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MAKING IT HAPPEN by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

MAKING IT HAPPEN

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 1970
ISBN: 0695801449
Publisher: Follett

Ultimately hoist by its own petard, the story starts out knocking revolution for revolution's sake. Not that John Jacobs who's telling it knows it: he's full of himself and his friend Gifford ("the most original person I'd ever met"), and their brilliant brainstorms for showing "how we felt about each other and how we felt about everything else" — i.e., getting attention by faking a fire to fake out the junior high principal, one Perona who asserts authority by calling drills all the time ("What some guys wouldn't do for a sense of power!"). Promptly expelled, John and Gifford and their brand new sidekick Lee, who's black, hole up in a hideout to prove that "We don't let labels or skin or things like that stand in the way of friendship." The fact that Lee's blackness was the essence of his appeal to the duo in the first place is blithely ignored — as is the fact that Dad had John's number a long time ago: "Before you look for shallowness in other people, take a good look at yourself." There's a girl too, the focus of all the confidential, sexy bathroom jokes. It's a matter of taste: bad.