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My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park’ | May 22, 2013

by Steve Kluger (Dial Books for Young Readers/Penguin Young Readers Group, March 2008)

What starts as a writing assignment turns into an epic tale of love: the love between brothers, parents and children, and significant others; and the love of baseball, Broadway, and Mary Poppins. A lot to cram into one novel? Never! This delightful book introduces two boys who adopt one another as brothers: the baseball-obsessed T.C., and future-director Augie. Their freshman year is looking great, until Alé enters the scene and T.C. falls hard, but he can’t get her to pay attention to him. What does a Boston boy have to do to get a girl fascinated by Jackie O. to go out with him?

Meanwhile Alé stars in the school production of Kiss Me Kate, but has to hide it from her ambassador parents who want her to focus on other things.  Augie develops his first crush on a boy (and while he’s oblivious to his feelings, his family couldn’t be happier for him) and T.C. meets a little boy who believes in Mary Poppins – and is heartbroken that she hasn’t come to rescue him yet. Always one to make miracles happen, T.C. and Augie take on the challenge of making Mary Poppins real.

This is a book I keep coming back to. The multi-faceted characters confront deep problems about loneliness, prejudice, and their own expectations, but they are buoyed by a sense of family and belonging that is almost unheard of. T.C. and Augie’s families have adopted one another – their extended families too – and they routinely go out of their way to help any friend who crosses their path. That camaraderie and community is extended to the reader, who revels in their closeness and understands their inside jokes; it’s a top fictional family to be part of, right up there with the Weasleys and the Bennets. The writing is glorious and witty; it will appeal to those who know the music of Liza Minelli and those who want to exonerate Buck Weaver from the Black Sox Scandal of 1919. In short, it’s a most excellent book.

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