The Benefits of Being an Octopus (Ann Braden)

The Benefits of Being an Octopus
Ann Braden
Sky Pony
Fiction, MG General Fiction
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: An octopus can squeeze through almost any opening. An octopus can change the color and texture of its skin to blend perfectly into its surroundings. An octopus has eight arms, perfect for multitasking. There are so many, many reasons octopuses are Zoey's favorite animal ever, so many reasons she secretly wishes she could be like them. With eight arms, she'd have no trouble helping out with her three younger siblings and overworked mom. If she could camoflage herself, she'd never have to endure the taunts of other kids and even adults about her shabby clothes and the trailer park smell that follows her everywhere, or see that look on teachers' faces when she has to admit that she hasn't done her homework again (which for sure she'd have had time to do with those eight octopus arms). And if she could move like an octopus, she could escape the dark hole she seems to be living in, crushed by the pressure of a life that's never been exactly right and lately seems just exactly wrong, even if Mom has finally found a somewhat stable man, Lenny, who lets them live in his clean trailer.
When her social studies teacher asks everyone in class to prepare a paper on their favorite animal for a presentation, followed by a debate where the class would have to defend their animal and convince the rest of the class why it's actually the best, for once Zoey actually feels confident enough to try. After all, nobody knows more about octopuses than she does. Maybe, just maybe, she could make her classmates see her as someone other than a nobody. But when her nerves fail at the last minute, her teacher doesn't give her a bad grade for "losing" yet another assignment. Instead, she makes Zoey join the class debate team. On her best days, Zoey goes an entire day without a single actual conversation with her classmates; she doubts they even know her name. And she's just a poor kid from the wrong side of the proverbial tracks; why would anyone listen to her, assuming she was remotely smart enough to say anything worth listening to in the first place? But as more things start to go wrong in Zoey's life, she starts thinking more and more about what she's learning in that class, and starts to wonder if maybe hiding like an octopus isn't the way to get to a life worth living. Maybe she needs to do something a cephalopod could never do: find her voice and speak up.

REVIEW: This award-winning tale tackles issues of poverty, class divides, prejudice, and the deep scars left by abuse even on those not directly targeted - and even when the abuser never lays a finger on the victim.
Zoey's life has always been chaotic, and try as her mother might the family can never seem to get its feet under itself for long... making them the perfect targets for an emotional abuser like Lenny, the sort of sly snake whose cruelty masquerades as protective concern until even Zoey doesn't quite realize what's so terribly, terribly wrong. After all, with Lenny they can live in a clean home (unlike the last few places, or the car they had to live in for a few months), and Lenny helped Mom land a job, so how bad can he really be? It's only after she's forced to attend debate class by a concerned teacher that she starts to recognize what Lenny is doing, how he manipulates ideas and undercuts arguments and attacks his opponents just like a debater at the podium, finding weaknesses and ruthlessly exploiting them for the "win". When her young brother Bryce starts parroting Lenny's cruelty, she realizes she has to do something... but what can one girl hope to do when her own mother no longer has the will or the strength to escape a trap she refuses to even see? Meanwhile, her best friend Fuschia is going through her own troubled times, which take a terrible turn just when Zoey is least prepared to listen. To cope with life's intolerable stresses, Zoey often imagines herself as an octopus, drawing comfort and strength from the cephalopod's abilities. She resists being drawn out by her teacher, resistance the reader fully understands given her circumstances and how her classmates continually and unthinkingly put her in boxes to ignore (quite relatable, I say as someone who wasn't exactly one of the popular kids growing up and who still counts her chief social success in high school as being the achievement of essential invisibility), but at some point growth and change become less about her well-founded fears and more about literal survival.
The tale sometimes feels like it's moving in circles, and at some point I found myself mildly irked at how it seemed like the only purpose in Zoey's life and main impetus to change was her younger siblings, the "screaming monkeys" (Zoey's description) she has to corral and half-raise as her mother becomes less and less certain of her parenting skills under Lenny's influence. (While of course their welfare is important, the children-are-the-be-all-and-end-all-of-a-female's-existence thing gets a bit old.) That aside, it's a decent story that offers no clear, clean, or easy answers for the characters, but does offer hope that sometimes one voice speaking up at the right time can make a difference. I can definitely see why it earned its awards.

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