Jumpstart the World Paperback – November 8, 2011

Jumpstart the World, a YA novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde, is a sweet story full of beautiful characters, images and moments: Toto's one eye, Don Quixote swinging his broom at Manhattan traffic, the Bobs' smiles at a party, shy yet confident Wilbur, the camera, Frank's broken eye glasses, Elle captures the cab. The story of Elle's personal growth from a negative, defensive 16 year old girl who is living alone in her own apartment in Manhattan to a positive, creative, compassionate adult weaves the moments, characters, and images, together tightly. We feel better to have read it. This is one set of reasons why.In fiction, as in real life, it is hard to show people that you've changed.Hyde takes this problem of personal growth head on when she chooses to let Elle narrate her own story. Jumpstart The World has no 3rd person, omniscient narrator to set the story, to fill in the background, to tell us things that we and that Elle might not otherwise know.As the narrator, Elle is elegant in choosing which people, interactions, and events to describe. Like a puzzle, the people and events fit together tightly. Unlike an ordinary puzzle, people and events change Elle within the story. If puzzles were both static and dynamic, then the picture Elle presents to the reader is that kind of static to changing puzzle.As the narrator, Elle's style is quick, funny, insightful, yet sometimes awkward, often embarrassed, and sometimes confused. Often she doesn't know what she is about to say; sometimes she over-emphasizes the obvious. While Elle changes as a character in her story, her narrative style does not change. Narrative styles change for different reason and through different experiences: reading, perceived audience, formal and informal training. No reason for the style to change. The story is about Elle the girl not Elle the author.Mother. Elle begins her story sputtering to and about her mother. Elle rescues a one eyed cat because her mother suggests that she get another cat. Elle names the cat Toto, ironically echoing, that other Toto in that other story where the other audience understands 'there is no place like home'. Elle actually cuts off her nose (here, her hair) to spite her (mother's) face. By the middle of her story, Elle shows she has grown when, instead of cutting up the clothes her mother bought for her birthday, she returns them and buys a camera and camera equipment with the money. Through the story she learns how to use the camera, which shows her the intensity in her own eyes, and eventually decides that this is how she will jump-start the world: she will use a camera to show the world the injustices that she sees, and has seen in the story. By the end of the story, we see that she has also gained a degree of compassion for mother.Crazy Harry. As Don Quixote duels with windmills, crazy Harry duels with cars and people on the street in front of Elle's apartment. Several pages in the story after we first see Harry, Frank uses the word 'quixotic' in a scrabble game, and has to tell Elle the story of Don Quixote. Unfortunately for Frank, Harry's broom draws real blood later in the story. By the story's end, Elle learns more than to forgive Harry. She takes pictures of Harry, trying to find that perfect image that will show to the world, the hell she sees in Harry's eyes. The puzzle pieces fit together and yet the picture of Elle changes.Frank. Elle is immediately attracted to Frank. But Elle's crush soon implodes when she is told at her party with her new friends, by her new friends that Frank is transgender.At first she doesn't want to talk to Frank or see her new friends ever again. But as the story develops and because Frank works in a vet's office, when Toto needs to go to the vet, Elle is forced to ask Frank for help. And when, after the accident, Frank has to go to the hospital, Elle fights for and captures a cab to take Frank to the hospital. She hopes the cab capture will assuage the hurt she had caused Frank, and yet she knows that it never can. Elle stays in the hospital with Frank, because she 'has his back'; and, through the night, she is finally able to say that she loves him: she has forgiven herself for her earlier reactions; she understands some of the injustice Frank suffers.By the end of this sensitive story, after Elle has used the camera to capture Wilbur's confidence, Frank and Molly's love for each other, the hell in Harry's eyes, we see a positive, even joyful young adult who has made it her life's work to Jump-start the World.

I just love to read this story and here I am thinking what if? What would have I done ?Just speechless and happy I got to read this book. Enjoy !

I liked it all. What a strong girl she was...for her to adopt a cat with his battle scars so like her own.I really enjoy this author and the way she can bring out the souls of her subjects.

