13: A Novel - Hardcover

Brown, Jason Robert; Elish, Dan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006078749X ISBN 13: 9780060787493

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2008

Synopsis

13 Things to Know About 13

1. This book is about a guy named Evan.

2. Three months before his 13th birthday, he has to move from New York City 3. to Appleton, Indiana,

4. where nobody knows him.

5. He's not very happy about it.

6. His mom is kind of nuts.

7. His dad is kind of nuts too.

8. Evan's not nuts, but he keeps ending up in nutty situations.

9. One of them involves a movie called The Bloodmaster.

10. Another involves a girl named Patrice.

11. But the nuttiest situation of all is his bar mitzvah—

12. which it's possible no one will come to.

13. Unless Evan can make some new friends really fast.

About this title

About the Author:

Jason Robert Brown is the Tony Award-winning lyricist and composer of Parade, The Last Five Years, and Songs for a New World as well as the musical 13, which he collaborated on with Dan Elish. At his bar mitzvah he sang a song he had written about breaking up with his girlfriend, even though he had not at that time ever had a girlfriend. Jason lives in California with his wife and daughter.

Dan Elish is the insanely gifted author of many novels for both adults and children, including The Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks, 13 (based on the Broadway musical), and The Worldwide Dessert Contest.

When he's not busy typing furiously away on his Lap-Top (not a Gum-Top or a Hat-Top or even a Balloon-Top), you can find Dan in New York City, where he lives with his wife, Andrea, and daughter, Cassie, and son, John.

From Booklist:

This quick read, accented with humor, takes up a vast array of themes while hewing rather closely to the strand of finding oneself. Twelve-year-old Evan Goldman is ripped from the emotional comforts of his New York City home when his parents divorce and his mother takes him to Appleton, Indiana. There, Evan prepares for his bar mitzvah, befriends a no-nonsense sort of girl, falls in with the popular but shallow middle-school crowd, suffers neglect by his old N.Y.C. friends, and alternately sympathizes with and is appalled by the disabled boy who lives across the street. Evan’s social- and self-awareness get a workout as he realizes the moral edges of both his own and others’ behaviors, and the concept of becoming a man is presented through both his actions and efforts to write his bar mitzvah speech. Brown and Elish keep things moving so quickly that critical questions barely have a chance to register, but 13 is ultimately a fine school story with characters that are limned with enough thoroughness to make them real. Grades 5-7. --Francisca Goldsmith

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 006078749X
• ISBN 13: 9780060787493
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208