The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen

High School

After Jessica loses her leg in a bus accident, she thinks her life it over. She’s not comforted by the news that she’ll be able to walk with the help of a prosthetic leg. Who cares about walking when you live to run?

As she struggles to cope with crutches and her first cyborg-like prosthetic, Jessica feels oddly both in the spotlight and invisible. People who don’t know what to say, act like she’s not there. Which she could handle better if she weren’t aware that she’d done the same thing herself to a girl with cerebral palsy named Rosa. A girl who is going to tutor her through all the math she’s missed. A girl who sees right into the heart of her.

I think Jessica handled it pretty well all things considered. I mean she lost her leg for Pete’s sake! And at a young age that’s just plain scary! I can’t imagine not having a leg when just having any sort of injury is so difficult. I’ve had problems plantar fasciitis, both ankles and shin splints and they are all pains in the leg.

I tried to recommend this book to my nephew who’s interested in prosthetic limbs but this is more a girl’s book and I have yet to convince him.

Just for the heck of it, here’s a picture of a few different prosthetics.

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

High School

Welcome to Elsewhere.

It’s warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It’s quiet and peaceful. You can’t get sick or any older.

Elsewhere is where 15-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she died. It’s a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth.

But Liz wants to turn 16, not 14 again. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she’s dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn’t want with a grandmother she doesn’t know. Can she let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?

This is the kind of afterlife I like. You age backwards, what a great idea! It is sad though if you died young and will never experience an adult life. I guess Elsewhere is more ideal when you’ve lived your life and excepted that you’re going to die and then realizing you’re in a world where you’ll age backwards and relive your youth and maybe see some of your loved one who haven’t gone back to Earth yet.

Like most female characters, Liz spends most of the story complaining and feeling depressed. But unlike most female characters, she has every right to complain. Her life was snatched away before she had a chance to live.

If you like Elsewhere, you’ll like the TV series The Good Place.

Like Elsewhere, the show doesn’t talk about religious theories behind death, which is very difficult to do.