Ever since I learned what a wake-up scene is, I’ve been obsessed with trying to think of books that start that way. So far I’ve been able to think of three.
1 – Most famously, Die Verwandlung by Franz Kafka. Its first line:
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
In the English translation by David Wyllie:
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.
Attention-grabbing, for sure. I would say this one is a wake-up scene DO.
2 – My boyfriend pointed out that surely James Joyce’s Ulysses must begin with a wake-up scene, since the conceit of that book is that it takes place over a whole day. I have never attempted to read it, but indeed, I think it would be fair to describe its opening as a wake-up scene. The first two paragraphs:
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
—Introibo ad altare Dei.
Is this a wake-up scene DO or DON’T?
Well, I don’t tend to read famously unreadable books—books that are so unreadable you need a companion book to guide you through them—so I’m going to say it’s a wake-up scene DON’T, but I expect people whose tastes are more literary than mine will vehemently disagree.
3 – Then there is my favorite, the chapter “Uncle Elephant Salutes the Dawn” from Arnold Lobel’s Uncle Elephant. This is a level 2 chapter book, “Reading with Help,” in HarperCollins’s “I CAN READ” series. It begins like this.
“VOOMAROOOM!”
It was morning.
I heard a noise outside.
Uncle Elephant was standing in the garden.
I ran to the window.
His ears flapped in the breeze.
He raised his trunk.
“VOOMAROOOM!” trumpeted Uncle Elephant.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I always welcome the dawn this way,” said Uncle Elephant.
“Every new day deserves a good, loud trumpet.”
Wow. Genius. In my mind, that is a wake-up scene DO, DO, 100 percent absolute and indisputable DO.
Now, sadly, I am not Franz Kafka, James Joyce, or Arnold Lobel (how I wish I could write like Arnold Lobel!), so I decided to take Michael Mammay’s advice and revise the first chapter of my YA novel, Elsewhere Summer.
Here’s how it reads now:
**
Jada Pinckney, my best friend Leila’s older sister, is the only person I know who could score a perfect 1600 on the SAT on the first try, and also get expelled from two different private schools.
The first time was at the Lab School when she was a freshman. Her English teacher was railing against Richard Nixon, who happens to be Jada’s all-time favorite president. Jada tried to correct the teacher’s facts, the teacher wouldn’t back down, it escalated to name-calling and then finally a slap-fight. Jada got expelled, the teacher got fired. Nixon has been dead for decades, so it didn’t really matter to him either way.
The second time she got expelled (after Jada’s parents managed to get her into Miss Parker’s, a school on the North Side) it was because she had a profile on a dating website directed at older men. Jada claimed she only signed up as a joke, but the principal was unconvinced.
None of this has anything to do with Leila, who has never even had detention as far as I know. But that’s why she’s at the public high school with me, instead of at Lab with all the other professors’ kids. There are a few other faculty kids at Hyde Park High, and they all have some complicated backstory to explain why they’re there.
Jada did actually graduate high school—several of the teachers at Hyde Park have asked Leila if she’s her younger sister, they look so much alike—and is now at some college in the South where all the students are misfit geniuses like she is. I know that because she’s one of the few people I can be bothered to follow on social media. Her account consists entirely of photos of bathroom graffiti. The students at her college are more creative with that medium than I would have thought possible.
Romeo, seriously, why the hell did you have to be Romeo
What’s brown and sticky? A stick
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate
There are only two words in the English language that end in –gry: hungry and angry. Which are you?
I like that one and add a comment: “both, definitely both”.
“No phones at the table, sweetie,” Mom says.
I look up. “But you’re on yours.”
She smiles. “You know what I mean.” She doesn’t want me to use my phone at the table because she doesn’t want it in her shot. …
**
I think it’s a massive improvement.
Carrie Golus 