Surviving American History

YA fiction 

"The halls are

empty.  Everyone's in

class.  Mom's 

waiting for me

outside in the U-Haul truck."

     Gabi, protagonist of Max Howard's Surviving American History, is not a happy camper.  She's at her high school for the last time.  She's about to leave her father and all her friends because her mother is insisting on moving to Maine to live with her boyfriend.

     As Gabi and her mom drive away they hear her best friend's voice on the radio.

"This is WQRW,

Godey High Radio.

We are live.

We are alive.

But we're hearing gunshots."

     On her phone, searching for news, Gabi learns that there was an active shooter and that at least fifteen people are dead.  Desperate to learn more, she begs her mom to turn around.  But Mommy Dearest refuses.  She has to be at her job on Monday.

     [Reviewer's note: um Mom.  Priorities.  Any decent job will be flexible if you're late arriving because your only child's school was the scene of a mass shooting.  

     When I talk to the characters you know this is an authentic and engaging book.]

     It turns out everyone in the American history class Gabi would have been in if she hadn't been moving is dead including the teacher, her best friend's mother.

     In Maine she has to start a new school.  Her best friend, who survived and reported live from the school through the shooting, won't return her texts. Her mother is pressuring her to move on already...

     ...But how do you move on when everyone in your American history class was slaughtered and you wonder if you should have been with them at the end?

     Told in poignant and powerful free verse, Surviving American History is a must read for kids who wonder as they kiss their parents goodbye before heading off to school if this will be the last time.  It's a timely reminder for those of us who are adults that we must be fighting for laws that will make them safer in a place where they deserve to feel secure.

On a purrrsonal note, we also did a lot of traveling with the kids:  other college campuses, marine research facilities, the State House, a play and a movie, a state park where we spent the day swimming...It was so much fun for everyone.  And the students really did us all proud.  They were courteous, engaged, and curious wherever we went.  At one place where they were told that they could take off their masks they replied that Upward Bound students mask inside.  Not one removed a mask.  They put many adults to shame with their maturity and graciousness. (Jules)

When is this heat wave going to end?  (Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to our fabulous Upward Bound students.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

     

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