by Andrew Clements ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001
Clements (The Jacket, above, etc.) looks beyond grade school for the first time with a multifaceted rumination on selfhood and various forms of invisibility. Fifteen-year-old Bobby wakes up invisible one morning. His equally flummoxed parents, quickly grasping the personal and social dangers should the news get out, urge him to hole up at home. But boredom, worry, and the mutinous thought that he should have some say in the matter soon lead him into a string of adventurous outings, both wrapped up Invisible Man–style, and stark naked. Clements cranks up the stress with an ensuing traffic accident that puts both parents into the hospital, and, as weeks pass, the increasingly persistent attentions of the governmental child-welfare machine. He also provides a needed confidante for Bobby in Alicia, a teenager blinded by a head injury two years before and no stranger herself to that sense of being unseen. Both feeling angry, scared, and vulnerable, their relationship gets off to a wonderfully tumultuous start, but builds on a foundation of caring and loyalty into something solid enough to survive Bobby’s final return to visibility. As always, Clements’s genius for developing credible plot lines (even from oddball premises) makes suspension of disbelief no problem. His characters, each one fundamentally decent—there is never a chance that Bobby will go the way of the transparent voyeur in Cormier’s Fade (1988), for instance—are easy to like. A readable, thought-provoking tour de force, alive with stimulating ideas, hard choices, and young people discovering bright possibilities ahead. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-23626-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
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by Andrew Clements & illustrated by Mark Elliott
by Neal Shusterman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2006
Death isn’t an easy subject to write about, but Shusterman handles it deftly, as he explores what happens to two children who are “lost” on their way “towards the light.” Nick and Allie have never met, but both are involved in a fatal car accident. They find they are neither living nor spirit; they now exist in Everlost. Learning to cope with their new state of being, they arrive in New York City, where a band of lost children have taken up residence in the Twin Towers, which still stand tall in Everlost. Led by Mary, the Queen of Snot, threatened by the Great McGill and his pirate band, these children have come to accept that this is where they belong and will always be. But Nick and Allie know there must be something—somewhere—else, and they are determined to find out what and where that is. A quirky sense of humor pervades, which helps to lighten what would otherwise be a disturbing concept. But the overall message (that there is existence after life and purpose to that existence and a destination when one is finally ready for it) is one of comfort. For anyone who has lost a friend or loved one at an early age, this is a good read. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-689-87237-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2006
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by Neal Shusterman ; illustrated by Andrés Vera Martínez
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by Jenny Han ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2009
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
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by Jenny Han ; Siobhan Vivian
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