Elle is a girl who doesn't belong anyplace--not even in her own home, after her mother sends her packing to accommodate her latest boyfriend. Elle finds herself thrust into a new apartment, facing the prospect of a new school, and she's alone. But she's used to being alone.Then she meets Frank and Molly, and a gang of friends at school, who are Different. Or are they? Elle's friendship and interactions with them deftly changes what it means to be beautiful, what it means to be special, and what it means to be true to the person that resides inside.Catherine Ryan Hyde's style reads is as if we have been given someone's diary and for just a few hours, we are allowed entrance into their secret world. We sit alongside Elle as she rides through the bumps, bruises and highs of her journey. More than that, Ms. Ryan Hyde captures silence like very few writers can. She takes the moments where everything is still, and she lets them just hold.Because we read a diary, the exposition does not preach like it might in someone else's hands. With Ms. Ryan Hyde, the events, feelings and conclusions simply are. The way everything plays out is the only way it ever could; the way we would expect it to if this indeed was a journal capturing a snapshot of someone else's life."Jumpstart the World" is the story you read in a Saturday afternoon, so you can spend all day Sunday mulling over the imagery and the moments that rang true. Then the people and their lives creep into your heart and get absorbed into your lifeblood and stay with you in ways you can't begin to imagine a few thousand words possibly can.Catherine Ryan Hyde delivers yet another deeply honest and raw rendition of what it means to be alive in our current times; somehow she can pull this off for eighteen books straight and it is always haunting and exquisite to see how the lives intertwine, and how the characters find their own kind of happy ending. Not the fairy tale kind, but the kinds that are around us, waiting to be realized, in the world we can reach out and make our own.-Joanna Celeste

Another Great story with lessons to be had. It seems that we all have to take our time trying to accept who we are and how we will react to people who may have a secret that they may or may not share with others. Even when we consider that person to be our friend. In this book I found myself identifying with Elle in how she reacts to the info her friends tell her about her friend and neighbor Frank. He is transitioning from female to male and Elle found herself attracted to him. But when she finds out he is transitioning, she wonders if she might be gay. Being only15 years old when she moved into the apartment, it is a wonder how she coped so well as she did. Being more or less a teenager, anything could have happened. I truly appreciate and enjoy reading every book I can of Ms Ryan Hyde and look forward to the next one I can find.

I loved this story of learning to accept. Oneself, others, family, foes. Another winner by one of the best authors around. Thank you, Catherine.

There is a lot of story packed into this very slim book. Part of me felt like it could have been fleshed out a bit but, at the same time, I'm glad it wasn't as I was emotionally exhausted by the end. I didn't pick up another book for a week or so because this one was just playing on my mind for a long time afterwards.Elle is in quite a strange situation that I couldn't quite get my head around: she's living alone because her mother's boyfriend couldn't deal with her. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but I was shocked her mother would do that. In a way though, it helps Elle to come out of her shell and grow as a person.Elle was a good character but, to me, she felt more of a channel for the story, a way to tell the stories of the far more interesting supporting characters. But, in a book like this, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm glad Elle didn't overshadow the other characters because they felt like the main draw.Frank was the best character, a sweet man with no qualms about befriending a lonely fifteen year old. While we, as readers, know he is a transman, Elle doesn't. And when she does, she has no idea how to deal with it, resorting to hurting Frank and pushing him away. It was heartening to know that, even when she initially rejected him, he is still there for Elle. And Elle is there for him when he needed it too. It was a nice, sometimes awkward, friendship which was well told.The group Elle falls in with at her new school are all misfits in some way, be they gay or straight. The Bobs really amused me. Boyfriends with the same name, they don't have anywhere to make out (and more) and immediately pounce on Elle's home situation in a very funny way. But it was Wilbur who I wanted to learn a lot more about. Gay and make-up wearing, he barely spoke throughout most of the book. When he does, Elle listens and finds a sort of kinship with him. He was definitely my second favourite character in the book.As someone with an interest in gender and sexuality, I get annoyed when authors completely miss the mark when writing about the topics, either because they don't quite get it or because they rely on clichés. It made me happy that CRH nailed it not only in the portrayal of Frank but also with the Bobs and Wilbur. CRH also managed to get across the unfairness how transgendered individuals are treated in hospitals and in society without being overly preachy.I'm not saying it was a faultless read but, ultimately, I can forgive the faults because it was a wonderful story which was well told.This is not the first CRH book I've read but it is the first YA story by her that I've had the joy to read. I love her writing and her stories and I feel like kicking myself for not sampling her YA before. I always get drawn into her novels and I recommend her to anyone that just wants to get sucked into a story.

Although this book is about people that are not in my world I really enjoyed it I have yet to meet such a mature 16 year old who would have a mother rich enough to allow her daughter an apartment in New York, but as I said I come from a different world , I grew up with poverty but my mother would never have chosen anyone over myself and my siblings. I learnt a lot from this book.Linda

Such a positive novel...it should be recommended reading for all 16 year olds in the grip of teenage insecurity and identity crisis....beautifully simply written and accessible.

It's very brilliant!

She is an amazing and brilliant writer who knows how to take a thread from here and there and weave a mosaic of deep awareness awakening the reader to an inner knowingness of how to make our planet a better place because she is able to gently help us see the world with new eyes.