Lizard Radio follows a young gender bending teenager named Kivali or, as her friends call her, Lizard. The book opens with Lizard being dropped off at CropCamp for the entire summer. Her guardian, Sheila, has been acting weird for weeks. Lizard thinks she’s going to hate digging in the fields and won’t make any friends, but she’s not even there a day before she starts finding allies among her comrades. Between Decision Making sessions with Ms. Machete and the agricultural training they all have to participate in, Lizard barely has any free time, but the little bit that she does she spends with Sully, a girl who makes her feel unlike anything she’s ever felt before. CropCamp has a secret though, and Lizard and her friends are determined to find out. Especially when Lizard learns something tragic has happened to her guardian.

Pat Schmatz has written a careful and intricate look at the way society forces us to choose between two genders as well as how we subvert those expectations. Her characters are equal parts understanding and challenging as they strive to become friends while still holding on to the values they believe are true. My one complaint about this book is that I wanted more! It ends in such an intense moment of tension and action that I felt lost when I put the book down. Kivali and her friends are captivating characters that will win your heart over.

There was a good deal of social commentary in this slightly dystopian novel. Schmatz identifies several distinctions that society makes between different socioeconomic classes as well as the way their work is viewed and treated. CropCamp is the least prestigious of the camps, and you get in there if you can’t get in anywhere else. Nevertheless, whatever anyone else might think of CropCamp, the campers themselves are not to be underestimated.

© 2015 Catia Cunha

Catia Cunha has a BA in Theater Arts and English from Mount Holyokc College. She won Young Playwrights Inc.’s 2013 National Playwriting Competition where her short play “Legs” was presented as a staged reading at the Lucille Lortel Theatre at the culmination of the Conference. In the spring of 2013 she produced and acted in her first full-length play, ____space, which was presented at Mount Holyoke. Catia’s senior project, Disinsemination, a play about feminist lesbians and aliens, was presented as a staged reading at Smith College and Mount Holyoke in Fall 2013. Mount Holyoke’s Rooke Theatre produced it in March 2014. In October 2014 Catia participated in the Grex Group’s Insomniacs 24-hour play festival. She is currently working on a play about sea monsters in the subway.