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Title: My Heartbeat by Garret Freymann-Weyr ISBN: 0-618-14181-2 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 29 April, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (15 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Great Book!!
Comment: My Heartbeat os a really, really good book. It deals with a sensitive issue, but still ends up being good. After Ellen asks her brother's best friend James and her brother Link the question (Are you gay or. . .) she dives into reading about gay people, and I learned several things that I did not know such as that michaelangalo, who designed the Vatican, was gay (I'm not really sure if this is true or not, but since it was in the book i'm guessing it was) and that Oscar Wilde who had several children was also gay. I really liked the ending, because Ellen discovered a lot about herself, plus she got together with James which didn't exactly resolve the issue of him being gay or straight (he had slept with guys before), but I enjoyed it cause I always love romantic parts. Also, there were subtle hints towards the end that Link was gay but that was never resolved, since he had a girlfriend during the book. So you never really know what everyone wants to know, which is why I only gave it 4 stars.
Rating: 3
Summary: hmmmm.
Comment: Okay, so I mostly liked the way the main character Ellen was written in this book. It was nice to follow her relationships with her brother Link, her dad, and her brother's best friend and her eventual boyfriend James. Ellen spends the book trying to figure out what love means, what relationships both romantic and not should be like, and what's important to her. It was good to see a story where the main character was someone you could connect with, since Ellen is a person with everyday problems and is trying to figure out what life is all about.
Here is a spoiler! If you don't want to know what happens at the end of this book, don't keep reading this!
What really bothered me about this story was Ellen sleeping with James at the end of the book. She is just fourteen years old, and there is no discussion in the book of what losing her virginity really means to her, or to James. Ellen doesn't really say what she thinks about being ready to have sex, if she felt like it was really the right thing to do, what she thinks about sex, or anything like this. I think sex is a subject that needs to be treated more carefully in books aimed at teens, especially if you are writing about characters who are as young as Ellen is. This is my one hang-up with an otherwise well-written and mostly enjoyable book.
Rating: 5
Summary: "A mind with its own heartbeat!"
Comment: "A mind with its own heartbeat!" This is one of the best aspects of geekiness according to the father of My Heartbeat's narrator--Ellen, an honest, perceptive, urban teen.
I have found few books that show the struggles of sexuality and young love in a realistic, complex way. This one does. ("And now James and I navigate around each other's bodies, trying to establish boundaries even as we erase them.") It also blurs the lines of what exactly it means to be straight or gay and examines how we figure out who we are and who we love.
Another refreshing aspect of this story is that, despite confusion and heartache and love, the melodrama is kept in check. It's not overly tragic, nor is it all perfectly sweet in the end--it's more complicated than that, just like life. Ellen is a likeable narrator who never becomes annoying or whining, and both James and Link are dynamic and believeable.
I should mention that, depending on perspective, some people may find the frankness about sexuality shocking in such a young person (Ellen is a 9th grader) while others will think it is realistic. I don't mean to imply any raunchiness--the narration is never obscene or explicit in any way--but some of the teen characters are sexually active.
Overall, a sweet, honest YA novel that many teens and adults--straight, gay, or anything in between--will enjoy.
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Title: Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos ISBN: 0374399883 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 26 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Postcards from No Man's Land by Aidan Chambers ISBN: 0525468633 Publisher: Dutton Books Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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Title: The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer ISBN: 0689852223 Publisher: Atheneum Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Bronx Masquerade (Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner) by Nikki Grimes ISBN: 0803725698 Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.99 |
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Title: The First Part Last by Angela Johnson ISBN: 0689849222 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Pub. Date: 01 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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