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Volume 31, Number 5, June 2004

Family Follies

Ruth Cox Clark

Double helix. Nancy Werlin.
Dial, 2004. $15.99. 0-8037-2606-6. Grades 8-12. Eighteen-year-old Eli defies his father’s wishes and takes a job at Wyatt Transgenics, where he discovers genetic experimentation is taking place using his dead mother’s fertilized eggs – his siblings.

The earth, my butt, and other big round things. Carolyn Mackler.
Candlewick, 2003. $15.99. 0-7636-1958-2. Grades 8-12. Virginia has a weight problem and her often-absent parents, an exercise obsessive mother and a golf-addicted father, are not much help. Her older brother is expelled from college for date rape, elevating her stress levels, but a trip to Seattle to stay with her best friend adds perspective.

The first part last. Angela Johnson.
Simon & Schuster, 2003. $15.95. 0-689-84922-2. Grades 8-12. At 16, Bobby is too young to raise a baby, but when his girlfriend goes into a coma during childbirth he cannot bear to give up Feather for adoption. With his older brother’s help, Bobby is going to make it. Winner of the 2004 Printz and Coretta Scott King awards.

Jake, reinvented. Gordon Korman.
Hyperion, 2003. $15.99. 0-7868-1957-X. Grades 8-12. Former math geek Jacob recreates himself as Jake, a preppie football player who writes papers for college students to pay for the wild parties he throws every weekend, all to attract the attention of Didi, the girl he once tutored and is now obsessed with.

Things change. Patrick Jones.
Walker, 2004. $16.95. 0-8027-8901-3. Grades 8-12. Paul and Johanna alternately chronicle the development and ultimate demise of their relationship due to Paul’s inability to control his temper and violent behavior, following in his father’s footsteps.

Ruth Cox Clark is assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of Houston-Clear Lake in Houston, Texas. She can be reached at Cox@cl.uh.edu.