{"id":487,"date":"2007-06-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2007\/06\/20\/my-teenage-sidekick-loves-a-deadline\/"},"modified":"2007-06-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-20T00:00:00","slug":"my-teenage-sidekick-loves-a-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=487","title":{"rendered":"My Teenage Sidekick Loves a Deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here you go, folks &#8212; another review written by my savvy 16-year-old <a href=\"\/blog\/660000266\/post\/1220008522.html\">sidekick<\/a>, Katrina Van Amsterdam.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"\/articles\/blog\/660000266\/20070619\/deadline.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jcY9WXPXVdA\"><em>Deadline<\/em><\/a><br \/> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chriscrutcher.com\/\">Chris Crutcher<\/a> (Harper Collins\/Greenwillow, September 2007)<\/p>\n<p>Deadlines aren&rsquo;t just for tedious homework assignments and stressful work projects. There is a deadline that, at some time or another, we all face: death. Some live in fear of that deadline for their whole lives, while other learn to appreciate life while they are living. In Chris Crutcher&rsquo;s <em>Deadline<\/em>, Ben Wolf is told that he has a fatal case of leukemia and opts not to tell anyone, on the grounds that he wants his last year to be a &ldquo;normal&rdquo; year. Through football season, a quest to show up a bigoted history teacher, and some surprising new relationships, Ben lives his last year as any old 18-year-old with a terminal disease.<\/p>\n<p>Crutcher touches on weightier issues in this novel &ndash; child molestation, to name a significant one. But, as always, he adds an element of athletics (football, in this case) for those of his readers who are avid sports fans. For the reader who doesn&rsquo;t fancy football, have no fear &ndash; Crutcher makes his discussion of the sport very reader-friendly!<\/p>\n<p><em>Deadline<\/em> is one of the best books I&rsquo;ve read in quite some time. It makes you laugh; it makes you cry; and it touches you in a place where most &ldquo;teen fiction&rdquo; novels fall short. If nothing else, you will come away with an invaluable lesson: to live life as if you have all the time in the world, while realizing that you might only have one day left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here you go, folks &mdash; another review written by my savvy 16-year-old sidekick, Katrina Van Amsterdam. Deadline by Chris Crutcher (Harper Collins\/Greenwillow, September 2007) Deadlines aren&rsquo;t just for tedious homework assignments and stressful work projects. There is a deadline that, at some time or another, we all face: death. Some live in fear of that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}