Wide Awake by David Levithan

Duncan is ecstatic.  It’s the morning after the first openly gay Jewish man has been elected president of the United States.  He and his boyfriend and all of their friends worked hard on the campaign, and it seems to them that now nothing can go wrong.  But then the governor of Kansas declares a thousand votes for Stein invalid and the entire election is in jeopardy.  Wide Awake is set in the not-too-distant future, after the Greater Depression (Debt, Deficit, and Fuel), the Reign of Fear, the War To End All Wars, the Prada Riots, and the Worldwide Healthcare movement.  While it was published in 2006, a lost of what Levithan posits in this novel are either quite likely or have already happened in the intervening few years.

Review by Kathleen from a library copy

Everlost by Neal Shusterman

Nick’s eating a candy bar when he dies.  Allie’s arguing with her dad about the radio and adjusting her blouse.  A couple seconds later, Nick and Allie meet when they crash through the tunnel from this world to whatever’s after life.  And that’s when the story starts.  Nick and Allie wake up most of a year later not knowing that they’re dead.  Obviously, they want to get back to their parents who must be worried sick about them.  But another boy they meet in the woods explains the situation to them.  Are they stuck being ghosts forever?  Can they trust anyone or anything in the ghost world?  Or are Nick and Allie truly lost?

Review by Kathleen from a library copy

London Calling by Edward Bloor

Martin Conway goes to a private prep school in New Jersey, which he hates, when his grandmother dies, leaving him an old radio his grandfather had when he worked in the Amerian Embassy in London in World War II.  This is a story of three times – 2019, when Martin is telling this story from the Embassy in London, 2003, when he is a student in New Jersey, and 1940, during the London Blitz.  Before Martin’s grandmother died, she kept talking about a young boy named Jimmy, and one night when Martin falls asleep by the radio, he meets Jimmy, who is a young boy in 1940.  Present day readers may know how the war turns out, but for some, part of the interest is in learning about the people the history books and encyclopedias don’t mention, like the firefighters, and the civil servants, and the secretaries, and the evacuees.

London Calling is an intriguing work of fiction, and readers will be asking themselves, when the time comes, what can I do to help?

Review by Kathleen