Getting the Details Right

Yesterday I attended a signing by Jacqueline Davies for her new middle-grade novel, The Lemonade War. Some other writing-group friends and I prevailed on Jackie to do a second reading even after most young customers had disappeared and the chairs were cleared away. Coming home, I got to thinking about the challenge finding the details of everyday life for kids today.

The Lemonade War was inspired by a lemonade-selling rivalry between two of Jackie’s own kids. During the reading, she mentioned how a passing episode that ends poorly for a bike helmet had really happened as well. She even named the perpetrator (so, kid, don't think you're getting away with anything; the grown-ups are onto you).

One of the novels I'm now writing is like Jackie's: set in the contemporary world that its young readers are supposed to recognize as their own. But I don't have kids, so not only am I not forced to know all about today's middle-school society, but I'm somewhat stymied at finding out the gloomy details.

Keeping up with technology is relatively easy because it's so new and obvious. I can pick up that some kids have cell phones and others want them, that the oral report is being replaced by the Powerpoint presentation, and so on.

But what about the minor but telling details of wardrobe? I must take care not to dress my young characters the way I dressed at their age. When I was a boy, all boys' socks were white, tubular, long enough to cover the calf, and striped at the top. The big choice was red stripes or blue stripes or, like the young gentleman to the left, a snazzy combination of both. As for shorts, they were short--hence the name.

Now boys' shorts are actually Capri pants, with extra pockets (for what?), and boys' socks have shrunk to hide inside shoes. Back in my youth, we had little socks, too, but they had pompoms at the back, and only girls wore them. (There does seem to be a conservation law at work here, though. Boys in shorts still bare the same amount of leg; it's just moved ten inches closer to the ground.)

So my hero wears little socks, and when his jeans get wet in the rain, they'll slap coldly against his shins. And he'll have to wear a bike helmet, right? My generation thought those were a good idea--in theory. Now kids actually seem to wear them.

Wrist bands? I grabbed that detail for another character when I met debut novelist Karen Day's son and realized he had more rubber on his arms than my old car had on its tires. Flip-flops? In my youth, kids didn't walk around in flip-flops unless they were actually in Hawaii or carrying a surfboard, but they seem ubiquitous now--and will no doubt spread further as the climate warms. But what other crucial details am I missing?