My Favorite Childhood Book: Wringer
In the fourth grade I had one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, Mr. Jeremy Mathis. I have very fond memories of that year, one of them being the book Wringer, by Jerry Spinelli. In our class there was a colored carpet, and I remember sitting in my square, always looking forward to the next time Mr. Mathis would read the next chapter for us. Aside from Cristina and Ferny, who read the book individually because they were the *advanced* students, Mr. Mathis would read out loud for the class, and everyone was always excited to see what would happen next.
For years, I’ve wondered if my perception of this book from so many years ago was distorted by my childhood brain. When I decided to read Wringer for the second time, I decided to write all of my thoughts and all that I remembered about a book. (THERE ARE SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT FORWARD!)
From what I remembered, Wringer was about a boy who dreaded turning 13, since in his town there was an event every year where they shoot at pigeons, and 13 year olds have to become wringers. (A wringer is a person who wrings a bird’s neck after it is shot but didn’t die.) From there, I remembered this kid somehow befriended a pigeon and kept it as a pet, and hid it from his family and friends. Then, the only other thing I remembered was that in the end, the book ends by a kid asking their parent if they could have a pigeon too.
Despite not remembering much of the book (and I later found out that many of the things I remembered were wrong), this book left a really big impression on me back then. I’m not sure if part of it was just because of the shock of a story involving birds being shot, but this is one of the only books from that time that I remember so vividly. I clearly remember missing a chapter once because I was sick and had to go to the nurse, and how was furious at myself I was afterwards. I was glad to get to read it again on my own and see how I felt about it now, after reading many more books and being much older.
The main character is a boy is called Palmer LaRue, and the story is told from his perspective. From the start of the book we are told about how he doesn’t want to be a wringer when he turns 10 (this is one of the things I remembered incorrectly— kids turn into wringers in the story when they are 10 years old, not 13). The book begins on his ninth birthday, and here we are introduced to three kids: Beans, Mutto, and Henry. They are considered the “cool kids” from Palmer’s perspective, but really they are just a gang of rude little boys. We’re also introduced to his neighbor, a girl called Dorothy, and Palmer’s mom really wanted him to be friends with her. In his birthday party, he invited these boys, and was both surprised and excited that they came. They brought some really odd gifts: an apple core, one white sock, and an ancient cigar butt. This tells you a lot about the type of kids they were, and why Palmer’s mom didn’t like them. This was also the first time that he did not invite Dorothy to his birthday. These three boys would torment her; they called her “Fishface,” always played pranks on her, and harassed her on her way to and back from school. These boys were also super excited to turn 10 years old to become wringers at the town’s annual Pigeon Day in the Family Fest event that happened every year. Palmer also felt pressure because his father had won the sharpshooter award for the Pigeon Day of 1989, and had a golden pidgeon statue in his den. Palmer would find himself anxious to live up to his father’s example and to be a wringer with his friends (who, by the way, gave him the nickname “Snots”), which is why he never came forward about how he was very reluctant to become a wringer.
One day, he heard a tapping on his bedroom window. It was a pigeon. At first he was hesitant about feeding the pigeon or letting it in, but he knew in his heart it’s what he had to do. After a while he fully adopted the pigeon as his pet. He named it Nipper, and from there his entire life slowly started revolving about protecting him. Nipper got to his bedroom window every day a while after school, would stay for the night, and then would leave in the mornings. Palmer would stress about both protecting Nipper, and about his friends finding out about his peculiar pet. Eventually he knew that he had to tell someone about Nipper, so he told Dorothy, as he knew that she also did not like Pigeon Day. This brought the two of them together, and led to them secretly becoming best friends.
Eventually the boys had their speculation that Palmer had a pet pigeon, and the friendship in general was going south. On his 10th birthday, when Palmer was going to get “The Treatment” (a ritual of that each boy receives on their birthday where they get a punch on their arm for every year they are old) he finally decided that he was done. He no longer cared to be “cool”, and he refused to get the treatment. The boys then continued to try to catch Palmer’s pigeon, and started to torment him like they did with Dorothy.
Palmer and Dorothy were now closer than ever, with Palmer telling her all of his fears regarding the Pigeon Day that was coming up, and how he was afraid for Nipper’s life. Eventually they decided they would take Nipper away on their bikes, but after several failed attempts at trying to make him stay far away, Palmer decided that when Dorothy went on her family trip, she would take Nipper with her, that way he would not get captured for Pigeon Day.
