A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me by Jason Schmidt

From inside jacket:

"Jason Schmidt wasn't surprised when he came home one day during his senior year of high school and found his father, Mark, crawling around on the kitchen floor in a giant pool of blood. Things like that had been happening a lot since Mark had been diagnosed with HIV three years earlier. From watching Mark get arrested in their living room when Jason was three years old to enduring a series of house fires, homelessness, and a bout of flesh-eating staph infection, Jason had figured out a long time ago that his home life wasn't like most other people's."

 

This book may not be for everybody, that being said I think this memoir is great. Jason seriously lives through some ordeals that you can't even fathom happening. This isn't a very PG rated book. There is swearing. There are situations that some parents may not want younger teens to read, but ironically many of those situations happened to Jason when he was even younger. 

This is a great read for teens that thinks their family is dysfunctional, have issues in their home life, or even feel lost.  Many of us have lived a sheltered life compared to Jason, but there are plenty of times while Jason is growing up that we can all relate to him. I think the major benefit of reading memoirs like Jason's is being able to step back from your own life. We are all egocentric but it's memoirs like these that we can appreciate people like Jason for their perseverance and honesty about their struggles in life, and ultimately reevaluate our own major problems in life and downgrade them to annoyances or, better yet, take them on with a new sense of tenacity.   

My only issue is that while Jason takes the majority of the 419 page book to tell us about his childhood and teen years, once he is on his own really struggling with his future, we only get the last page in the book tackling that. I would have liked to read about his struggle with adulthood and how he eventually came to peace with his dad (if he really did forgive him) and how much he has "settled down." 

my rating: A-

 

A.B.

Counting By 7's by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Characters are Willow, genius with a very positive attitude, Dell inept school counselor, Mai and Quang-Ha real friends of Willow though older, their mother Pattie, Jairo the Mexicano Taxi driver, Saduh and Cheddar the Cat. Setting is somewhere in southern California.  Willow is a misfit in school, she is way to smart and serious for the average middle schooler. But, she has her garden which is spectacular, understanding parents, a lot of determination. When she takes a standardized test and gets a perfect score she ends up in counseling for cheating. Dell is largely inept as a counselor but he recognizes genius when he sees it and winds up a friend of sorts for Willow. Quang-Ha is also being unsuccessfully counseled by Dell. Willow and Quang-Ha and Mai his sister aren't supposed to meet but they do. Willow recognizes a fellow genius and quickly makes friends of Mai, her first friend actually. Quang-Ha finds a way to use Willow's genius to his advantage and slowly becomes less of a trouble maker. Tragically both Willow's parents are killed in a car accident. Family services wants to place Willow in a locked residency for troubled teens till a permanent placement (adoption) can be found. Willow knows she cannot survive this. She calls on Mai to help keep her out of there. Mai enlists her mom Pattie. This family's living situation is unusual to say the least, not something family services would approve of. So, with the help of Dell and Jairo an acceptable living environment is created using Dell's apartment and sending him to live with Saduh. They do succeed in getting temporary placement of Willow and eventually even better. There are a lot of near disasters along the way but this odd group of people become true family and everyone is thriving in the end, at least for now... I was happy to see some good capable adults (Pattie, Jairo) in this story, even though Dell is a bit of a stereotypical adult in teen novel. I have a hard time thinking of a teen or tween who would be attracted to this quirky story. Maybe readers of Holes or Hoot or Walk Two Moons would enjoy this. Certainly it will take a reader who understands and appreciates intelligence. By the way, counting by 7's isn't some freaky obsession, its just something Willow happens to enjoy! And when she cannot enjoy this the reader knows how deeply sad she is. This story is worth reading. JDW 12/4/13