The Truth Project

August 1, 2020

Gr 8 Up-High schooler Cordelia plans to coast through her senior project, copying her older sister's idea of taking an ancestry test through GeneQuest, and adding her own spin by exploring the results through her poetry. Cordelia teams up with Kodiak, who's a friend, crush, and fellow poet. Recently, Kodiak's life has been troubled: After finding out that a classmate he impregnated was having an abortion, he drunkenly crashed his mother's car. When work and their project begins and the test reveals that the father she has always known is not her biological father, Cordelia is thrown into emotional turmoil. On a trip to a young poets' conference in Seattle, Cordelia becomes rebellious, drinking and sneaking off, and she ropes Kodiak into helping her track down her father. Set in Alaska where the author lives, this novel is told through Cordelia's poetry and her emails and texts to other characters. Cordelia talks at length to other people, a tactic that allows each character to be fully developed. Poetic elements such as rhythm, similes, and metaphors are well done, and the cast is diverse in many ways: Cordelia's best friend Sana is biracial (one parent is Asian), interested in girls, and lives in a trailer park, and Kodiak's project focuses on stories from his Tlingit heritage. She develops ways of coping, but the descriptions of Cordelia's response to Kodiak's creations are extremely emotionally charged, and readers may struggle to connect. VERDICT A story about family and identity that will appeal to readers who like novels in verse, or books about artistic teens.-Liz Anderson, DC P.L.

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 7, 2020
Delia, a high school senior in Alaska, has achieved early acceptance to Columbia, so she’s not worried about the big senior project. She’s planning to mimic her older sister’s: get a DNA test and write about the results. Delia will differentiate her assignment by writing in verse, although she rarely shows her lines to anyone. Her project partner is Kodiak Jones, her childhood friend and crush whose slam poetry sings. But when the DNA test shows that the man who raised her isn’t her father, Delia is shattered. She’s always felt different from her family, and she can’t forgive her mother’s infidelity and secrecy; and reaching out to her biological father only adds complications. Debut author Medema brings the Alaskan milieu to life, including showing how Kodiak, who has Tlingit heritage, is seen as “trouble” after a few missteps in a way Delia, who’s white, might not be. Delia tells her story through passionate poems, texts, and emails that grow increasingly distressed as her obsession with meeting her biological dad leads to her letting down friends and lying to family, making for an effective exploration of identity, secrets, and what family means. Ages 13–up. Agent: Louise Fury, the Bent Agency.

October 1, 2020
Grades 9-12 Meet Cordelia, high-school senior, star student, and middle sister of three. When she receives the results of her DNA test, which she elected to do as part of a senior project, she learns that her biological father is a stranger, and her world explodes. Obsessed with learning the truth about her "real" father, she neglects responsibilities, seethes at and confronts her mother, and ropes her friends into helping her. She contacts her biological father and believes everything he tells her about himself. Cordelia's obsession culminates in sneaking away from a school-sponsored trip to Seattle to meet him in person, but by the end of the novel, she realizes there is more to being a father than shared genes. Through Cordelia's first-person narrative, Medema uses dialogue, texts, and emails effectively to render her family and friends with empathy and depth; they forgive her even when she is so centered on herself that she treats them poorly. This is a solid debut novel about truth and personal identity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)