Paul Zindel, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for his memorably named play, "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds," also happens to be a prolific and talented writer of novels for young adults ("My Darling, My Hamburger," "Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball!").
Zindel is that rare specimen of a grownup, one who seems to have total recall of that emotional roller-coaster ride known as high school. And Zindel can make you laugh, despite the pain. Witness his terrifically funny novel of last year, "The Amazing and Death-Defying Diary of Eugene Dingman," about one befuddled teenager's summer waiting tables in a Borscht Belt hotel.Zindel's newest book, "A Begonia for Miss Applebaum," is about two kids who live on Manhattan's Upper West Side - handsome Henry Ledniz and sensitive Zelda Einnob - and the love they have for their eccentric science teacher, who is dying. It is a sort of modern-day "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," written from the perspective of two smart-and-sweet urban teens.
The writing has many memorable bits. Anyone who has ever entered a city apartment house and breathed in its characteristic aroma of cabbage cooked ages ago will appreciate Zelda's musings on Miss Applebaum's seedy Central Park West dwelling: "To me, old wallpaper is like a mystical eye that has seen years and even decades of life walk by it. The wallpaper outside Miss Applebaum's apartment probably had molecules from people's breath and faint scents of perfumes and flavors of ancient coffeecakes, and probably the very essences of hundreds of humans who had passed by."
Henry and Zelda show up for science-lab duty on the first day of the new term to find that peppy old Miss Applebaum - nicknamed "The Shocker" for her unorthodox methods of gaining student attention - has suddenly and mysteriously "retired." No one will give them a straight answer when they ask for more details - in fact, the adults act positively shifty when the subject comes up. It turns out that Applebaum has cancer. And she is alone in her apartment, attended only by weird Dr. Obitcheck and a harridan niece named Bernice.
It all sounds like a pretty sad and creepy setup, but what happens from then on is pure Zindel - that is, a well-tempered mixture of comedy and pathos. Zelda and Henry visit their former teacher and find her not only delighted to see them but raring to go on teaching the glories of science - and of Western civilization - using the city as her classroom.
The feisty Applebaum, wheezing dangerously all the way, guides Henry and Zelda through a Central Park they have lived with all their lives without really seeing. ("This," she cries out, "is where all of civilization comes together and means something.")
Daring enough to have held Miss Applebaum's hand while she refused to go gently into that good night, Zelda and Henry are ultimately able to say goodbye to her without guilt or feelings of regret. Their outrageous final tribute to their teacher is something only a writer as deft as Paul Zindel could carry off. At the end of "A Begonia for Miss Applebaum," readers will also feel bereft, at having to say goodbye to three such endearing characters.