Toughing It (Turtleback)

I knew that the typical teen book-hater is a boy, and I knew I had to pull him into the story with the first paragraph, the first line. I thought about it; what sort of authority did I have to write something that would connect with the reality of a teen boy? I'm a middle-aged woman, for God's sake, and all the usual topics -- cars, sports, inner city, boarding or blading -- are far from my experience. But I'd made the acquaintance of some people who lived along the Susquehanna, and they reminded me of the rugged sort of boys I'd grown up with, my older brothers and their friends, always hunting or fishing or tinkering with a car or up to something. I could write about that sort of boy. And I remembered a very disturbing incident that had happened locally several years before, in which a teenage boy riding a dirt bike had been killed.

I began my novel:

The moment before he died, my brother turned his head to yell something to me above the noise of the dirt bike. He was grinning, teasing me about a girl. "So does she like your stuff, Tuff?" and the answer was no, she did not, but I never got to answer. Those were the last words he ever said to me.

I intended to write an adventure story in which Tuff would track down his brother's murderer. Instead, Tuff took charge, and I found myself writing a book about Tuff's grief, which he tries to handle through anger and a quest for revenge. About halfway through, his pain got to be too much for me to take, and I chickened out, shortcutting to the ending. My daughter, who was my first reader, told me I'd blown it, but I didn't believe her until an editor said the same. I braced myself, rewrote the last half of the book to do justice to the beginning, and much to my astonishment, sold TOUGHING IT to Harcourt Brace.

This quixotic undertaking, of which I expected nothing except good intentions fulfilled, has won more awards and honors than any other novel I've written. It's an American Booksellers Pick of the List, a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allen Poe Award winner, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, a Carolyn W. Field Award Honor Book, an ALA Recommended Book for the Reluctant Young Adult Reader, it's sold for several foreign editions and is a Recorded Book, it's on state lists, and in general delighted me with its performance.

It's also my most censored book. Some school principals or boards will not allow their teachers to use TOUGHING IT in the classroom or librarians to shelve it. Why? Because Tuff says some of the things a real down-by-the-river kid might say under the circumstances. The censorship bothers me, but every once in a while I hear from a brave teacher who slips TOUGHING IT to kids anyway. Usually, hey, they read it. I think I did something right, because I heard that a boy who had never read a book in his life came back to his teacher the next day and demanded, "Youse got any more books by this here lady?" And whoa, that one response made it all worthwhile. Warmed my quixotic heart. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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