---
product_id: 8066331
title: "Crazy"
price: "€ 31.84"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 6
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region: Monaco
---

# Crazy

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- **What is this?** Crazy
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## Description

desertcart.com: Crazy: 9780802854377: Phillips, Linda Vigen: Books

Review: It has been my great joy and privilege to walk alongside of Linda Phillips ... - It has been my great joy and privilege to walk alongside of Linda Phillips over the last fifteen years as she has crafted her debut YA novel, CRAZY. From reading the first twenty poems in which Linda poured out her anguish as a teen struggling with her own mother's mental illness; through watching Linda add, subtract, and organize these poems into a story arc at the 2009 Chautauqua Highlights Writing Workshop we attended together; through hearing the up's and down's of finding her agent and publisher; to now actually turning the pages and savoring the poems--it's almost as amazing as watching the birth of a child! Now I have the opportunity to share with you some of my favorite poems and parts of this book. I've read some of these phrases several times and they still catch my breath for their simple beauty and sensory imagery; others surprise me as if I've just discovered a new treasure. Without further ado, here are some gems from CRAZY. In the opening poem, the protagonist, Laura, is humiliated in home ec when the class decides that her best color is brown. This poem not only foreshadows much of Laura's conflicts, but also provides the subtext for the cover of the book: So the class decided on brown for my basic color, as in mud rats rotten bananas swamp water and dirty anything. I ran out the side door after school, thank heavens home ec was last period, thinking my cheeks were so hot they must be leaving a trail of smoke. I stopped by the canal, swarming with hungry pelicans and screeching gulls, and I wondered, just wondered and wondered for I don't know how long, what it would fee like not to sit and dangle my feet through the slats and daydream and watch like I usually do but instead to climb up on the railing, and let myself just slip off and down and down and down. I decided against it because, of course, I'm not the crazy one in our family. (pp.14-15) Laura's artistic talents are admired throughout her school. She sees the same talent--now unexpressed--in her mother. Laura wonders how her mother "had drifted from/creating brilliant oil paintings/to slapping paint on molded figurines." (p. 23) She asks, "Why don't you take up painting again?" I ask her one day, admiring the pleasing arrangement she created when she was fourteen. "Oh, I could never get back to that," she says, slamming a window against the rising storm. (p.24) Her mother's behavior becomes more erratic, irrational, and bizarre. One day Laura comes home from school and finds: First thing inside the door I smell turpentine. I nearly trip over a wet canvas propped against the door frame. I follow a trail of smudgy rags and scattered paint tubes into the living room where I find Mama, her back to me, kneeling muttering crossing herself before a dripping canvas. She's been painting again! "Hail Mary, Other of God…." A sickening sense of panic begins crawling up my spine. "What's going on, Mama?" I ask ………………….. She passes grubby hands absently through her disheveled hair, leaving multicolored streaks and smudges on her face, and she begins crawling on the floor, agitated, frantic, looking for the missing paint or who knows what. …… Then it hits me. This is my fault. I caused this. I pushed her over the edge, oh my God, I did this. It was my suggestion, "Take up painting