Annie on My Mind

Annie on My Mind

Garden, N. (1982). Annie on my mind. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.

For starters, Annie on My Mind is a very difficult book to locate.  Whether this is because it is a controversial novel, especially for the time it was written, or because it was written so long ago, I had a difficult time getting my hands on it.  Having said that, Annie, somewhat ahead of its time,  is about two girls, Liza Winthrop and Annie Kenyon, who meet at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and find themselves drawn to one another and ultimately get caught together, and reported to Liza's school board,  while pet-sitting for a gay teacher/couple.  In the meantime, Liza confesses her homosexuality to her parents while at the same time defending herself at her private school for not tattling on a classmate after she witnesses something that is against the rules.  Ultimately, the girls have the freedom to express themselves but the reader doesn’t know if they find their happily-ever-after.  Because Annie deals with such an emotionally charged social issue, I think the book would be appropriate for upper middle and high school students.  As a contemporary fiction novel, I feel that students today, especially those who share some of the same conflicting issues such as sexual identity, can easily identify with the novel, in spite of the fact that it’s an older book.

Shiver

Shiver

Stiefvater, M. (2009). Shiver. New York: Scholastic.

Shiver, along the lines of Twilight, is a romantic fantasy about a girl, Grace, who falls in love with a boy named Sam who is a werewolf.  Attacked at the age of 11 by a pack of wolves, Grace was saved by a white wolf with yellow eyes, who she later meets in boy-form as Sam after he is shot when another young man, Jack, is assumed to be killed by the same wolves and then later becomes a wolf himself.  For whatever reason, Grace, who is not able to “turn”, but is immune to wolf-bites, is caught in between the worlds of her human friends and her love for Sam.  In an effort to find a “cure” for Sam, Grace and others who are also caught up in the supernatural phenomenon experiment on Jack and Sam.  When Sam runs off and Grace doesn’t see him for some time, she assumes he is dead, only to discover not only is he alive, but he is alive in human form at the time of year when he is normally firmly a wolf.  Shiver is a typical love story with the usual plot twists and turns and is appealing to most teenage girls. The characters are believable with the exception of those that change and there are multiple other aspects that make this modern fantasy “believable”.  Naturally, Linger, would be an excellent follow-up.