Awkward

During the rising action of Chapter 2, readers learn more about the overall tone of the graphic novel and the social environment of Berrybrook, particularly its clubs.

Often, schools are made up of cliques, typically perceived as bad, exclusive, and excluding friendship groups. However, friendship groups composed of like-minded peers are an important part of finding belonging at school—finding acceptance marks The Importance of Academic Community. The novel contrasts cliques and friend groups. Peppi’s “Cardinal Rule #2 for surviving school” is to “seek out groups with similar interests and join them” (12). Bonding over similar interests is a great way for young people to form positive connections with other people. For Peppi, the art club, and later the science club, becomes exactly this kind of safe space. However, the novel also shows readers an example of a clique oriented around belittling others—this is the group Peppi calls the “mean kids.” Their friendship is predicated on exclusion and derision. The warning offered by the mean kids’ group is that friends might become a clique when they become insular and unwelcoming to people perceived as other. Peppi’s social circle is completely restricted to the art club. She is aware of this, and explains that “the problem with having friends only in your circle of interests…is that, outside of that circle? You’re on your own” (45). She does not reach out to anyone beyond the art club.

Although the art club is not at the antisocial level of the mean kids, it still might be considered a clique because of its insularity. Berrybrook’s principal points out that they don’t contribute to the school culture the way the science club does and are always preoccupied “playing games or doodling their own things” (27).

Also of concern is the art club’s animosity toward the science club, and vice versa. When they are near each other at the bus to the Discovery Center, Peppi’s friend Tessa says, “Ugh. Half the science club dorks are here too,” while a science club member named Leticia says, “Oh, hey art club! Good luck squeezing education into that single brain cell of yours!” (56). Each has negative perceptions of the other. The art club perceives the science club kids as uncool, while the science club insults the art club kids’ intelligence. They are unwelcoming and unsympathetic to the other group.

The animosity between the art and science club rises from legitimate circumstances, and the conflict plays into the novel’s interest in The Relationship Between Art and Science. The art club believes the science club gets unfair treatment because they “win awards and make the school look good” (13). What a school thinks “looks good” reveals greater trends about what type of intellectual work is valued in society. In the United States, arts and humanities “take a back seat to math, science, and technology,” and many Americans believe that giving a “central role [to] science and technology” will build the most “powerful nation” (Tamer, Mary. “On the Chopping Block, Again.” Harvard Education Magazine. Harvard School of Education. 2009). Public schools, which are constantly underfunded, cut resources from arts and humanities programs before STEM programs. In Chapter 1, Mr. Ramirez, the supervising teacher for the art club, laments that the science club gets “all the resources” (13). When thinking of a way to help the school, the art club turns down several ideas because they “don’t have the budget for anything big” (28). Expected to contribute without adequate resources, the Berrybrook art club feels the pressure of financial constraints, and this fosters bitterness between them and the science club, which receives ample funding and is perceived as being better for the school community.

In Chapter 2, Peppi begins to realize that stereotypical distinctions between fields like art and science are based more on social perception than reality. When she finds out she turned in her mermaid drawing to Miss Tobins, Peppi is aghast. But Miss Tobins tells her that her art “could easily be a science project” (23). Drawing a creature like a mermaid demands that an artist think about biology and physics, demonstrating scientific engagement.

This conversation leads Peppi to think differently about supposedly irreconcilable groups of people, like the art and science club. Her conclusions underscore The Importance of Academic Community outside the strictures of cliques and across academic disciplines. In her geocaching group, Peppi unites with the science club kids against the “mean kids” who teased her and Jaime on her first day in school. She works with Jaime, and together they become the first group to solve all the science clues. Then, while the rest of their group searches the gazebo for their geocache, Jaime and Peppi band together to figure out the last riddle. A panel on page 74 depicts Peppi and Jaime facing the reader. They are each smiling, and between them is a single “!” that conveys their shared excitement and the creativity of their thinking.