37 Things I Love (in no particular order)

April 9, 2012
Magoon (Camo Girl) gently but unflinchingly explores difficult adolescent territory in this intelligent, affecting novel. Set over the last four days before summer vacation, the book traces 15-year-old Ellis’s complex emotional journey as she confronts the inevitable death of her comatose father, who was injured in a construction accident two years earlier, navigates volatile friendship dramas, explores her sexual identity, and struggles with her evolving relationship with her mother. Deftly developed characters (including well-drawn minor ones) and highly credible relationships—especially the loving yet testy push-and-pull (“a flawed and fragile thing,” notes Ellis) between Ellis and her mother—ground the book. Magoon persuasively depicts the high school social scene and Ellis’s simultaneously secure and awkward role in it; her memories of her father are particularly well rendered with a love that avoids lapsing into sentimentality. Both perceptive and perplexed—“I am torn. Abby: best friend or today’s pariah? Evan: savior of the hour or he who may try to feel me up?”—Ellis tells her story in a singular voice that captures and holds readers’ interest and empathy. Ages 14–up. Agent: Michelle Humphrey, Martha Kaplan Agency.

April 1, 2012
Ellis experiences emotional turbulence as she copes with her father's extended coma and the pain of changing friendships. There is tension between Ellis and her mother. Her beloved father has been in an accident-induced coma for two years. Ellis resists any discussion of removing life support and, despite her mother's disapproval, visits and shares her deepest thoughts with her unresponsive father. Coinciding with her father's accident was the change in Ellis' relationships with her best friends. Ellis, Cara and Abby had been close in middle school, but somehow, Cara drifted away. Now, at this critical time, when Ellis' mom wants her to see yet another psychiatrist in hopes she will accept the inevitable, Ellis finds she needs Cara, especially since Abby is becoming wilder and more self-centered. In the meantime, Cara has accepted that she is gay, adding another complication for Ellis as she seeks to renew their friendship. As Ellis confronts her pain, she is able to see herself, her mother and her friends as they really are. Magoon, winner of the Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award for New Talent (The Rock and the River, 2010), has crafted a fresh look at the complexities that can arise in the friendships of teens. Ellis' first-person expression of her pain and confusion is especially well done. Strong secondary characters provide additional insight. Another powerful outing from a rising star. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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June 1, 2012

Gr 10 Up-Magoon takes readers through four days in the life of a 15-year-old in this short novel that is packed with memories, flashbacks, issues, and characters, adding a sense of elongated time. For two years, Ellis's loving father has been in a coma and kept alive by machines. Despite his inability to communicate, his daughter holds out hope that he will someday be whole. She doesn't have much of a support system. Her BFF Abby is simply clueless and a flirt. Colin, who adores Abby, shows some ability to connect with Ellis's feelings, but she turns to a childhood friend with whom she has had little contact of late. Trying to sort out why she let their friendship languish; why she tolerates Abby's selfishness; how to relate to her mom, who thinks "it's time"; how to let her father go, and-as if that were not enough-who she is socially and sexually make up the story line. Abby (who has "enlarged" her breasts with Jell-O Jigglers) gets terribly drunk at a party, and there is tremendous drama when the story of her fake bosom hits the high-school gossip mill. When the former friends connect, Cara assumes that Ellis knows and accepts that she is gay, and she takes sexual liberties that confuse Ellis even more. It is not until her father dies and she eulogizes him that readers discover the "37 things" she loves are one memory for each year of his short life. This is an easy but not substantive read, and the ending is too neat.-Joanne K. Cecere, Monroe-Woodbury High School, Central Valley, NY

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