again," I'd said-- oh my God….. I clean up the mess as best I can, finally getting Mama to sit down in her rocker. Still paint-splattered, she rocks back and forth humming muttering, staring past me without recognition. I watch her rock almost in rhythm with the ticking wall clock and I take deep breaths trying to match the rhythm, trying to beat down the panic surging through my body. (pp.65-68) Here is Linda reading one of the next poems, "Nervous Breakdown." As the book progresses, Laura wrestles with her own demon: her fear of being as crazy as her mother. With the encouragement of two new friends--a local gift shop owner who "stands out like an art piece herself/in a shift dress full of helter-skelter bright colors,/dangly earrings,/and the most beautiful long gray hair/I have ever seen" (p. 148); and her crush, Dennis, who pushes Laura to "dig for answers/don't run, dig"(p.272); Laura discovers the work she must do to discover the truth about herself and her family. ********** There are two things this review of CRAZY cannot do. First, I can't communicate how proud I am of Linda's accomplishment and how wonderful it is to see this book in print. In a previous blog I compared myself to a mid-wife but that's not quite accurate. Linda is like a sister to me. Since CRAZY is her baby, I guess that makes me a proud aunt. Second, I can't begin to tell you how Linda's poetry touched a place deep inside of me. When I finished reading her final poem in which Laura asks her mother for forgiveness, I was in tears: In her typical way, she brushes it off, says I don't have need for forgiveness but of course she forgives me, and she understands my confusion and frustration and she doesn't hold anything against me, and she loves me very much. I'm not sure if she gets it at all, what I am trying to say, but the important thing is I get it and I did what I needed to do and it feels as good as anything I have ever done. I wouldn't want to say it, but I think there has been some healing in our family after all. (p.314)
Review: Important Enjoyable Read - I enjoyed Crazy very much. Laura’s voice is authentic, totally believable for a child her age living in the 1960s. A young girl terrified that she’d succumb to her mother’s illness that remained unnamed until she pushed for truth. Linda Vigen Phillips flawlessly paints normal tumultuous teen emotions exploding with fear. For those who may shy away from a novel written in verse, Crazy’s plot is so engaging and so smoothly written you won’t even realize you’re being captivated by poetry. Here is one of my favorite stanzas minus the line breaks: “I take my time walking home with one completed project in the bag and one incomplete project buried deeper than I am able to dig.” But it’s near the end that I find a sentence I have adopted for a personal mantra, “Life is too short to spend on the pursuit of a guarantee.” Expect to get more out of reading Crazy than anticipated. It’s an important read to share.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #2,563,424 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #473 in Teen & Young Adult 20th Century United States Historical Fiction #739 in Teen & Young Adult Fiction on Depression & Mental Health (Books) #810 in Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Being a Teen (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (23) |
| Dimensions  | 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.25 inches |
| Grade level  | 7 - 9 |
| ISBN-10  | 0802854370 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0802854377 |
| Item Weight  | 12.8 ounces |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 320 pages |
| Publication date  | October 6, 2014 |
| Publisher  | Eerdmans Books for Young Readers |
| Reading age  | 13 years and up |

