This Book Is Not Yet Rated

February 15, 2019
Movies were a bond between Ethan and his father, the Film Studies Department chair; movies were also the glue that kept him together after his father's untimely death.Now, they are the catalyst for the biggest changes 17-year-old Ethan has ever had to face. Spending most of his free time at his job managing a dilapidated university movie house with a motley crew of co-workers, his biggest worry is the daily battle to keep rats out of the candy. When the theater is served an eviction notice, Ethan and his cast of misfits band together to fight the loss of a community icon. Raina, his first love, who is now an up-and-coming movie star, unexpectedly returns to town, lending a hand to the struggle but also opening up old wounds. As in the best tried-and-true tales of movie valor, Ethan and his friends bravely take on each obstacle only to be faced with new ones. As they do, Ethan learns vital information about his past, his father, and why movies meant so much to him, which helps him work through his feelings of loss and grief. Uneven pacing and underdeveloped secondary characters mar an otherwise intriguing story. One theater employee grew up in Lebanon with his Lebanese father (his mother is American), otherwise all characters default to white.A character-driven story of grief and growth. (Fiction. 13-18)

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March 11, 2019
In this film-centric YA novel, Ethan, a teen cinephile, works at a Minneapolis art house cinema that’s in danger of being closed and replaced with a luxury development. Ethan developed his love of film with his recently deceased father, a film professor, so his passion for the Green Street Cinema is personal, familial, and tied up in his grief. Reenter teen movie star Raina, Ethan’s former best friend and first crush. After abandoning her latest film set, she has returned home, and Ethan suddenly finds himself with a famous advocate at his side as he tries to save his beloved theater. The cast of characters, especially Green Street’s workers, add humor and madcap antics to Ethan’s quest, while the relationship between Ethan and Raina—both its past and newly kindled present—injects friendship and romantic tension into Ethan’s reflections about film, his family, and the movie house. Young film buffs will appreciate the extensive knowledge of film terminology and movies of all kinds that Bognanni (Things I’m Seeing Without You) exhibits in this sweet love story with a quest at its heart. Ages 14–up.

April 1, 2019

Gr 9 Up-A heartfelt, humorous contemporary novel about the magic of movies, first love, and found families. Seventeen-year-old Ethan has watched a movie every day for the last three years. Each one is a doorway into another life-and each life lived vicariously through film is better than his own. In real life, Ethan's father died unexpectedly and his best friend-turned-movie-star hasn't spoken to him in years. The only place Ethan feels he belongs is the dilapidated independent movie theater he manages, which has a significant rodent problem and an even more significant debt problem. But when developers show up, intent on tearing down the cinema to build a "residential/retail establishment," Ethan and his ragtag band of misfit employees must find a way to convey the magic of obscure films to the masses or risk losing the place they consider home. Genuinely moving, this novel takes a nuanced look at how to cope with the losses you didn't see coming and how to live in the face of destruction that you can't control. Larger-than-life characters and clever film references are laugh-out-loud funny. However, there are no easy answers to the book's central problems, keeping Ethan's emotional journey-from being a spectator in his own life to living it again-satisfyingly real. VERDICT Recommended as a first purchase; hand this appealingly offbeat tragicomedy to fans of Jesse Andrews's Me and Earl and the Dying Girl or Jeff Zentner's Rayne and Delilah's Midnite Matinee.-Elizabeth Giles, Lubuto Library Partners, Zambia

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2019
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Seventeen-year-old Ethan's life centers around the Green Street Cinema. He works there, retreats there, and reveres the art house as the special place he and his film professor father bonded. Now his father has been dead for several years, and the dilapidated movie house is going to be torn down, leaving its assortment of misfit employees out of work and disoriented. Ethan, the erstwhile manager of Green Street, feels obligated to save the theater, a Don Quixote-like endeavor; his windmills will include karaoke-singing real-estate developers and rats fat from gorging on Junior Mints. Add to the mix the reappearance of Raina, Ethan's first love, who has been making movies in Hollywood, and Ethan feels like he's in his own movie?one that probably won't have a happy ending. Characters are the thing here. Although the cinephile-as-awkward-hero is not unknown in YA books, Bognanni does a particularly fine job individualizing Ethan, who's struggling with so many different issues, yet is wry and hopeful, idealistic, and finally, realistic. A strong supporting cast contributes both the wisdom of elders and the zaniness of youth, while Ethan and Raina's awkward and sweet relationship dance makes for a tender core. Ethan's Glossary of Film Terms interspersed throughout extend the story. Film aficionados and fans of John Green will especially like this one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)