Beige

by Cecil Castellucci

Overview

"Castellucci mixes details of the L.A. punk scene with memorable characters and witty dialogue. . . . Consider this pure Nirvana." -- BOOKLIST

Exiled from Canada to Los Angeles, Katy can't believe she is spending the summer with her father--punk name: the Rat--a recovered addict and drummer for the band Suck. Even though Katy feels abandoned by her mom, even though the Rat's place is a mess and he's not like anything she'd call a father, Kathy won't make a fuss. After all, she is a girl who is quiet and polite, a girl who smiles, a girl who is, well, beige. Or is she? From the author of BOY PROOF and THE QUEEN OF COOL comes an edgy L.A. novel full of humor, heart, and music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763659974
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	05/22/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Lexile:	540L (what's this?)
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Cecil Castellucci is an author, filmmaker, actress, and singer-songwriter. She says, "When I first moved to Los Angeles from Montreal, I wrote in a café owned by Eric Melvin from NOFX, had Thanksgiving dinner with Tim Armstrong from Rancid, and had my taxes done by a guy who was in the Circle Jerks. Everyone was So-Cal Punk crazy and I felt so . . . beige. I wondered what it would be like to grow up around adults that cool, especially if you were plopped into that scene when it wasn’t yours." She lives in Los Angeles.

“I’m a card-carrying sci-fi geek and proud of it,” Cecil Castellucci proclaims. The lead player in her debut novel, Boy Proof, would probably say the same thing. Victoria Jurgen, aka Egg, is an antisocial cinephile who meets up with the worldly new guy at school—a quick-witted artist who’s savvy enough to see through her sci-fi disguise. Both Cecil Castellucci and Egg have a passion for the creativity and imagination that are the hallmarks of science fiction.

The author’s creativity goes all the way back to her childhood years growing up in New York. She wrote her first story at the age of five. It was one paragraph long, and every word was misspelled. Later she attended the LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, where she studied theater, wore vintage clothes, watched a lot of old black-and-white movies, and saw numerous Broadway plays.

From there, the talents of Boy Proof’s creator only continued to grow. Cecil Castellucci’s second young adult novel, The Queen of Cool, was published in 2006. “Sometimes I feel cool and other times I feel like the biggest loser ever,” the author admits. “So I started wondering, what would happen if everything you always thought was cool was suddenly lame? What would happen to you if you were all of a sudden uncool? And what exactly is ‘cool,’ anyway? The Queen of Cool came out of a desire to figure it all out.” About her third young adult novel, Beige, she says, “When I first moved to Los Angeles from Montreal . . . everyone was So-Cal Punk crazy and I felt so . . . beige. I wondered what it would be like to grow up around adults that cool, especially if you were plopped into that scene when it wasn’t yours.”

Not only is Cecil Castellucci a writer, she is also a filmmaker and is co-founder of the short-film club Alpha 60, which is dedicated to creative endeavors in film. She can be seen acting in her own and others’ performance pieces and plays. She is also known as a singer-songwriter under the pseudonym Cecil Seaskull, and was the lead Nerd in the band Nerdy Girl.

So what more should you know about this imaginative artist? Here are a few fun facts:

Three Things You Might Not Know About Cecil:

1. She waited in line for six weeks in a tent on Hollywood Boulevard, in front of the Mann’s Chinese Theatre, for tickets to Star Wars: Episode I.

2. Oriental poppies are her favorite flower; pomegranates are her favorite fruit.

3. Her feet are very tiny and she has been known to walk with only one high heel shoe on (a la Cinderella).

Cecil Castellucci lives in Los Angeles, in the “belly of the beast” known as Hollywood.

Read an Excerpt

"Relax." Lake says. "It’s just feedback from one of the amps."

She likes that I don’t know anything. Thinking I’m stupid probably makes her feel good about herself. She climbs up on the stone wall so that she can see better. She puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles like a trucker.

Suck is the band now taking the stage. Everyone at the party starts to stumble closer.

The Rat takes his place and sits behind his drum kit, shirtless. Sam quietly stands at the microphone as the entire party becomes still. He just stands there with intention.

Suddenly, The Rat breaks the spell, clicking the drumsticks over his head.

He screams, "ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!"

_______

BEIGE by Cecil Castellucci. Copyright © 2007 by Cecil Castellucci. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.

Editorial Reviews

When Katy's mother leaves for an archeological expedition, the Canadian teen is sent to live with her father-a legendary punk rock drummer and recovering drug addict nicknamed The Rat-in Los Angeles. Katy knows she is "incurably uncool," and does not connect with her father's lifestyle or his music; it's Lake, the daughter of the lead singer in her father's band who calls her "beige," a nickname Katy adopts. But she slowly finds a place in their world, affecting them with her kindness and "learning to be loud" so she can release some of her bottled anger. The plot holds few surprises: she gets to know her father-who really does try hard to understand her, even after she tells him "I guess I don't really like music that much"-and she begins to see another side of her mother, who was also an addict. Castellucci (The Queen of Cool) has rendered Katy as a believable character, and teens will sympathize with her as she finally starts to reveal her true feelings. The book seems scripted at times, but readers will certainly learn something about the history of punk music and, like Katy, can consider what it means to "live on [one's] own terms without conforming to society's expectations." Ages 14-up. (June)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

What's a decidedly non-hip girl to do when she's suddenly plunged into the punk-rock scene in L.A.? Fourteen-year-old Katy desperately doesn't want to leave her mother and her nice life in Montreal to spend two whole weeks with her almost-famous drummer father, nicknamed "The Rat." Katy doesn't even like music and tries to bury herself in books, but can't escape Lake, the rocker girl assigned to keep an eye on her. Chronically angry Lake takes to calling Katy "Beige," a seemingly perfect label until Katy at last begins to find a side of herself she didn't even know existed. Castellucci shows wonderful insight as she slowly opens Katy's mind to new ideas and conflicting feelings. A cast of quirky characters keeps the book interesting, both for readers interested in the emotional drama and in the L.A. music scene, without getting into anything too gritty. (Fiction. YA)

Kirkus Reviews