## Images

![Crazy - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71udgIlT-6L.jpg)
![Crazy - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/314P9mTgfNL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ It has been my great joy and privilege to walk alongside of Linda Phillips ...
*by C***N on December 2, 2014*

It has been my great joy and privilege to walk alongside of Linda Phillips over the last fifteen years as she has crafted her debut YA novel, CRAZY. From reading the first twenty poems in which Linda poured out her anguish as a teen struggling with her own mother's mental illness; through watching Linda add, subtract, and organize these poems into a story arc at the 2009 Chautauqua Highlights Writing Workshop we attended together; through hearing the up's and down's of finding her agent and publisher; to now actually turning the pages and savoring the poems--it's almost as amazing as watching the birth of a child! Now I have the opportunity to share with you some of my favorite poems and parts of this book. I've read some of these phrases several times and they still catch my breath for their simple beauty and sensory imagery; others surprise me as if I've just discovered a new treasure. Without further ado, here are some gems from CRAZY. In the opening poem, the protagonist, Laura, is humiliated in home ec when the class decides that her best color is brown. This poem not only foreshadows much of Laura's conflicts, but also provides the subtext for the cover of the book: So the class decided on brown for my basic color, as in mud rats rotten bananas swamp water and dirty anything. I ran out the side door after school, thank heavens home ec was last period, thinking my cheeks were so hot they must be leaving a trail of smoke. I stopped by the canal, swarming with hungry pelicans and screeching gulls, and I wondered, just wondered and wondered for I don't know how long, what it would fee like not to sit and dangle my feet through the slats and daydream and watch like I usually do but instead to climb up on the railing, and let myself just slip off and down and down and down. I decided against it because, of course, I'm not the crazy one in our family. (pp.14-15) Laura's artistic talents are admired throughout her school. She sees the same talent--now unexpressed--in her mother. Laura wonders how her mother "had drifted from/creating brilliant oil paintings/to slapping paint on molded figurines." (p. 23) She asks, "Why don't you take up painting again?" I ask her one day, admiring the pleasing arrangement she created when she was fourteen. "Oh, I could never get back to that," she says, slamming a window against the rising storm. (p.24) Her mother's behavior becomes more erratic, irrational, and bizarre. One day Laura comes home from school and finds: First thing inside the door I smell turpentine. I nearly trip over a wet canvas propped against the door frame. I follow a trail of smudgy rags and scattered paint tubes into the living room where I find Mama, her back to me, kneeling muttering crossing herself before a dripping canvas. She's been painting again! "Hail Mary, Other of God…." A sickening sense of panic begins crawling up my spine. "What's going on, Mama?" I ask ………………….. She passes grubby hands absently through her disheveled hair, leaving multicolored streaks and smudges on her face, and she begins crawling on the floor, agitated, frantic, looking for the missing paint or who knows what. …… Then it hits me. This is my fault. I caused this. I pushed her over the edge, oh my God, I did this. It was my suggestion, "Take up painting again," I'd said-- oh my God….. I clean up the mess as best I can, finally getting Mama to sit down in her rocker. Still paint-splattered, she rocks back and forth humming muttering, staring past me without recognition. I watch her rock almost in rhythm with the ticking wall clock and I take deep breaths trying to match the rhythm, trying to beat down the panic surging through my body. (pp.65-68) Here is Linda reading one of the next poems, "Nervous Breakdown." As the book progresses, Laura wrestles with her own demon: her fear of being as crazy as her mother. With the encouragement of two new friends--a local gift shop owner who "stands out like an art piece herself/in a shift dress full of helter-skelter bright colors,/dangly earrings,/and the most beautiful long gray hair/I have ever seen" (p. 148); and her crush, Dennis, who pushes Laura to "dig for answers/don't run, dig"(p.272); Laura discovers the work she must do to discover the truth about herself and her family. ********** There are two things this review of CRAZY cannot do. First, I can't communicate how proud I am of Linda's accomplishment and how wonderful it is to see this book in print. In a previous blog I compared myself to a mid-wife but that's not quite accurate. Linda is like a sister to me. Since CRAZY is her baby, I guess that makes me a proud aunt. Second, I can't begin to tell you how Linda's poetry touched a place deep inside of me. When I finished reading her final poem in which Laura asks her mother for forgiveness, I was in tears: In her typical way, she brushes it off, says I don't have need for forgiveness but of course she forgives me, and she understands my confusion and frustration and she doesn't hold anything against me, and she loves me very much. I'm not sure if she gets it at all, what I am trying to say, but the important thing is I get it and I did what I needed to do and it feels as good as anything I have ever done. I wouldn't want to say it, but I think there has been some healing in our family after all. (p.314)

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Important Enjoyable Read
*by N***K on July 10, 2016*

I enjoyed Crazy very much. Laura’s voice is authentic, totally believable for a child her age living in the 1960s. A young girl terrified that she’d succumb to her mother’s illness that remained unnamed until she pushed for truth. Linda Vigen Phillips flawlessly paints normal tumultuous teen emotions exploding with fear. For those who may shy away from a novel written in verse, Crazy’s plot is so engaging and so smoothly written you won’t even realize you’re being captivated by poetry. Here is one of my favorite stanzas minus the line breaks: “I take my time walking home with one completed project in the bag and one incomplete project buried deeper than I am able to dig.” But it’s near the end that I find a sentence I have adopted for a personal mantra, “Life is too short to spend on the pursuit of a guarantee.” Expect to get more out of reading Crazy than anticipated. It’s an important read to share.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Not just for young adults
*by K***N on October 13, 2014*

My copy arrived today and I'm instantly drawn into the story. The style is uniquely detached and personal at the same time. The story leads directly to questions beyond how we deal with mental illness to remind us that those afflicted have families and friends who are directly affected and have no reasonable way to escape. It's billed as young adult literature. Don't let that stop any adult from seeing the value in this work.

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