What's It All About?
Ann Turner puts Mark's physical and emotional journey in verse in this heart-wrenching story.
Mark thought living up to his baseball coach's standards was tough and that his dad was always pushing him a bit too hard. His friends Eddie and Diane help take the tension off but even they can't help when his world turns upside down. His dad is diagnosed with cancer and he has to struggle to learn how to cope with this devastating diagnosis.
Mark thought living up to his baseball coach's standards was tough and that his dad was always pushing him a bit too hard. His friends Eddie and Diane help take the tension off but even they can't help when his world turns upside down. His dad is diagnosed with cancer and he has to struggle to learn how to cope with this devastating diagnosis.
What'd I Think?
Turner expertly got the emotional point across in this minimal word, verse novel. I wept many times throughout as I read of the ups and downs of living after the diagnosis.
I give it 3 out of 5 stars!
What'd They Think?
School Library Journal
(February 01, 2006; 9780439296809)
Gr 8 Up-As in Learning to Swim
(Scholastic, 2000), Turner addresses an intense subject in lyrical poetry.
Mike, 16, has the perfect life-star baseball player, cute girlfriend, and loyal
best friend-until the phone call that turns his life upside down. His father
has pancreatic cancer. While his friends continue to live their lives, time
stands still for Mike. His dad suffers through and begins the wasting away that
cancer causes. A short period of remission brings a brief period of
celebration. In the end, however, Mike finds that his bargains with God and his
attempts to get along better with his sister are all for naught. His father
dies and he must find a way to go on with his life. Teens who have experienced
serious illness and/or death in their family or with close friends will relate
to Turner's profound novel that traces the journey of one young man through the
stages of grief and recovery. National help lines, addresses, and Web sites are
included for readers who need them.-Kathryn Childs, Morris Mid/High School, OK
(c) Copyright 2010.
Booklist
(February 01, 2006; 9780439296809)
Gr. 7-10. Tenth-grader Mark
Warren is a golden boy: good friends, a gorgeous girlfriend, and an awesome
pitching arm, an arm that his dad has cultivated since Mark was small. Yet all
turns gray and meaningless when Mark learns that his father has pancreatic
cancer. In a carefully crafted, free-verse narrative, the teen tells of his
struggle with faith, hope, and disillusionment as his family watches his father
slip away--and the inevitable terror and guilt of those still living. It's a
hard, sad, beautifully written book, spare yet with surprisingly well-developed
characters. Unlike longer, more complex novels that build layers of emotion
through description and events, Turner employs poetry to paint the reality of
gradual loss, and the language conveys the absence of all the family has known
and its emptiness without its central figure. A short bibliography of resources
for children whose parents have died rounds out this special book. --Frances
Bradburn Copyright 2006 Booklist
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