Items related to Damage
Synopsis
What you really want to do
is give up trying. Lay your head down on
the steering wheel and quit sneezing,
quit breathing, quit trying.
The problem is, you can't.
Just quit, that is.
When people want to quit,
they have to choose.
Make a decision. Take action.
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About the Author
A. M. Jenkins received a 2000 California Young Readers Medal and a Delacorte Press Prize for Breaking Boxes, a debut young-adult novel praised for its uncanny depiction of adolescent experience.
The author was also featured as a Flying Starts author in Publishers Weekly. Born and raised in Texas, A. M. Jenkins currently lives in Benbrook with three sons, three cats, two gebils, two fish, and a dog.
From School Library Journal
Gr 9 Up-High school senior Austin Reid is a star of the Parkersville Panthers football team and dates the prettiest girl in the school. Everything would seem to be going great for him; yet, at its core, this novel is about Austin's depression. Jenkins brilliantly reveals it with a subtle, deft touch, dropping small clues to the state of the protagonist's mental health throughout the book. The most striking feature of the novel, however, is that it is told in the second person: "Last year, you scored fifteen touchdowns. After each you were so pumped you almost danced off the ground, raising your arms and yelling with the crowd." This unusual technique succeeds, giving the book energy and immediacy. This bold stylistic choice is helped along by dialogue that perfectly captures present-day teen speech patterns and by a skilled rendering of small-town life and the sometimes-brutal world of high school football. Austin's relationship with his girlfriend, Heather, is also handled with skill and subtlety, although some readers may be startled by the graphic descriptions of their sexual relationship. Appropriately, the book's ending is somewhat ambiguous, with Austin just beginning to understand his fragile mental state. A brave, truthful, stylistically stunning young adult novel.
Todd Morning, Schaumburg Township Public Library, IL
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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