Are You Alone on Purpose?
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- $65.00
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- $65.00
Descripción editorial
Though fourteen-year-old Alison Shandling is a brain, her twin brother, Adam, is autistic. All of her life, Alison's parents have focused on Adam and what he needs, while Alison has always felt she had to be perfect.
When the rabbi's son, Harry Roth, begins taunting Alison about her brother, she does her best to stand up for herself. But when Harry is injured in a diving accident, Alison senses that he's hiding something that he wants to share with someone. And she begins to think that— strangely—she's just the someone he can share it with.
A wonderful first novel." —VOYA"A moving portrayal of two remarkable teenagers." —School Library Journal
"A writer worth watching." —Publishers Weekly
"Characterizations are superb." —Booklist
A Publishers Weekly Flying Start bookAn ALA Quick PickA New York Public Library Best Book for the Teen AgeAn ALA Popular Paperback selection
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alison Shandling and Harry Roth would seem to have nothing in common. "Queen Nerd" Alison sticks with one close friend and stays out of trouble; her parents have enough worries dealing with her autistic twin, Adam. Harry, a bully, runs with the popular crowd and delights in embarrassing his widowed father, a not terribly intelligent rabbi. But a bitter set of coincidences draws Alison to Harry: her mother, infuriated by the rabbi's insensitivity to Adam, tells the rabbi that she wishes his son were handicapped too. When Harry is paralyzed in a diving accident, the rabbi sees it as divine punishment and tries to atone by showering Adam with attention. First-novelist Werlin compensates for the unlikely plot and the even less likely romance that develops between Harry and Alison by investing her characters with rich, strong personalities. She alternates between Alison's and Harry's perspectives to round out the reader's understanding of both families. Her novel has a few too many revelatory moments and too neat a resolution, but her skill in sketching out family dynamics and probing the difficult issues of adolescence mark her as a writer worth watching. Ages 10-14.
