Recommended Ages: Gr. 8-12

Plot Summary: Miriam's mom is dying of cancer and this memoir follows her innermost thoughts and feelings of the year of her death, starting about 6 months before her death, and ending with a letter to her mother the day before leaving for college.

Setting: never mentioned and seems irrelevant, but I assume it's a suburb. 1999.

Characters:
Miriam - high school senior, writes in poetry
Mother -
Father - starts dating again, but asks Miriam how she feels about it first
David - Miriam's brother, hug once in hallway night before mom's death

Recurring Themes: cancer, family, college, prom, poetry, death

Controversial Issues:

pg 6 "smoke bowls" ... "I come home at 7:00 as I am coming down from my high"

pg 7 poem about getting her period, uses breasts, period, frail, sexless body

pg 10 author smokes cigarettes

pg 11 author is remembering the time her mom told her about the first time she had sex

pg 22 David smokes little cigars

pg 22 "Dad takes us to his favorite brewpub, where we sample beer in little glasses"

pg 51 author dreams of talking to her mom "I had sex for the first time at it was wonderful"

Personal Thoughts: This succinct book manages to pull at your heartstrings without dragging on. You can see some of the different stages of loss. It's very impressive that this author published this book at such a young age (while she was in college).

I picked this one up at work the other day, and didn't put it down till I finished it (only about 20 minutes later!). Very slim, very quick read, but it really got under my skin. It's a daughter's memoirs - poetry and journal entries - written in the year her mother died of cancer. Her words about a dream she had are particularly haunting... She describes herself as tied to the moon, but her mother is

"No longer attached to the moon,
you are left dangling,
waiting to be swept
away by the breeze."

Though it's a daughter's reflection upon the loss of her mother, Stone's words will strike a chord with anyone who has lost a loved one. ( )