{"id":178,"date":"2008-08-16T22:10:25","date_gmt":"2008-08-17T02:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/16\/review-of-november-blues-by-sharon-m-draper\/"},"modified":"2008-10-11T20:52:37","modified_gmt":"2008-10-12T00:52:37","slug":"review-of-november-blues-by-sharon-m-draper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=178","title":{"rendered":"Review of November Blues, by Sharon M. Draper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"november_blues.jpg\"<\/em><\/p>\n

November Blues<\/em><\/p>\n

by Sharon M. Draper<\/p>\n

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, New York,\u00a0 2007.\u00a0 316 pages.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.sharondraper.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Sharon Draper is the author of the amazing and moving book, Copper Sun, <\/em>a story of escaping slavery.<\/p>\n

November Blues <\/em>begins as 16-year-old November Nelson discovers she is pregnant.\u00a0 She knows when the baby started, since it was the night before her boyfriend died.<\/p>\n

In some ways, this seems like just another story of teen pregnancy.\u00a0 It’s good, and it’s absorbing — the writing pulled me in so that I checked it out rather than shelving it at the library, and then kept me reading until early morning — but in some places the dialog and situations felt stilted and stereotypical.<\/p>\n

A teen pregnancy novel is a hard one to write.\u00a0 Because the situation itself involves thousands of teens, but a novel must focus on one particular teen.\u00a0 What happens to that one teen will feel symbolic of what happens to the other teens in that situation, and that’s a bigger burden than a young adult novel can necessarily carry.<\/p>\n

Taken as a story, this is a fun high school tale, with some sobering things to think about.\u00a0 The no-good backstabbing popular girl gets her comeuppance, and November learns who her true friends are.<\/p>\n

November has to choose between keeping her baby and giving the baby up to her dead boyfriend’s rich parents.\u00a0 I found myself wanting to shake them and say, “Isn’t there an alternative?\u00a0 Can’t you let November keep the baby, but provide her support and be a huge part of your grandchild’s life?\u00a0 Does it have to be all or nothing?”\u00a0 Again, this was one particular story, but the situation felt so prototypical, I found myself wanting the author to present all possibilities, more than I would have cared in a novel about, say, choosing between a career in art or science.<\/p>\n

An enjoyable story about a typical teen in a difficult situation.<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on the main site at:<\/p>\n

www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/november_blues.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

November Blues by Sharon M. Draper Atheneum Books for Young Readers, New York,\u00a0 2007.\u00a0 316 pages. http:\/\/www.sharondraper.com\/ Sharon Draper is the author of the amazing and moving book, Copper Sun, a story of escaping slavery. November Blues begins as 16-year-old November Nelson discovers she is pregnant.\u00a0 She knows when the baby started, since it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary","category-teen-fiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}