Palmer and Dorothy were both really upset and there was some space between them after letting Nipper go, but Palmer decides to ask her where she released Nipper on Pigeon Day. She reveals that they let him go near the railroad tracks, unaware that people capture the pigeons there to release them for the shooting. From that point on, Palmer tries to see if he can recognize Nipper with every pigeon that is released from the crates. Every time one of the many lookalike pigeons was shot, his heart would break. Every so often, some of the pigeons were able to escape the shooters, and one of these pigeons, instead of flying away like the others, started flying in circles. That’s when Palmer knew that it was his pigeon. Nipper started looking for Palmer, as he always liked to stand on his head, and Palmer ran to the field. When Nipper landed, Beans, who is a wringer at the event, ran up to him and grabbed the pigeon from Palmer so that it was killed by the sharpshooter. However, Palmer was able to save him, and he carried Nipper off the field. As Palmer walked past the booing crowd as he’s carrying Nipper, a little hand reached out to touch Nipper’s wing. Then the book concludes as this little kid asks: “Can I have one too, Daddy?”
Wringer is beautifully written. While it is for younger kids, I can talk from experience as both a child and a teenager that this book captivates you. Reading this book again was an amazing experience. Despite being a book for children I was glad to find out that I was hooked on the story. I also saw so many aspects of myself on the story, which leads me to believe that several parts of the story stuck with me after all these years. Despite my memory failing me, this story was much deeper and had so many lessons taught throughout it. This is not something I think I realized when we read through it the first time back then.
Palmer wanting to be friends with Beans, Mutto, and Henry was baffling to me. I didn’t have much of a memory about that aspect of the book, yet it was one of the things that stood out the most to me now that I’m reading it again. This brings up one of the topics that I wanted to discuss: peer pressure. This book makes it clear how kids want to fit in, but it also shows children that they do not have to give in to peer pressure. It shows how if they feel like something isn’t right (Pigeon Day in this instance), they can voice what they are feeling, even if it feels as if they’re the only one. I feel like this is something that stuck with me. I’m not saying that I never was a victim of peer pressure, but I do know that I’ve always had strong opions. For instance, I don’t drink, and from a young age I’ve known that I can say no and don’t have to do anything even if everyone is doing it. While I don’t think that me being like this is completely attributed to this book, it is peculiar to me that something that I believe is so important is so prominent in this book. This is something that I believe is super important for young readers, especially because Jerry Spinelli wrote it in a way that doesn’t feel preachy. In a society where there is so much pressure from others, this is a message that needs to get out there.
This book is also so smart about talking about bullying and friendship. It shows how bad it is to bully someone and how tormented Dorothy was, without saying something like “Dorothy was being bullied and was upset” or something obvious as such. It tells us Palmer’s perspective, but it also shows how much it can affect a person. It tells us how even when someone is bullied, they can be super special and a wonderful human being. Dorothy was thought of as a weirdo, when in reality she was super sweet and had the same beliefs as Palmer. This then leads us to the conversation about how important it is to have good friends by your side that you share beliefs with. Palmer’s friendship with Dorothy is what kept him sane when he was trying to protect Nipper, and she was who he told everything to and expressed his emotions. Being vulnerable, having friends like this, and the impact of bullying is something that young readers need to be exposed to, and Wringer is written so that you are so connected to the characters that it expresses this amazingly. I could connect so much with Dorothy and Palmer throughout the book, but there were even parts where you can relate to Henry (one of the kids from the gang), which was something that I did not realize back then. The connections you can form with the characters are truly incredible.
Although this is a children’s book, it does talk about more serious topics, like animal cruelty (which I connect with on a deeper level nowadays as well). It also connects to real life because of this, since Pigeon Day was a thing for 66 years in Hegins, Pennsylvania, which inspired Spinelli’s fictional Waymer. Just like in Waymer, in the pigeon shoot during Labor Day in this town, more than 5,000 birds were killed and the proceeds would be used for the maintenance of the town’s park. Young children would be called ‘trappers’ (instead of wringers like in the book) to kill the pigeons who were still alive after being shot. Eventually this event was no longer done after protests ocurred. Wringer was published in 1997, and these events in Pennsylvania ended in 1999, but it was still often done as a sport. However, by 2002 it was finally prohibited that children under 18 could act as wringers or any act as such, which was described as “agents of euthanasia.”
I have a fond memory of Mr. Mathis telling us about other books, especially a specific one about a plane crash, which we never got to read. That said, I’m so glad we read Wringer. As I reread, not only was I able to connect with everything that happened in the story on a deeper level, but I was able to see how many important things I was taught as a kid through this story. This shows how important reading is for young minds, and I hope that this book is still read for elementary students, just like it was read to me in the fourth grade.
