Jordan Sonnenblick

1. Jordan Sonnenblick 2012 Author Visit at the end of January!

2. Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie Steven’s life is turned upside down when his baby brother is diagnosed with cancer. I’m baking in the June sun, in a brown gown and a funny square hat on my head. It’s middle school graduation and I’m spacing out, as usual. “How did I get here? What have I learned since last September? How could my life have changed so much in only ten months?” The principal’s making a speech, so I’ve got some time to think about it. It all started in September when Miss Palma asked us to write a journal entry about the most annoying thing in the world, and I wrote about my little brother Jeffrey. He’s five years old, eight years younger than me, and while I have brown cowlicky hair, glasses about an inch thick and braces, Jeffrey has perfect teeth, 20/20 vision and golden curls. But that’s not what’s really annoying about him. What bugs me the most is how he idolizes me, follows me around and wants to do everything just like me. And in doing that he destroys my stuff, including my sanity and my self esteem. Take the Dangerous Pie incident. Jeffrey has always known that he’s not to touch anything to do with my drums—no matter what. I’m serious about my drums, and last year I became the only seventh grade drummer to be admitted to the All City Band—ever! They had to send a special bus to the middle school to pick up me and Annette Watson, who’s an incredible piano player. But last year I came home after school, and decided to use my Special Sticks to practice with. They’re signed by my all-time drum hero, Carter Beauford of the Dave Matthews Band. When they weren’t on the shelf, I went running for Jeffrey, hoping I wasn’t too late. I was. He was sitting on the kitchen floor, stirring an ungodly nasty mess of something in a big pot with my drumsticks! I got them away from him and cleaned them up, but they still smell funny. And that’s only one of the ways he was annoying. He also has a knack for saying exactly the right thing to embarrass me in the very worst way, in front of all the people I want to think I’m at least close to cool.

3. Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie Jeffrey stopped being annoying on October 7, just about a month after that journal entry. I’d woken up early and gone down to the basement to get in some work on my practice pad before school. So of course, about the time I got warmed up, Jeffrey comes in and wants me to make him some oatmeal. He’s complaining about his “parts hurting” the way he has lately, and says that “moatmeal” will make him feel better. He’s not gonna let me alone, so I give up and fix him the oatmeal. I put him on a tall bar stool so he can mix in the water before I nuke it, and the next thing I know, I hear a crack, a thump, and a whimper. Jeffrey’s slipped off the bar stool and cracked his face against the counter as he fell. His nose is bleeding like it would never stop, and he starts screaming like a banshee. Of course that wakes up the ‘rents, and I get all the blame for everything. But that’s over as soon as Jeffrey pushes my hand away from his nose, and we all get a look at the blood. All that blood. All over me. All over the towel. All over Jeffrey. This was no ordinary nosebleed. My mother instantly decided to take him to the ER, and was out the door in mere minutes. My dad and I stare at each other in shock before we separate to get ready for the day, both wondering just what was going on with Jeffrey. No matter what I do that day, I can’t stop thinking about Jeffrey and all that blood. Then, when I get home from school, my mom is waiting for me, and I finally find out. Mom has this pale, set look on her face, and she says in a soft strange voice, “Steven, your brother is really sick. The fall this morning had nothing to do with it. But he’s really, really sick. He has leukemia.”

4. Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie And just like that, my world is turned upside down. Jeffrey’s been sick for a while and has to start chemo immediately. That means he and my mom have to spend several days at the hospital in Philly, an hour and a half away. Dad turns into a zombie, never talking to me about anything—it’s almost like he’s disappeared. I live on nukable food and don’t tell anyone about Jeffrey, even when people want to know why I’m more spacey than ever. I think if I can just keep my head together, things will get better. But they don’t. They get worse. And worse. When the neighbors and the family find out about what’s going on, they descend on us, which isn’t always good, but they all bring food, which is good, and my diet improves. When teachers find out why I haven’t even looked at my homework in months and don’t talk in class any more, they help me make up everything over Christmas vacation. But nothing makes a real difference. Jeffrey is still sick. My family is still in debt over our heads with medical bills. My mother still doesn’t have a job because she has to spend all her time and energy on Jeffrey, and my dad is working ninety hours a week and looking like he’s on the verge of flipping out completely—and there’s nothing, nothing, nothing I can do to make any of it any better! What’s it like to watch your baby brother dying of cancer? Take a look at Steven’s story and find out.

5. Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie http://www.schooltube.com/video/6e2d444460e23d913141/ Lexile Measure: 940L Genre: Realistic Fiction, Young Adult Subject: Adolescence, Disease and Illness, Feelings and Emotions, Romantic Relationships, Siblings

6. After Ever After Jeff has passed the five-year mark. He's free. Cancer-free. When he was four years old, Jeff was diagnosed with leukemia. His hair fell out, he threw up a lot, and he went through different kinds of treatment in order to be cured. Now that Jeff is cancer-free, he can finally live a normal life and hopefully not be considered just "The Boy with Cancer." 8th grade gets off to a great start. He meets Lindsey, a beautiful new transfer student from California. And Jeff is shocked to find out that she actually likes him. Not just as a friend, but as something more! And he has a bunch of classes with his best friend Tad, who's also a cancer survivor. Of course, not everything is perfect. Jeff spaces out at school because of his cancer treatment and walks with a limp. His big brother Steven, who was always there for him, has dropped out of college and moved to Africa. And Jeff is still terrible at math. Then the bad news arrives. . . Every 8th grader is being forced to take a state-wide standardized test. If Jeff doesn't pass that test, he won't move onto high school with his girlfriend and best friend. But Tad and Lindsey have a plan to make sure that Jeff doesn't fail the test. This plan is so big, so secretive and so crazy that there is no way it will work. . . will it? Read After Ever After by Jordan Sonnenblick so you can find out if they pull off the plan of the century!

7. After Ever After http://www.schooltube.com/video/517a12ca2a0e23a1b094/ Lexile Measure: 820L Genre: Realistic Fiction, Young Adult Subject: Adolescence, Disease and Illness, Overcoming Obstacles, Siblings

8. Notes from the Midnight Driver This is a story of Alex Gregory, his jazz guitar, his best friend Laurie, an angry judge, and a feisty old man dying of emphysema, and how the combination changes all of them. It sounded like a good plan when I thought of it, even brilliant. I'd drink one more pint of Dad's vodka, swipe my mother's car keys and drive over to my dad's house and tell him what I thought of his getting it on with my third grade teacher and breaking up with my mom. But I was more smashed than I thought I was, and I ended up in the middle of Mrs. Wilson's lawn, with the lawn gnome I'd just decapitated. Mom wasn't happy to have her first date since Dad moved out interrupted to bail me out, the cops who arrested me weren't happy about the fact that I threw up all over them, and my best friend Laurie wasn't happy with me because I hadn't called so she could talk me out of doing such a dumb thing. But what really reeked was the fact that the judge absolutely hated drunk drivers, especially when they weren't willing to admit they'd done something wrong-and I wasn't. I mean I hadn't hurt anyone—it was just a lawn gnome, for crying out loud! But she sentenced me to a hundred hours of community service, anyway, and told me I had to pay to have the lawn gnome replaced and the car fixed.

9. Notes from the Midnight Driver I was supposed to go to this old folks home and talk to one of the men who lived there, like make friends with him or something. But the guy my mom picked out for me to visit was the meanest guy I've ever met! His name was Solomon Lewis, and he looked like an ancient, merciless old gargoyle, and was rude, angry, and verbally abusive. I tried every way I could to get out of the gig, but it was impossible. The judge was determined to make me serve each and every hour of my sentence with him. She wanted me to learn from him, and him to learn from me. Never mind that we didn't have anything in common, and he was bitter, old, and got his kicks from taunting the other residents. We still had to spend a hundred hours together.

