chick lit meets adoption

I think many of you know I am a elementary and middle school librarian, and my middle school girls really love this author: Sarah Dessen. She writes very realistic high school fiction, and I have fallen in love with the way she writes her characters and the amount of heart in her words. The situations are real, things you can imagine happening to girls today, things you know are being kept from parents and teachers. But Dessen, deals with them in a way that girls can handle and understand. But like I said, mostly for high school girls.


This is the problem, really, because I don't teach high school. I have middle school students that want to be high school students so badly. While I want to expose my students to great, contemporary literature, I have to be careful. I ordered a couple of books, thinking I could preview them and slip them to the 8th grade teacher for her classroom bookshelf, and I knew I would have to read them first.

This book was especially poignant. The whole plot of the book deals with two best friends, one of whom becomes pregnant. The mom wants the girl to give the baby up for adoption, since she is only 16, but the girl wants to keep the baby. The mothers of both girls caution that life won't be the same when dealing with a baby, and they seem to get it, but the character is determined to keep the baby.

Now, I don't have an opinion about whether she should or shouldn't give up the baby. That's every woman's choice. And I understand why a mother might want her 16 year old to have a shot at a normal college experience.

I understand that angst. Our side of the coin is just as confusing and hurtful and filled with pros and cons. To adopt or not. What races to consider? How much to budget? It's all filled with questions that we won't have answers to right away.

The book is a great read, and would certainly spark conversations between a mother and daughter if read together, about where to draw boundaries, who to love and how to be there for your friends. This author is such a rare talent, and if you have daughters, buy her books now and save them for her teenage years.

Okay, library time is over, for now.