Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #623320 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780545069700
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

From Booklist
Cora nervously begins ninth grade in the shadow of her older brother, Nate, who died six months earlier after crashing his car. Her BFF, Rachel, is more concerned with boys and popularity than with helping her troubled friend, and her parents, lost in their own grief, offer nothing but severe restrictions on her life outside of school. Comfort comes in art class and, surprisingly to Cora (if not to readers), in the friendship of her brother’s best friend, Damian, who survived the crash that killed Nate. After Damian shows Cora a secret cache of art that he and Nate were creating, she confronts family secrets and vows to be closer to the people she loves. Cora’s artistic talent is evident in her lush descriptions of settings, but the fairly stock secondary characters and the lapses in strong dialogue dull the story’s overall palette. Even so, teens will enjoy the tension that builds to Cora and Damian’s first kisses and the tidy resolution that has Cora and her family back on track. Grades 7-10. --Cindy Dobrez

About the Author
LISA ANN SANDELL is the author of Song of the Sparrow, a Book Sense Summer 2007 Pick, and The Weight of the Sky, which was named one of the New York Public LibraryÂ’s Books for the Teen Age. Music and art have always been an important part of LisaÂ’s life; she is a prize-winning sculptor and also studies drawing. Lisa is a childrenÂ’s book editor in New York City, where she lives with her husband and their puppy. Visit her at www.lisaannsandell.com.

Customer Reviews

A look at the grieving process through a young girl's eyes
This book tells the story of a young girl entering her freshman year of highschool, as the little sister of a troublemaker who died in a car accident a few months earlier. The story involves this girl's observations of the changes she sees in the people around her, mainly her parents' inability to cope with the grief losing a son brought upon them, as well as the change in the relationship beween her and her longtime best friend. She uses drawing as an escape. During the book, she also develops a friendship with her dead brother's best friend, who is also into art. Through this forbidden friendship, she finds out things she never knew about her brother and gets in touch with the changes she has gone through as well.

The story is touching, although I found the writing to be a little choppy. Occasionally it feels like we are reading diary entries, and sometimes it feels as though we are being told the story directly.

As a parent of tweens, I am always concerned about what they may read in young adult fiction. I feel that this book would be suitable for them to read as there is no foul language, drug or alcohol usage, and no sexual scenes in the book. There are just a couple references to wondering what it would be like to kiss someone, and the kissing that does take place seems to be relatively low-key lip brushing.

All in all I would feel comfortable letting my kids read this book, and I feel the story is a good one.

Less trashy than most novels about high school
It seems like these days the "high school novel" (which is in general a genre I avoid) is full of junky clique garbage, sex, drugs, the usual. Loud, showy kids trying to make it seem like they're the center of the world. This book, by contrast, is a somber look at the life of a very well-balanced and introspective girl. The main character and her life and thoughts remind me a great deal of Genevieve Pasquier in Judith Merkle Riley's "The Oracle Glass"; Genevieve is also a well-balanced, introspective girl in a somber lifestyle (although that book is a period piece from the time of Louis XIV in France).

"A Map of the Known World" is a short book, but it took me a while to get started...about three or four days of picking it up and struggling through a few pages a day, and I almost gave up. But I ran out of other books to read, so I sat down and forced my way through, and finished it in about an hour. If it weren't so somber in tone I'd call it a beach read, but it's more like something you'd want to read after studying Poe late at night.

The tone of the book is that the main character has deep and complex feelings but does not have the verbal capability to make those feelings known through the narration. At several points in the story I had a very strong sensation that the girl was holding back her thoughts from the reader, or that her thoughts and emotions were so complex that she couldn't figure out how to articulate them. This is, in fact, the way real life is, but it made reading the book a bit awkward.

In short, I'd say it's a good library book; not a book for purchase. I probably won't reread it.

A Book For Teenagers
This is a book for young people. Please don't order this for an adult!

Despite the fact that I found myself reading a book meant for young girls, I had trouble getting and staying interested in the main character. It seems like she has overly-complex thoughts and feelings the author cannot express, which in my opinion means the book should not have been written.

The story is fine -- not remarkable, but a decent teenage story -- and holds interest for the length of this short book. But the strength of the story just does not make up for the fact that an obviously-older person failed to successfully let us inside the mind of the young main character.

This book had potential, but I wouldn't buy it for my grand-niece.