Reader Redux: "Flipped"

I’ll admit it; I used to judge books by their covers. It was a routine I picked up after having voraciously perused the stacks of the school library every afternoon for something worthwhile to read. After two summers, I had decimated the youth section of the public library of their entire young adult romance selection, as any prepubescent girl would. I was an impatient reader; I could identify from the first few paragraphs of a novel if the rest of the plot was going to be worth my time. My habit eventually developed into something so obstructive that it started to prevent me from actually reading the book without first scrutinizing its outside cover. If the front of the book were too cluttered with different fonts and colors, I wouldn’t even touch it. Since the covers of virtually every young romance novel cover in the early 2000s featured identical shocking pink bubble letters and cartoon images of skinny girls wearing high heels, I found myself in a drought of substantive reading material until I noticed a bright white book with an upside-down baby chick on its cover in a Scholastic Book Fair catalog. Since the cover was so minimalistic and straightforward, I had to sneak a peek inside—and ended up finishing “Flipped” in one sitting. Can you even imagine what my life would have been like had I not decided to open the book? It was no surprise that I quickly saw through my naiveté after—for lack of a better pun—I had flipped.

Wendelin Van Draanen’s he-said/she-said account of a puppy love that almost runs its course remains to this date a book that I will forever cite as something that has irrevocably changed my perspective on life. As grandiose and tacky as that statement sounds, it’s appropriate as a description for “Flipped,” a novel so innocent that it still retains popularity on recommended reading lists for elementary schools. Buoyed by a film adaptation released three years ago, “Flipped” has continued to stand out among the many other subpar and derivative young adult books that I previously had to endure.

And perhaps I’m just being a tad dramatic; after all, I’m saying that my favorite book is a novel geared towards middle-schoolers. However, even though Julianna Baker and Bryce Loski are only seven when they first meet, the retelling of every significant scene in the novel from both characters’ viewpoints makes their romance one of the most authentic accounts of young love I have ever read. The narrative starts with Juli’s one-sided infatuation with her crush, the blue-eyed Bryce, who cares more about his reputation than others’ feelings. As the intrepid Juli continues to make increasingly bold advances toward the extremely self-conscious Bryce, the harsh realities of the outside world begin to reverse their unique relationship over time. After a series of bad judgment calls and awkward encounters, Juli begins to lose interest just as Bryce finally notices that Juli may not be as intimidating and bothersome as he’d always perceived her to be. The pages of my copy of “Flipped” are just about to fall out due to excessive use; in my multiple rereadings of the novel, I could never quite identify at what exact moment in the plot at which Bryce finally realized that he was falling for Juli. But now that I’m looking back, I guess that was the whole point. How are you supposed to know exactly when your feelings for someone change?

Admittedly, like all tween novels, “Flipped” has its fair share of quotable one-liners that are universal enough to youth to be found on countless Tumblrs of wistful and overly emotional teenagers; these are quotes that join the ranks of the ultimate cliché: Stephen Chbosky’s “And in this moment, I swear we were infinite.” However, the metaphor Bryce’s grandfather uses to lecture Bryce about making uninformed preconceptions about people is a particularly memorable one because it made me realize my own faults as well: “Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss...but every once in a while, you find someone who’s iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.” I remember reading that line for the first time and feeling goosebumps erupt all over my skin. That was when I knew this book was different.

But the most surprising element of the book was that “Flipped” surpasses the typical formula of young adult romances by taking exemplary care in how it illuminates various social stigmas. “Flipped” was the first book to have introduced me to mental illness and its effect on relationships, something not covered in my customary regimen of “Lizzie McGuire” episodes. Never before had I considered ignoring first impressions until I had read “Flipped.” You know you’ve found a book that’s powerful when it makes you reverse your entire perception of the world. And when you do, you are not beholden to a black/white judgment of a cover, but instead you can gain an iridescent spectrum and nothing will ever compare.

—Staff writer Connie Yan can be reached at connieyan@college.harvard.