Lamron Lit Corner: The Everlasting Lessons of Stargirl

“The trouble with miracles is, they don’t last long.”

~ Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

Children’s literature and young adult literature share a particularly difficult, yet incredibly important, job in the world of writing. From Harry Potter to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, authors of the genre are tasked with creating a world interesting enough to keep young readers entertained, yet to not weave a plot so complex that it will lose their developing attention spans. 

And then there are the stories that rise above the rest, and not only create a world with the lens of a child’s eye, but one that is just as enthralling and important for adult readers. Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl is one of these special few, rivaling, if not beating, those that came before it.

I first read Stargirl in fourth or fifth grade, I couldn’t say for sure which. Back then, the world was just hazy and intimidating enough to keep my mind focused on the small things: people, faces, songs, locations. The larger questions like what the future held or what I wanted to do with my life just weren’t present yet, nor was the idea that one day I would be looking back on the books we read in a circle on the carpet of the classroom.

But I remember Stargirl. Not just the novel, but the character as well.

A girl who dressed differently than everyone else, who acted differently, who thought differently. The girl who sang “Happy Birthday” to everyone in front of the whole cafeteria. The girl who got up in front of the whole town during a basketball game, sang and danced, then led them on to a victory. She was the girl who woke the world up: who showed them what life could be.

And as a kid, she was very real. The line between reality and fantasy was blurry then, as it is for most kids, and what was simply the product of Spinelli’s book had just as much evidence for being real as any memory I made. 

This summer, I picked up Stargirl after having a very loose memory of the cover. It probably had been almost a decade since I picked up the novel for the first time, but upon opening the first page and reading I was swept back to a time long passed. I remembered what it used to be like: trying to fit in, trying to find a place, trying to live between everyone else’s worlds. It wasn’t just memory, though. I started to notice the small things reflected by the book: certain scenes that came and went in everyday life, ideas that I thought were mine alone, but the book had just nudged into place.

Stargirl had subconsciously taught me how easy it is to be better, and that it doesn’t have to be something big like singing in front of people or leading a team to victory. Leave a quarter on the ground for some passing-by kid to grab. Say Happy Birthday to someone, even if you don’t know them. Hold the door, say hello, show your common humanity. 

It was a gift to read Stargirl as a child, and a gift to have reread it as an adult. I can see clearly why I had remembered the cover so clearly, but the best part was seeing a reflection of my former self in the mirror that it created. Seeing a self that learned so much from the girl who was just a little different.