Clementine

Eight-year-olds often think in concrete, binary ways—good or bad, children that are hard or easy. In Clementine, Pennypacker challenges perceptions of normality and perfection through the protagonist’s changing understanding about who she is and what makes people good. Clementine is different from other people, but she isn’t exactly sure why, and she struggles to figure out what makes her good.

Clementine is unique in her ability to draw and notice things. She loves to illustrate what’s happening in the world around her. Early in the novel she says: “That’s how good of an artist I am: everybody always knows what it is” (15). For Clementine, other people being able to understand what she’s made means that she is doing a “good” job at being an artist. She also likes her own artwork, describing how she draws Margaret as “beautiful.”

However, Clementine’s perception of herself as good extends only as far as her artwork. In other parts of her life, external pressures make her worry, such as about her lack of ability to make her room look as good as Margaret’s. This reflects Clementine’s understanding that she is somehow different from what people expect or want.

The novel’s conflicts help Clementine change the way she thinks about her differences. In the final scene, she realizes that “everything else was perfect, too: my mother in her overalls, my comedian father, my brother who didn’t get stuck with a fruit name” (133). These examples reflect all the differences that Clementine has stored up internally: That her mother is an artist and not a professional like Margaret’s mother, or that her father spends hours chasing pigeons, or that she has “a fruit name” (133). Just like her lack of ability to pay attention in school, these differences had made Clementine feel frustrated and like she was different in a bad way. As she learns more about herself and begins embracing nuance and complexity, she can see the world around her as more perfect.

Pennypacker challenges readers to think in new ways about children who behave outside of what is considered the norm. Clementine is always coming home with letters from her teacher about her lack of focus, yet readers get an intimate look at all the tender and compassionate ways that Clementine processes and reacts to the world around her. Building this narrative is Pennypacker’s way of challenging people to embrace differences as perfection.