Emergency readiness goes boink: on The Defense of Thaddeus A. Ledbetter, by John Gosselink

The Defense of Thaddeus A. Ledbetter, by John Gosselink, is an "epistolary novel". That is, it's told as a series of letters and emails and journals and paperwork and drawings, by or to or concerning 12-year-old Thaddeus, who has been placed in In-School Suspension for the entire second semester of the school year. Thaddeus is the Misunderstood Victim of a Massive Injustice, and he writes primarily to himself, his lawyer uncle Pete, and especially his school principal Frank Cooper, who has never encountered anything like him. He is of course concerned with his own vindication, but he is selfless about it: even in exile, he shares his school improvement (and church improvement) (and scout-troop improvement) schemes, plus his handy educational Thaddeus Fun Facts, and even the official rules of Slug Bug with his persecutors.

Cooper and Pete share their own perspectives, which for some reason aren't always in exact accord. They seem over-worried about discipline forms where the "cause for referral" is a scrawled "HE TRIED TO SET ME ON FIRE!", and too little interested in the perspectives of, say,
classmate Alison, who passes on her own affection and those of fellow 7th-graders who find that the teachers are much worse-behaved without Thaddeus around to challenge their logic and grammar. The novel proceeds chronologically but with extensive flashbacks, as each vile accusation of chaos-mongering and attempted manslaughter, all of which were in fact done entirely for the greater good, is dealt with in turn, building up to the oddly-resented True Emergency Drill. (Because how can we honestly prepare for emergency with scheduled "drills" where everyone knows what's going on?)

My first fond reaction to it, reading it to myself in 2010 -- having browsed the New Books for Middle Schoolers while my then-toddlers were playing with the bookstore's Thomas the Train equipment, and taken a few pages to get myself properly hooked -- was to see Thaddeus as an alternate-world version of 12-year-old me if I'd had the energy and self-confidence to be way more annoying than I really managed. My second reaction to it, the sudden 2017 realization while seeing it on the shelves, is likely of broader interest: that Thaddeus is a plausible guess at what Bill Watterson's Calvin, so brilliant and assertive and unmanageable, would have been like at 12.

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It's my blog, so I'll indulge the first and more personal impression until that next row of asterisks. I think it was triggered by Thaddeus's repeatedly urging Cooper to do his morning announcements in limerick form, so that students might actually pay attention for once. I was 15 when I got my chance to do school announcements, a two-week shift that was terminated halfway through because I'd felt a similar sense of duty. I don't recall any achievements as announcer that would read as triumphs of wit for grownups out of context. But against the usual drone, I was amazingly popular that week, getting stopped and congratulated even by teachers, reading the pre-scripted texts in a selection of excitable fake voices with little jokey asides and slightly-snarky adjusted descriptions. Before my fifth day, I was told "I don't think our conception of the morning announcements and yours match. Could you please read them exactly as written?" I proceeded to, in an exaggerated robotic monotone; I was fired. Next Monday, Jeff Ward also read the words in an exaggerated robotic monotone, but the exaggerated robotic monotone was his normal everyday voice, so for some reason that was okay.

It set a tone for my high school career that would be struck again. When the hit rap act 2 Live Crew were arrested for (not at all incorrect) obscenity charges, I felt that Americans were let down by professional news accounts that censored out their vilest lyrics, making them articles about nothing; I vowed that as editorialist for my high school newspaper, I would get full transcripts of their lyrics and write so clearly about the case that -- even though I came out in the end against their treatment -- everyone reading the selected quotes could understand the valid points the censors were making. I was as shocked and offended as Thaddeus when my editor uploaded my article with reams of blanks rendering it illegible and senseless. The only small victory I emerged with, as we argued late into the night, was sneaking in a reference to the Dead Kennedys song "Too ----- to Fuck".

I also got into trouble running for student council president, although that was more equivalent to my and Thaddeus's morning announcement stand. I didn't want to win, where Thaddeus absolutely would have: he would have assumed he'd have carte blanche to start installing his Important Student Lane, and his new improved discipline form (in which among other things "cause for referral" is replaced by "alleged 'offense'"). I just wanted the posters and speeches to be less boring, and my sense of humor, unlike 2 Live Crew's, should have been considered innocuous. But the one allotted large banner my running mate and I submitted was scissored to pieces. And when my campaign speech started parodying new rules I didn't like by pretending to endorse them, the vice principal pushed me off stage before I could even finish my argument that while banning hats in order to attack gang symbols had been a great start, gangs were smart enough to adopt special shirts and shoes and pants, so that safety required us to ban the wearing those forms of clothing as well.

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But Calvin was a cleverer and more assertive 6-year-old than I ever was. At 6 he was a knowingly destructive force, but also a lonely one. It's reasonable to imagine that would have started to wear on him, such that he decided to use his obviously vast intelligence telling everyone off in *constructive* ways. He might even have outgrown having a stuffed tiger as a best friend (or for that matter Hobbes, who seems clearly older than him, might have reached a tiger's limited lifespan). Also, in a slight alternate-universe gambit, Calvin's father is a lawyer; Thaddeus has a lawyer uncle, but his father (R.I.P.) was an efficiency expert. Imagine Calvin with *encouragement* in the ways of telling everyone how to do their jobs better.

I recommended the Defense of Thaddeus A. Ledbetter to my then-wife and my then-alive mom, and it's fair to warn you that neither liked it as much as I did; they found Thaddeus too much to take, and I understand this. They didn't like Calvin & Hobbes much either. My 8- and 10-year-old boys adore Calvin & Hobbes, and are closer to the intended age range anyway. Like me, they empathized at once with the misunderstood genius only trying, in his overbearing and occasionally near-fatal way, to help. Some minority of his ideas are good, in-story and out; even Mr. Cooper grudgingly comes to acknowledge this. Many aren't. But they're good storytelling, at least.