World Made of Glass
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
An “inspiring” (Kirkus, starred review), “heartfelt” (The Horn Book, starred review) coming-of-age novel about a girl finding her way to activism in the early years of the AIDS pandemic, from award-winning author Ami Polonsky.
Iris tries to act normal at school, going through the motions and joking around with her friends. But nothing is normal, and sometimes it feels like she’ll never laugh again. How can she, when her dad is dying of a virus that’s off-limits to talk about? When she knows that soon all she’ll have left of her kind, loving dad are memories, photos, and a binder full of the poems they used to exchange?
In a sea of rage and grief, Iris resolves to speak out against the rampant fear, misinformation, and prejudice surrounding AIDS—and find the pieces of Dad that she never knew before. Along the way, Iris might just find new sides to herself.
Critically-acclaimed author Ami Polonsky has crafted a lyrical, tender, earth-shattering novel that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1987, this short, emotionally charged novel by Polonsky (Spin with Me) follows a few months in the life of seventh grader Iris Cohen, whose father is dying of AIDS. People at Iris's largely white, private New York City school know her father is gay, but Iris hasn't told her friends, DnD players who head up an after-school Philanthropy Club, that he's sick. Surprising herself, though, she suddenly tells new kid Julian, who's just moved from Indiana and doesn't balk at the news, or at Iris's family situation—she and her mother live in the same West Village building as her father and his boyfriend. Alongside emotional first-person prose peppered with mentions of era-specific entities and people—ACT UP, Indiana teen Ryan White—acrostic poems exchanged by Iris and her father address themes of life's fragility as well as managing grief and rage. Iris's father says that writing a poem means first identifying its "beating heart"; foregrounding believable, dynamic characters and showing both the cost of inaction and fear around the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the power of activism to bring change and build community, Polonsky has done just that. Ages 10–14.
