Crutcher, Chris Deadline
Publisher: Greenwillow Date: 2007 ISBN: 978-0-06-085089-0 Price: $16.99 #of pgs: 316 Call number: F Crutcher
Annotation: Ben Wolf has gotten the ultimate punch in the gut. He’s eighteen years old, a senior in high school, when he finds out that he has an incurable blood disease. He orders his doctor not to tell anyone (and because he’s of legal age he gets away with it) and he sets out to have the best year possible.
Ben has his reasons for making the decision not to tell anyone. His mother is bipolar, with nightmarish manic and depressive cycles. Ben has no idea how his mother will react to the news, except it won’t be good. His father has all on his plate that he can handle. Ben also wants to be treated normally – he doesn’t want to be known as the "dying kid." Finally, he wants to do some
things that he would never have had the nerve to do otherwise – such as playing football (at 123 pounds) and seeing how far he can go with Dallas Suzuki.
So Ben plays football with his brother, starts a relationship with Dallas, and continually irritates his government teacher by pointing out how bigoted he is. To Ben, "somehow I knew my chances aren’t about living, they’re about living well" (p. 10) and that’s what he does.
Strength: Theme -- the idea of getting the most out of life. Crutcher's characters are also very appealing.
Weakness: Crutcher does hit a lot of problems in this novel but I think he does it successfully.
Cover Appeal:
The cover has a picture of boy upside down -- appropriate since Ben's life has been turned upside down. It would be appealing for both boys and girls