Who likes Gabrielle Zevin??

[Brighde]

I luv Garbrielle Zevins books. i have reccently read The Life Of A Teenage Two of the best YA books I've read in a while...

[elissa]

ELSEWHERE was one of my very favorite books of 2005! I've currently reading MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE AMNESIAC and enjoying it. I don't think it's quite as good as ELSEWHERE, but still good.

[Ken]

I was so-so on Elsewhere. I liked the concept all right, but it began to wane as the book dragged on. For one, there was way too much dialogue. For two, Zevins' sentences were too short and simple (for the most part, I mean). I also thought some of the characters acted uncharacteristically.

Eerie thought from that book? That "undead" people can keep dropping "eternims" (coins of the realm) into binocs to watch us living folks back on earth. No matter what we're doing. Creepy, eh?

As for Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, I liked it a little better, though I wished she'd gone in promising directions that wound up being dead-ends. At one point, the protagonist/amnesiac says to a girl that helps her, "Do we get along?" and the girls says something to the effect of "Not since 5th grade." Now that was a cool theme to explore -- how so many prejudices and cliques are learned behaviors and, if wiped clean and not supported by any peers or our own learned-over-time notions, would totally disappear.

Instead Zevins went with an accent on a romantic triangle between a stereotyped geek, a stereotyped jock, and a stereotyped brooding artist.

Pretty good, not great. Then again, I'm not the target audience.

[Boyd]

One of my students is reading Elsewhere right now. I just picked it up and checked out the back. It sort of reminds me of Shusterman's Everlost