YA ~ Death and Deadly Disease

Asher, Jay	Thirteen Reasons Why Wow, I had to read this book in one sitting, just the way Clay Jensen needed to wander his town all night listening to seven cassette tapes that were delivered to his mailbox wrapped in brown paper and absent a return address. There are two narrators of this book, Clay whose thoughts are in regular text and Hannah Baker's voice on the tapes, which appear in italics. This is a book I would like to hear in audio. Hannah Baker committed suicide two weeks before Clay receives the package. In the tape, she addresses the thirteen people who are most directly responsible for her choice to end her life. Each person is required to listen to the entire story and then send the tapes on to the next person. Failure to do so will result in the tapes becoming public as there is a third party involved who is "watching." Creepy and compelling.
Crutcher, Chris	Deadline Get the tissues out for this one. Eighteen-year-old Ben discovers that he has some sort of agressive blood cancer after a routine exam for cross-country. Ben is poised to win the state cross-country title and he has plans for his senior year - no senioritis for him. When he receives the bad news from his doctor, he is not surprised because he has always known that he would die young. He refuses treatment and swears the unwilling doctor to secrecy and goes out and lives his life - to the fullest. Instead of going out and fulfilling expectations in cross-country, he, tiny as he is, goes out for football. He decides to try for the girl he has been crushing on forever and he decides to rattle the cage of his social studies teacher by quoting from the book Lies My Teacher Told Me and campaigning to have a street in his all-white town, Malcolm X Boulevard. This is classic Crutcher - Ben is athletic, smart, insightful and empathetic as well as infuriating. While he is a little too accepting of the prognosis of his disease, he proceeds to live his life with dignity and humor. Themes of racism, bigotry, abuse and insest are explored and the occasional crude language is reflective of realistic teen talk. Summer 08 - I decided to "reread" one of my favorite titles by listening to the audio. It was well done. The narrator did a convincing job as Ben.
Ehrenhaft, Daniel	Ten Things to Do Before I Die Sixteen-year-old Ted Burger lives in New York City, has two high-powered ad executive parents who don't know him and two best friends, Nikki and the wild, spontaneous Mark. Nikki and Mark also date and Burger is secretly in love with Nikki. He is content to live life vicariously through his two friends and avoid conflict; but they are encouraging him to be more spontaneous while sharing their usual hamburger special (Nikki eats the coleslaw, Mark eats the burger and Burger eats the fries) at their favorite hangout, a diner. They are making a list on a napkin of ten things Burger needs to do before he dies when a disgruntled, recently fired fry cook threatens everyone in the diner with what turns out to be a water pistol. No one knew this until Mark heroically tackles the man. Burger leaves the diner with his list and feeling weirdly nauseous and later discovers that the cook also poisoned the oil used to cook the french fries and that he has twenty-four hours to live. What would you do if you knew you had twenty-four hours to live? This rollicking if uneven novel presents one possible scenario. Some may find parts of the novel offensive given the fact that losing his virginity is first on the list. But while there is a great deal of talk and no action, some foul language and underage drinking; the novel also asks the reader to ponder some interesting life questions.
Koss, Amy Goldman	Side Effects Fifteen-year-old Izzy feels a lump in her neck one morning, mentions it to her mother, who signs her out of school later that day to go to the pediatrician's for a check-up. He recommends an x-ray. Izzy and her mom are barely home when the doctor calls back saying that Izzy has lymphoma and sends them to children's hospital. Izzy is abrasive and funny, her mother cries 24/7, her father walks around in a daze and her little brother is truly ticked off at the changes around their house. The tone is never maudlin thanks to Izzy's sometimes inappropriate sense of humor. She does use some crass language, but Koss paints a realistic picture of a young person facing a life-threatening disease complete with supersonic puking and the excrutiating pain of some chemotherapy.
Levithan, David	Marly's Ghost I adore David Levithan's writing and I just so happened to reread Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol recently. So when I happened upon this "remix," I was intrigued. Levithan retools the story by making Scrooge, seventeen-year-old Ben on the eve of Valentine's Day "bah-humbugging" the idea of true love. He recently lost his own, true love, Marly to cancer and just can't get back to living his life. His best friend, Fred isn't willing to give up on the friendship despite Ben's rudeness and Tiny Tim makes an appearance as Tiny and Tim, two freshmen finding first love. It's a clever, quick read that works really well in some places and stretches thin in others. It is illustrated by Brian Selznick with black and white Victorian-type drawings.
Mackler, Carolyn	Love and Other Four-Letter Words This is Mackler's first novel but I read it after I read The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things. I read it because I liked The Earth... so much. Sammie is fifteen and has just found out that her parents are going to try a "trial separation" which means that her father is taking a sabbatical from his job at Cornell and going out west and her mother is moving with Sammie to an apartment in New York City and looking for a job. Her mother, aptly nicknamed "the onion" because she is so emotional, breaks down and takes to her bed, leaving Sammie to take care of herself, her mother, the apartment, the dog and everything else. Not quite as laugh-out-loud funny as The Earth... but Sammy is a likable character.
