Waiting For Sarah

September 29, 2003
As this Canadian novel opens, Mike Scott's father, mother and sister die in a car crash that leaves him legless and wheelchair-bound. Sullen and withdrawn, Mike goes to live with his aunt Norma, who eventually convinces him to return to high school in time for his senior year and graduation. As he works alone on a project in the school library, Sarah, a perky eighth-grader, boldly befriends him, despite his best efforts to keep her, like everyone else, at arm's length. Gradually, the boy begins to enjoy Sarah's company, just in time to learn her supernatural secret. Mike's bone-chilling discovery marks the pivot point where the book moves from angry character study to paranormal redemption tale. Both halves of the book will engage the target audience. Mike's inner torment echoes familiar questions—Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do children die while evil men live to ripe old age?—and his coming to terms with them is mature and thoughtful. Ages 12-up.

October 1, 2003
Gr 6-10-When 10th-grader Mike loses his family and both legs in an automobile accident, he is predictably withdrawn and highly resistant to those intent on helping him. Just as total academic and social detachment seem inevitable, the yearbook committee at his Vancouver high school offers Mike a job assembling a 50th anniversary feature. He accepts, but only because the assignment will free him from attending the soporific history class taught by the dreaded Mr. Dorfman. The plot takes a supernatural turn when an eighth-grade yearbook assistant, Sarah, turns up. Her persistent peppiness gradually defrosts Mike, and young love seems destined to run its course until he reports to his post one day to find Sarah bloodied and weeping in a corner. When she runs out, Mike notifies school officials who inform him that they have no record of her existence. Eventually, yearbooks reveal that she was a student there, but was slain in an unsolved murder dating back to 1982. In subsequent appearances, Sarah reveals the identity of her killer, and Mike sees that justice is done. Unfortunately, while the plot has some compelling ingredients, the third-person narrative relies so heavily on awkward chunks of bald exposition to prop up the tinny dialogue that any personal and spiritual epiphanies that the story's ambitious conclusion might hold are simply not realized.-Jeffrey Hastings, Highlander Way Middle School, Howell, MI

Copyright 2003 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2003
Gr. 7-10. An automobile accident that killed his parents and sister has left Mike Scott bitter, without legs, and with little will to live. His aunt Norma provides a home, and his best friend, Robbie, is attentive, but Mike remains deeply depressed. A project researching and writing the 50-year history of Carlton High School helps engage Mike, until eighth-grader Sarah is assigned to help him. Sarah reminds Mike of his little sister, and he works hard to drive her away. But her curiosity, frankness, and indefatigable good humor gradually nudge Mike out of his self-pity, until the day she disappears. In the tradition of Cynthia Voigt's "Izzy Willy Nilly "(1986) and Deborah Froese's "Out of the "Fire (2002), this novel explores what happens when a teenager must adapt to a new, much more limited life, while adding a romantic ghost story to the mix. Mike is realistically angry and unlikable, but readers will easily connect with him as he absorbs Sarah's lessons of survival and courage. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)