As I am writing this entry, I am going to try my absolute best to not end up on Gabbie Hanna’s blocklist by the end of the week. A few months ago, I found myself interested in reading her 2017 book “Adultolescence” where she writes a series of not so profound poems that address her experiences through young adulthood. While I appreciate her clever wordplay in which she merges the terms adult and adolescence together to reflect her seemingly premature entry into life as an adult, I do believe that every page turn following the cover is quite underwhelming to say the least.
It feels like Gabbie wanted to make an adult book for kids while also making a kids book for adults. While I don’t hate the idea, I do believe that it complicates things by making some entries in the book a little more difficult to follow.
One example is of a poem named “RECESS” in which Gabbie takes the infamous “kids sitting in a tree…K-I-S-S-I-N-G” and follows it up with a series of depressing and negative life events that completely change the trajectory of the poem. I mean, I guess that’s the point, right?…Sprinkle a little dark humor on top of a silly, little kids joke. Gabbie, this is a book tailored towards your younger audience—not a personal diary that’s meant to be shared with your therapist. Unfortunately, kids don’t want to hear about an affair or a “severe case of alcoholism.” Another example is in her poem “IRON” where she talks about how her mother used to check to see if the iron was hot by touching it, and how, in some way, she believed that that was a metaphor for something.
I mean, that joke would most likely be funny if we had even the slightest clue what she was talking about. Again, this is a book of poems that is mainly being pushed towards a younger audience because—no offense but…I can’t imagine a middle-aged housewife reading this while chugging a glass of wine. These jokes might land with some teenagers and young adults but will completely fly over the heads of the rest of the audience.
I do, however, understand what she is trying to do here. The book is called “Adultolescence”…so of course there’s going to be some dark humor about experiences in young adulthood. To say that the book is absolutely humorless would be harsh and simply just a brutal condemnation of her writing ability. What we can say is that she fails to read the room quite a bit. Some of the poems feel like a trauma dumping session while other poems feel senseless, making even Dr. Seuss sound somewhat profound—okay, maybe that’s taking things a bit too far. I definitely see the purpose of her book, and I will say that a few of her diary entries disguised as poems made me smile just a little. However, she seemed to just miss the mark a bit, and instead of making something with a little more effort that would be better suited for her audience and young fans, she wrote down a bunch of personal traumas and depressing stories that added a grim air to a book that had so much potential.