Minchin, Adele	The Beat Goes On I wanted to like this book. I really did. There were things that I did like about it, but on the whole, I was disappointed. The book received respectable reviews, VOYA gave it 4's, but I found the book a bit teachy, sort of like AIDS-101 and the narrator was wise way beyond her years. However, there aren't many YA books which deal with the subject of AIDS and the book isn't terrible. Fifteen-year-old Leyla is a drummer who longs for some excitement in her life. She finds more than she can handle when her beloved cousin, Emma, reveals that she is HIV-positive but swears her to absolute secrecy. Only Emma's mother and Leyla know. Minchin lives in Great Britain, the book is set in Great Britain, complete with forms and Maths, and Britishisms abound. Leyla is a likeable character but I felt some of the minor characters were stereotypes and undeveloped. Undeveloped was her blossoming relationship with Darren and more details about her passion for drums. Leyla is quite frank and some of the situations described while realistic, preclude inclusion in a K-8 school library. That said, the AIDS info was solid and the dilemmas that face heterosexual sexually active teenagers.
Sones, Sonya	one of those hideous books where the mother dies (sic) Fifteen-year-old Ruby just buried her mother and is on a plane heading to live with a father she never knew because she left before she was born. Her father lives in Los Angeles because he is a big movie star and the only time Ruby has ever seen him was in the movies. Now, her mother is dead and he wants to be her father. This touching, often laugh-out-loud novel is written in blank verse and told by Ruby herself. She is likable, funny, trying so hard to cope with her losses and adjust to a completely alien life among the rich and famous.
Soto, Gary	The Afterlife Chuy, a senior at Fresno High School, is looking forward to meeting his crush, Rachael at a dance but when he compliments a guy's shoes while in the bathroom while freshening up, he ends up bleeding to death on the bathroom floor after being stabbed. Throughout the rest of the book he tells the reader about his "life" while he floats around, visiting grieving friends and family and slowly losing body parts as he fades away. Chuy is a likable and believable character. The book is not at all maudlin and generously leavened with humor.
Trueman, Terry	7 Days at the Hot Corner This first person narrative is told by senior, varsity third baseman, Scott Latimer who, when he should be looking forward to the best week of baseball in his life, is also spending the week waiting to see if his AIDS test is positive. He should be concentrating on his baseball, but his emotions are reeling after his best friend comes out. He never had an inkling and is now in a panic because six months earlier, Travis bled all over him after he was struck in the face with a baseball. Even though the chances of Scott's contracting AIDS is slim, he insists on taking a screening test. He also needs to deal with his anger and confusion over the status of his friendship, worry that his team-mates will think he is gay by virtue of being best friends and wanting to do well during the tournament to increase his baseball prospects.
Trueman, Terry	No Right Turn Sixteen-year-old Jordan is the master of pushing down pain and walling it off even if it means pushing away friends and family and giving up activities such as sports. He just wants to be left alone, if that means letting people think he is a zombie, that's fine by him. It is the only way he has been able to cope in the three years since his father's suicide. It would have been hard enought coping with the fact of the suicide, but his father chose to end his life while Jordan was the only one home. But now, his mother is asking his permission to date a new neighbor and while Jordan is happy for her, he acknowledges that he is angry that she seems to be moving on when he can't. Don is cordial and not pushy. Jordan wants to dislike him but finds that he can't especially when he finds out that Don is restoring a vintage Corvette. Trueman is a master of writing about teens in pain. The description of Jordan's father's suicide pulls no punches.
Weyn, Suzanne	Reincarnation Eons, emeralds and rebirth. The lives of four people are intertwined through the ages from prehistory through ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, the African slave trade, Salem Witch Trials, World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement through two high school students on a field trip. Two are meant to be with each other, but fate and one or both of the other two, keep intervening. And an emerald or green stone figures prominently throughout. This is a romantic and satisfying read for students who love star-crossed lover stories or are intrigued by the idea of reincarnation. (Since I don't have a page of romantic books and the main characters keep dying, I placed the book here.)
Zevin, Gabrielle	Elsewhere Fifteen-year-old Liz Hall wakes up on an ocean liner heading to "Elsewhere." She was killed by a hit-and-run driver when she was heading to the mall to help her best friend pick out a prom dress. She doesn't want to be dead and age backward to infancy when the dead return to earth as new babies. She want to get her license and fall in love. Elsewhere is perfectly lovely and most people there adjust nicely to life there, but Lizzie doesn't. She spends hours and eternims (Elsewhere money) at the observation decks watching her parents and her best friend continue life without her. Her grandmother, whom she never met in real life, tries her best to give Liz the space she needs to adjust.