The Year Without Michael, Susan Beth Pfeffer
Book: 29
Title: The Year Without Michael
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Genre: YA fiction
One-sentence summary: Sixteen-year-old Jody's younger brother disappears on his way to a baseball game one summer afternoon. The book follows his family's disintegration, and hopes of renewal, in the year following his disappearance.
Why did you get this book? I had read it when I was a kid and loved it, but I lost my copy ages and ages ago. This is another PBS find.
Do you like the cover? Nah, not much - it's a rather poorly done portrait of the family, sans Michael.
Did you enjoy the book? I did, almost as much as I did when I originally read it when I was ten. The main character is something of an Everygirl, but her family members are interesting and not terribly typical. Some of the plot developments are predictable, but most aren't, and the book rings very true. This is another book that refuses to cop out and tie everything up in a neat bow at the end.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? I've read Twice Taken, which is another take on a child who goes missing, that one from the kid's perspective (a custody snatch). That I'd rank as a little better than this, mostly because the narrator's voice has a bit of a hard edge to it that I like, and the family in it isn't so perfectly middle-class and "typical". Which is the point of the family in this book, really, but... well, anyway. Both books work, for what they are.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? Not really, just that this is really a very good YA book.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9
Number of pages: 164
Total pages for the year: 8539
Title: The Year Without Michael
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Genre: YA fiction
One-sentence summary: Sixteen-year-old Jody's younger brother disappears on his way to a baseball game one summer afternoon. The book follows his family's disintegration, and hopes of renewal, in the year following his disappearance.
Why did you get this book? I had read it when I was a kid and loved it, but I lost my copy ages and ages ago. This is another PBS find.
Do you like the cover? Nah, not much - it's a rather poorly done portrait of the family, sans Michael.
Did you enjoy the book? I did, almost as much as I did when I originally read it when I was ten. The main character is something of an Everygirl, but her family members are interesting and not terribly typical. Some of the plot developments are predictable, but most aren't, and the book rings very true. This is another book that refuses to cop out and tie everything up in a neat bow at the end.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? I've read Twice Taken, which is another take on a child who goes missing, that one from the kid's perspective (a custody snatch). That I'd rank as a little better than this, mostly because the narrator's voice has a bit of a hard edge to it that I like, and the family in it isn't so perfectly middle-class and "typical". Which is the point of the family in this book, really, but... well, anyway. Both books work, for what they are.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? Not really, just that this is really a very good YA book.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9
Number of pages: 164
Total pages for the year: 8539
