When I was young, my family lived that apartment life for several years before being able to afford a mortgage. I don’t remember much about the apartments, save for thin walls and scuttling roaches, but I do remember the dumpster. As one of those leave-the-house-after-lunch-come-back-for-dinner kinds of kids, I spent many a Saturday afternoon unobserved, which afforded me plenty of opportunity to go scrounging through the bin looking for treasure: appliance boxes, crates, discarded toys, broken furniture—you could build a respectable temporary fort out of the finds from the apartment dumpsters. If you were really lucky, you might even find something worth taking home. Mostly you found garbage.
It would be a massive understatement to say I wasn’t the most skilled dumpster diver (I was still in elementary school). I didn’t really understand the value of things. I also was doing it out of boredom rather than necessity—essentially just playing with junk and trying not to get tetanus. But I understood the possibility. On any given Saturday there could be something absolutely wonderful lurking in that dented brown bin: a bike that someone had grown out of, an action figure missing an arm but otherwise playwithable, a bag of stolen diamonds perhaps (I had a rich imagination). It was that promise that kept me coming back–that kept me digging, scavenging, scrounging, getting my hands dirty.
You can probably already see where I’m going with this.
When I first conceived of my latest novel, Dive, all I had was the title. I knew it would be about diving in at least three forms: the graceful and athletic art of springboard diving, the still-socially-stigmatized practice of dumpster diving, and the very symbolic plunge into adolescence (which might be better described as belly-flopping for those of us who did it less gracefully). The main character, Kass, experiences all three of these—though the coming-of-age-plunge turns out to be the most challenging. Along the way, she comes to see the world differently, to better discern the value of what she finds, and tosummon the courage to both make mistakes and to learn from them.
When Kass stands on the diving board, she realizes she has the capacity to make something beautiful. When she opens the lid of a dumpster, she believes in the possibility that there is something wonderful lurking inside. When she looks in the mirror, she sees a better, braver, wiser, more compassionate version of herself—one that she can work towards.
I know just how she feels. Staring at a new document with only a one-word title at the top, I, too, am entranced by the possibilities. It’s one of the reasons—perhaps the main reason—why I tell stories. Watching that cursor flash, I think to myself, “Man, there could be anything in there.” So I dive in. I start digging. And yes (as my editor will attest), much of what I find is garbage, but buried among it are kernels of truth and moments of beauty. There is treasure to be had in the bins of our imagination, it’s simply a matter of knowing it when you see it. The first step is to look.
It’s a message I hope young readers take from this book, or from any book, really: that even though the world may seem like a garbage heap sometimes, there’s still so much potential, so many lessons to learn, experiences to share, people to love, and stories to tell. If you keep at it. If you don’t give up. But as Kass will tell you, you can’t create something beautiful unless you take the leap.
So take a deep breath. Hold your nose if you have to.
And let ‘er rip.
John David Anderson is the author of some of the most beloved and highly acclaimed books for kids in recent memory, including the New York Times Notable Book Ms. Bixby’s Last Day, Posted, Granted, Sidekicked, and The Dungeoneers. A dedicated root beer connoisseur and chocolate fiend, he lives with his family in Indianapolis, Indiana. You can visit him online at www.johndavidanderson.org
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