10. Notes from the Midnight Driver http://www.60secondrecap.com/potw/notes-midnight-driver/ Lexile Measure: 930L Genre: Realistic Fiction Subject: Compassion and Honesty, Friends and Friendship, Friends and Friendship, Pride and Self-Esteem

11. Zen and the Art of Faking It When San starts at a new school in the middle of eighth grade, he decides to fit in by standing out. I'd been to schools in a lot of states — five plus an air force base in Germany — so I thought I knew what to expect when I walked into Harrisonville Middle School in Pennsylvania to start the second semester of eighth grade as the only Asian kid in school. Things went about the way I thought they would till I got to social studies, the last class of the day. The teacher, Mr. Dowd, looked like Santa's twin, complete with the white beard and the twinkle in his eye. The class looked pretty normal, but one girl caught my eye — messy brown hair, gray eyes, and tiny purple-tinted glasses. They were studying Zen Buddhism, something I knew about from my school in Texas, so when Mr. Dowd asked me a question, I launched into a long answer. When I finished, everyone was staring at me. Mr. Dowd asked if I'd studied Zen before, and I said I had, but let him think it was on my own, not in school. Class went on, till just before the bell rang, the big angry guy sitting next to the girl with purple glasses, leaned over and said, "So, Buddha Boy, if a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" New kid or not, I wasn't going to let him walk all over me. I said, "If a monkey howls and no one hears it, is he still a monkey?" The class cracked up— "Jones got told — Cool!"

12. Zen and the Art of Faking It I'd been thinking about who I'd be in Pennsylvania for days. I'd been a skater in California, a Bible-thumper in Alabama, a rich preppie in Houston, a macho jock in Germany, and it all took work, lots of work. I had to study up on the slang, music, dance moves, clothing brands. Maybe it was time for me to be someone who was a little less work. I decided I'd build on the person I'd been in social studies that afternoon, a Zen master, the ultimate in serenity — controlled, certain. I'd follow the Four Noble Truths that all Buddhists believe. An important part of Zen Buddhism is meditation, sitting and not thinking of anything at all. I could do that, in fact, I already did it whenever I could, but I called it procrastination. Now it would be my religion, my enlightenment. And just maybe it would make me interesting enough to attract Woody, the girl with the purple glasses. The next morning before school, I found a flat rock under a tree across from the school's entrance, sat down, folded my legs, and began to meditate. Just about the time my butt was totally frozen, I saw Woody and Jones get out of a minivan and walk towards me. Yes!  It was working. Buddha Boy was here to stay! What can happen when a poor, adopted Asian kid with a screwed-up family becomes a Zen Master, even if he's faking it? Let San tell you himself.

13. Zen and the Art of Faking It http://animoto.com/play/soxU10LLTVgufbFTLDvj3w Lexile Measure: 840L Genre: Realistic Fiction Subject: Changes and New Experiences, Compassion and Honesty, Understanding Self and Others

14. Jordan Sonnenblick Time to fill out your ballot… 2012 Author Visit at the end of January!

15. Curveball: The Year How I Lost My Grip …NOT an order choice, but a GREAT book all the same! Currently ONLY in HARDBACK… Sometimes, the greatest comebacks take place far away from the ball field. Meet Peter Friedman, high school freshman. Talented photographer. Former baseball star. When a freakish injury ends his pitching career, Peter has some major things to figure out. Is there life after sports? Why has his grandfather suddenly given him thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment? And is it his imagination, or is the super-hot star of the girls' swim team flirting with him, right in front of the amazing new girl in his photography class? In his new novel, teen author Jordan Sonnenblick performs his usual miraculous feat: exploring deep themes of friendship, romance, family, and tragedy, while still managing to be hilariously funny. Lexile Measure®:800L Genre Realistic Fiction Theme/Subject Photography Disease and Illness Grandparents High School