Jay Asher and me.

I went to the off site event, supporting reading and hoping the kids were going to have a great time and find some new authors and books to love. What I didn't expect was to run into Jay Asher, author of one of my favorite books-13 Reasons Why.

Recently, I reviewed Jay's book on my sidebar because it really pertains to the current problem of bullying in schools.

Listening to Jay talk was very illuminating. Turns out he started out wanting to write humorous books and finally hit with this book, which is anything but funny. It just goes to show you that sometimes you never know what life has in store. As Jay spoke, he talked about reaching out to people in his life, and asking them about what things in their youth still haunted them today. What would make you want to kill yourself? They are some interesting questions.

For any of you who haven't read or listened to 13 Reasons Why on audio (I totally recommend that by the way), it is about a girl who kills herself and the tapes she makes just before she dies. If you are on the tapes, you contributed to her decision to end her life. The boy who gets the tapes doesn't understand why he is the one to receive them, and as he listens, we travel with him as he begins to see. It is a journey of loneliness and hard decisions. It is the choice between facing the things that hurt you with courage, or defeat.

This book will make you think. It will keep you turning the pages into the wee hours of the morning.

Before I Fall

If you were to ask me which book every teen should read, I would tell you Before I Fall. The book came to me through the bn.com First Look program. I picked it up and couldn't stop reading. It was one of those books that you have to read just five more minutes when you know you should get to sleep because you are getting up really early for work. Like a hundred pages later, you look at the clock and totally cringe because it's 2:00 am and you have to be up at 4:00am. Not good for sleep, but wow, and excellent book.

Mean girls. Every high school has them, right? In this book, one of our mean girls goes to a party and ends up dying in an accident. When she wakes up, she starts to relive the last day of her life. She goes to bed again and wakes up to the same scenario. Again.  As I was reading, I kept waiting for her to just do some kind of Pollyanna moment where she feels bad for all the things she did, but that doesn't happen. She keeps making mean girl mistakes and stumbles through her days, slowly realizing that the smallest thing she does can have a ripple effect on the people around her.

The book is a little like the movie Groundhog Day, but a whole lot deeper. As our character goes through her days, she starts to get that her friends may not be the people she thought they were, and the girl who they had been bullying for years may have more worth than she ever knew.

The point I took away from this book is this: You never know how the smallest thing you do (or don't do) will effect someone. Events spiral out like a pebble on the surface of a pond, and everything and everyone is connected.

I think of this book as I watch the local news about bullying legislation and hope that changes can be made in the way bullying is handled in schools.

For my part, I will try to tell everyone about this book, and Jay Asher's 13 Reasons Why and hope my suggestion might be a pebble that ripples out to help someone else.