Dad came out of the kitchen pushing his walker, this satisfied look on his face. He spotted me. "I'm sure you know who this is?" Yeah. I did. Curtis right behind me whistled between his teeth, only it wasn't whistling so much as blowing, like the sound bulls make when they're really mad. Because standing in front of his brand-new Cherokee in his brand-new work boots, looking about as much a part of our junky old farmyard as a UFO, was Brian Nelson. Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. Copyright (c) 2006 by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. Reprinted by permission Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Excerpted from Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
