Waiting for Sarah [Paperback]

Grade 6-10-When 10th-grader Mike loses his family and both legs in an automobile accident, he is predictably withdrawn and highly resistant to those intent on helping him. Just as total academic and social detachment seem inevitable, the yearbook committee at his Vancouver high school offers Mike a job assembling a 50th anniversary feature. He accepts, but only because the assignment will free him from attending the soporific history class taught by the dreaded Mr. Dorfman. The plot takes a supernatural turn when an eighth-grade yearbook assistant, Sarah, turns up. Her persistent peppiness gradually defrosts Mike, and young love seems destined to run its course until he reports to his post one day to find Sarah bloodied and weeping in a corner. When she runs out, Mike notifies school officials who inform him that they have no record of her existence. Eventually, yearbooks reveal that she was a student there, but was slain in an unsolved murder dating back to 1982. In subsequent appearances, Sarah reveals the identity of her killer, and Mike sees that justice is done. Unfortunately, while the plot has some compelling ingredients, the third-person narrative relies so heavily on awkward chunks of bald exposition to prop up the tinny dialogue that any personal and spiritual epiphanies that the story's ambitious conclusion might hold are simply not realized.
Jeffrey Hastings, Highlander Way Middle School, Howell, MI
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 7-10. An automobile accident that killed his parents and sister has left Mike Scott bitter, without legs, and with little will to live. His aunt Norma provides a home, and his best friend, Robbie, is attentive, but Mike remains deeply depressed. A project researching and writing the 50-year history of Carlton High School helps engage Mike, until eighth-grader Sarah is assigned to help him. Sarah reminds Mike of his little sister, and he works hard to drive her away. But her curiosity, frankness, and indefatigable good humor gradually nudge Mike out of his self-pity, until the day she disappears. In the tradition of Cynthia Voigt's Izzy Willy Nilly (1986) and Deborah Froese's Out of the Fire (2002), this novel explores what happens when a teenager must adapt to a new, much more limited life, while adding a romantic ghost story to the mix. Mike is realistically angry and unlikable, but readers will easily connect with him as he absorbs Sarah's lessons of survival and courage. Frances Bradburn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

"A great choice for senior high school fiction collections. Highly recommended" (CM Magazine )

Mike looks beyond his own grief to help a girl from beyond the grave. (20030101)

"I told you. I don't need anyone..."
"Everyone needs someone. Parents, for instance; everyone needs parents."
"I've got no parents."
"Everyone's got parents." She thought for a second. "Unless you're an orphan."
"I've got work to do. So get lost."
"You're not very nice."
He scowled. "Just because I'm in a wheelchair doesn't mean I've got to be nice." (20030919)