Happy About After Ever After

After Ever After by Jordan Sonnenblick
4Q 4P; Audience: M/J

I laughed and cried my way through Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, and I was eager to enter that world again. I was not disappointed. When we last saw Jeffrey, he was a five-year-old fresh out of the hospital tackling his brother with a great big hug. It seemed as though he was out of the woods, and readers were left with a picture of a happy family celebrating his brother Steven's graduation from eighth grade. But what happened after that? Now we know. After Ever After jumps to Jeffrey's own eighth grade year, when his graduation prospects are a little more tenuous than his brother's. After included two more years of leukemia. After included chemotherapy. After included learning to cope with the after-effects of that chemotherapy: he's slower to process things than he used to be, he has trouble paying attention, mathematical concepts slip from his brain as quickly as a monkey eats a banana, and his drop foot keeps tripping him up.

Now Jeff is crushing on the new girl (Lindsey) and wondering if she's crushing on him too. Now Jeff is trying to keep his best friend and fellow cancer survivor (Tad) from imploding, exploding, or causing all kinds of mayhem with his take-no-prisoners attitude. Now Jeff is enduring hours of tutoring each week in the hopes it will help him pass the state math test, because if he doesn't pass, he won't graduate. Now Jeff is missing his lifeline Steven, who is off playing drums in Africa. And just like then, nothing is going to keep Jeff down for long.

Musings:

Now Jeff is every bit as captivating and indomitable as he was eight years ago, and it's a pure pleasure to catch up with him again. Just as he did in Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, Sonnenblick shows a deft touch in blending the lines between humor and and tears. Jeff is a real kid. At times he's a little more mature than most boys his age, and given what he's been through, that's hardly surprising. But he's also an awkward, insecure, slightly goofy thirteen-year-old who sometimes puts his foot in his mouth and makes bad decisions. He's utterly charming, and I can't think of many readers who won't enjoy getting to know or get reacquainted with him.

A few of the things I really liked:

• Jeffrey's determination and courage, which brings me to:
• the training scenes in the gym (Jeff would make a great personal trainer)
• Jeff learning what this girl thing is all about
• Jeff's friendship with Tad, with all its bickering and truth-telling and deep understanding
• that to balance Jeff's glass half-full character, Tad is dark and prickly and not always likeable
• lines like "Lindsey has a sprig of mistletoe over her bedroom door. Just sayin'."
  
• Jeffrey's journal articles and (unsent) emails to Steven: he writes as affectingly as Steven did
• Jeff. You just can't help liking this kid.

I was under the impression that the effects of cancer treatment on young children is fairly recent research, so I was a little surprised to discover just how much this book focuses on that. I gather that Jordan Sonnenblick had both a student who really influenced him in the writing of this book and Drums and some nurses who encouraged him to write about the issue. It's certainly something new in YA literature, and I'm sure it's welcome to the patients and families who want people to know that the cancer story isn't necessarily over after a patient goes into remission.

I'm looking forward to introducing both Steven and Jeff to my younger teens and sharing their stories with them.

(For my take on Sonnenblick's Notes from a Midnight Driver, see this post.)

You'll laugh, you'll cry

Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss
4Q 3P M/J

How often do you read a book about someone with cancer and wish it had been longer? Not often, I imagine. But I liked Izzy so much that I wanted to spend more time with her. And, to be honest, I thought that the book rushed through her treatment a little too much. Then again, how many scenes of spectacular projectile vomiting does one book need? Seriously, this is a really good book. And it didn't make me feel as though I was being manipulated, as I feel when I force myself to read books by an author who writes book after book about kids dying from (mostly) cancer.

Izzy actually feels fine the morning she looks into the mirror and realizes that the glands in her neck are unusually swollen. Her mother makes a doctor's appointment for her, but Izzy is more worried that her mother will make her go back to school afterwards than she is about what the doctor might say. Nobody is prepared for the news they receive: Izzy has lymphoma, and they need her to go to the Children's Hospital now for treatment. Cancer? She has cancer? How can that possibly be? It doesn't seem real to her, even when she's admitted, even when they hook her up to an IV, even when they do the biopsy to find out more about her cancer. But it becomes horribly real with her first dose of chemo. Constant nausea and vomiting will do that.

There's no two ways about it. Cancer is horrible. The treatment is tough. But so is Izzy. And Izzy refuses to give in to her cancer. She has a dry, sarcastic wit that never wanes, even when she's at her sickest. She has her drawing, which keeps her mind off what is happening and helps her cope. She has a best friend who only occasionally gets weird on her. She has boys to worry and dream about. And she has a family that loves and supports her, even though her little brother still treats her just the same as he always did, which means he isn't always exactly sweet. Izzy is going to fight this cancer, and she is going to win.

This is not a book about dying. Izzy never doubts that she is going to survive, and she never gives up hope. This is not the book to read if you want to wallow in sadness and misery. This is a book to read if you want hope and something life-affirming. (That being said, I must say that some of the scenes dealing with her treatment pull few punches, so they can be difficult to read.)

Musings:

Some examples of Izzy's wit:

• There was the "Live Nude Girls" sign that made me wonder, when I was little, whether other places had dead nude girls.
• Of the CAT scan she says: Insert girl. Radiate. Deafen. Remove.
• Meeting her social worker (aka S.S.):
  
  I grabbed my pen and notebook, inspired to do this smarmy woman's portrait. I bet she thought she was hot s**t. I practically cackled as I gave her tights and a billowing superhero cape. Then I added a halo because her friends, if she had any, probably thought she was a friggin' saint for working with cancer kids. Saint S**t. I emblazoned S.S. in a crest on her chest, and snickered.
  "I'll come back later then," the S.S. baby-talked. "Would you like that, Isabella?"
  I said, "No."
  "Izzy!" Mom sputtered. "Don't be rude!"
  So I smiled sweetly and said, "Sorry, I meant no, thank you."
  
  
• Amy Koss's teens always feel and sound like real people to me. She hasn't forgotten what it's like to be a kid. I love that despite everything that Izzy is going through, she remains firmly rooted in the things that have always been of interest and concern to her. So a bunch of kids from her school have written her get well notes? Okay, fine, whatever. Is there one from her secret crush, Jared? THAT would be worth getting excited for.
• Another proof of this: If you're in middle school and haven't read The Girls, you might want to take a look at it.


• As you can see from the quote above, Izzy's mouth isn't sparkling clean. This book does contain swears, and they are appropriate to the emotions and situations of the characters who say them.