Roller Girl!

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Your latest gift may have changed the course of our lives. Thanks to you, and thanks to graphic novelist Victoria Jamieson, we spent last Saturday evening watching the Brooklyn Bombshells battle the Bronx Gridlock, rooting for Hela Skelter, Sexy Slaydie, and Squid Vicious.

We're on our way to getting deeply hooked by roller derby, and here I'm holding up the reason why:

Roller Girl, Jamieson's first graphic novel, is the newest addition to our Must Have Graphic Novel shelf, which also houses Bone, Zita the Spacegirl, The Olympians, Sisters, and Smile. 

The heroine here is 12-year-old Astrid, in Portland, OR, the summer before junior high school. Astrid falls in love with roller derby after her mom takes her and her best friend Nicole to a game. Though she can't skate, she signs up for junior derby camp over the summer, assuming that Nicole will sign up with her. When Nicole chooses dance camp with a friend Astrid hates, Astrid finds herself going it alone -- working hard to become a decent skater, pushing herself intensely, and working through all of the complex friend-breakup feelings that so often come with junior high. 

Before reading the book, I had only the dimmest notion of what roller derby was. Jamieson -- a derby player herself; she skates for the Rose City Rollers under the name Winnie the Pow -- explains the basic rules clearly at the outset, and weaves in more information throughout the storyline.

When we got to the game last Saturday, both Eleanor and Isabel were immediately able to identify not only blockers and jammers, but several moves by name: "Look, pivot turns!" The technical detail, presented smoothly as part of the story, is one of the book's big pluses.

Astrid's sports success narrative is another. While her story follows the basic plotline we've all seen before in movies and books (start out a newbie, train hard, weather disappointment, keep training, play in a big exciting game at the end), what I loved here is that Astrid is initially really bad at skating, and that she toughs it out. Her stubbornness and at some points real burning anger are part of what give her the strength to get good, and when she gets good, she's still, realistically, not all that good. She feels like a real 12-year-old, all the way through.

And more things to love: Astrid is the only child of a single mom who regularly takes her and Nicole out for Evenings of Cultural Enlightenment (roller derby is one). The single mom status isn't the story -- there's no mention of Astrid's father, and she and her mom are just presented as a family without further comment. 

Perhaps most of all, there are the warmth and humor that go hand in hand with the celebration of female toughness. Derby names are an art form, punning and tongue in cheek. In the book, Astrid's idol is named Rainbow Bite, and her coaches are Heidi Go Seek and Napoleon Blownapart. At the game we went to on Saturday, one of the players called herself Davy Blockit, and did her first laps around the track with a coonskin cap before putting on her helmet for the game. Of course, the kids came up with their own names after reading the book: Eleanor chose Conan the Librarian, Isabel went with Twisted Sister, and Ian with Freakachu.

There are lots of tattoos in roller derby, much dyed hair (hair dyeing plays a big part in Astrid's plot, too), and a general sense of campy fun. And there is deep heart. Roller derby in its current incarnation has deep ties in the LGBT community; on Saturday, derby players all over the country wore warmup jerseys reading "Do It for 57," a reference to the suicide of a 15-year-old transexual derby player who killed himself because of bullying.

Both Eleanor and Isabel finished reading the book and immediately declared that they wanted to join junior derby. Gotham Girls, the New York derby league, has a junior derby team, and they take girls as young as 8. After watching the junior derby play at halftime on Saturday (my favorite names there: Little Orphan Slammie and Smacklemore), we're starting to do the research to sign Eleanor up. If it works out, I'd be proud to be a derby mom.

Love, Annie