This book has been in our class library for the last two years, and we have had quite a few students pick it up and read it and enjoy it.
When we learned that our city was going on a stay at home order, we were told we could enter our buildings from 8-12 the day before the order started to gather what we may need “for the next two weeks.”
My first thought was that I need books, and I need to read! I gathered about 10 books knowing that I had quite a few from my public library and on my personal shelf at home that I still needed to read, but I wanted to be prepared.
Since so many of my students seemed to like this book, it was one of the first I grabbed. It’s very short – thus being one of the main reasons students pick it for SSR. The copy we have is only 131 pages. It is also part of a trilogy, which I did not know, and I also didn’t feel like I was missing anything. It definitely felt like a stand alone book.
The main character is Bobby and you find out in the first page (and from the front cover) that he has just become a father and is raising his daughter as a 16 year old. You don’t find out until almost the end of the book what happened with the mother.
The author does a nice job of telling both the present time story and what led up to the current events by alternating chapters between “Then” and “Now”. It shouldn’t come as any surprise in a story about teen parents that there is a little talk about sex, maybe one page in the entire book. The focus is definitely more on Bobby and his coming to terms with being a father.
I really enjoyed this book, and it only took me a couple hours to finish it in between my Zoom meetings today. I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars instead of a 5 on Goodreads simply because I wanted more of the story.
Oh, and fair warning, the last 15 or so pages made me cry a lot.
Michelle Reads & Writes 