Postcards

John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars does a rare thing for a novel about the life of a teenage cancer patient: it uses laugh out loud humor to discuss the deeply horrendous nature of sickness. Because of the thyroid cancer diagnosis she received at the age of thirteen, Hazel Grace Lancaster goes through life attached to an oxygen tank. A “miracle drug” has allowed Hazel to live with her cancer, although she’s uncer tain of whether or not her frequent hospital visits, the stress her illness puts on her parent’s relationship, or having to endure a pitiful support group on a weekly basis can be called living. However, when one of the weekly group sessions leads to Hazel meeting Augustus—an attractive amputee in remission—Hazel’s life becomes a little more wor thwhile. More than just your typical teenage love story, Green creates utterly realistic characters that must deal with the big questions in life. Causing more than a few tears, this rare and profound piece of fi ction leaves readers knowing that they have come across something marvelous and feeling unusually complete.

Tia Lalani

John Green

The Fault in Our Stars

New York: Dutton, 2012.
313 p.
ISBN: 9780525478812
(YA Novel, 14+)

This book draws a perturbed preteen, Lynn, and her carefree, new-age mother closer together through the daughter’s strange, but authentic, relationship with another teenage girl living off the grid with her family in the middle of Toronto. Her name is Blossom, her underground home is called “the Lingerlands,” and her family’s self-professed title, “the Underlanders.” Their livelihood relies on finding everything second-hand, which exposes Lynn to a home stranger than her own. Ellis captures the difference that each realm imposes on Lynn with ease, in her whimsical banter with friends and her contemptuous critiques of her mother at home, and writes Lynn’s surrender to the innocent charm of “the Lingerlands” and its inhabitants with picturesque delicacy. Lynn’s journey of reconciliation with her mother remains engaging throughout as she handles the complex social issues an adolescent might face in learning to love others from different backgrounds. Even with this book ’s theme of accepting difference, both Lynn and Blossom come to the same humorous conclusion after their unique journey toget her: sometimes being strange is just too funny not to laugh out loud about.

Ben Smith

Sarah Ellis

Outside In

Toronto: Groundwood, 2014.
176 p.
ISBN: 9781554983674
(Young Adult, ages +10)

At times playful, at times serious, Nina E. Grøntvedt ’s pseudodiary Hey, It’s Me! weaves together hand-written journal entries, drawings, email messages, lists, poems and shor t stories—all created by its twelve-year old protagonist Oda Andrea Stokkheim—with longer typeset sections, also told in the first-person. Its sub-title, Please Don’t Leave Me Here Alone, is a dual invitation to both physically pick up and read the book, and to accompany and befriend the artistic Oda as she negotiates the confusion, joys and challenges of adolescence, including an intense, albeit brief, period of self-precipitated isolation and loneliness. With the help of her grandmother, the strong-willed and occasionally aggressive Oda gain s some self-awareness and insight as to why we are often cruelest to those closest to us, and this helps her to mend old relationships and build new ones near the happily wrapped-up ending of this novel. Mildly reminiscent of Jeff Kinney’s popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Grønvedt’s novel was part of the Leselyst [I Want to Read]program in Norwegian schools, and it has been translated into six languages. Oda’s adventures continue in two sequels, both published by Omnipax.

Ingrid Urberg

Nina E. Grøntvedt

Hei, det er meg! ikke la meg bli alene igjen her [Hey, It’s Me! Please Don’t Leave Me Here Alone]

Oslo: Omnipax, 2010.
282 pages
ISBN: 9788253032658
(Ages 10 +)

This picturebook is brimming with colorful illustrations and meaningful content. The tex t is co-authored by Shaila Abdullah and her ten-year-old daughter, Aanyah, and the book dedicates a...