Tag archives for Afterlife
Posted by BOOK NAME: The Everafter
AUTHOR: Amy Huntley
Life ended for Maddy–she’s dead and left with nothing except a few objects, representing specific times in her life; times that made her laugh and times that made her cry. Maddy calls her new surrounding “Is” and spends part of her eternity trying to understand death. Not only does she try to understand death, but life too.
Maddy is able to go back and re-experience some snippets of her life. She sees her mistakes and her flaws–she realizes what person she could have been if she made the right choices.
I liked how the book wove back and forth between the “Is”, where Maddy is dead, and the time when she was alive. Obviously too late to fix anything in her life–Maddy still learns about right choices and living.
The Everafter was written for grades 8 and up. Personally, I think it is age appropriate because of one scene when Maddy goes back to a point in her life where she spends time alone with her boyfriend Gabe.
I actually enjoyed this book and thought the author wrote it well. Amy Huntley described the character’s feelings thoroughly and didn’t leave any confusing gaps in the story.
Posted by BOOK NAME: Elsewhere
AUTHOR: Gabrielle Zevin
Did you ever wonder what happens once you’ve died?
Liz Hall was a was a teenage girl meeting her friend at the mall and she got hit by a taxi. She woke up in a boat in the middle of the ocean. She thought she was in a dream when she finally realized that she was dead! The boat that she was on was taking her to an island called Elsewhere where all dead people were living (or living in the state of “dead”).
She found one of her dead grandmothers who surprisingly was thrity-two but had died at the age of fifty. She soon realized that instead of getting older in Elsewhere, you get younger. Liz still had her WHOLE life in front of her and she gets to turn fourteen again! She would never be able to drive a car or graduate from college but instead she had to go back to preschool! But Liz gets used to her new life. When everybody in Elsewhere turns seven months old again they get sent off down a river and are reborn back on earth.
This story kinda freaked me out at times. Just thinking about reliving and then dying yet still living…(shiver). The author did a great job writing this book because she was so imaginative about how people acted there and what kinds of jobs were needed and also how the people could look back at their family and friends back on earth. It does get confusing and creepy at parts so make sure you are ready to read a more difficult book but it is another book that once you get caught into it, you can’t stop.
Posted by BOOK NAME: Everlost
AUTHOR:
Neal Shusterman
When a person dies, they go towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, what if you died and were going through the tunnel, but were such a klutz that you tripped on the way to the light? What would happen to you? Where would you go? A potential answer lies in Neal Shusterman’s novel Everlost.
In the story, two teenagers, Nick and Allie, die in a car crash. They bump into each other on the way to the light, and fall out into a place called Everlost. They wake up in a forest and meet another kid who fell out of the tunnel when he died. He’s an Afterlight like them, but is different in many other ways. For example, he can’t remember his real name and looks like he came from the year 1900! As Nick and Allie set off to find out more about their new life (or non-life), the boy follows them and they decide to call him Lief.
Lief, Nick, and Allie soon discover the many wondrous and sinister parts of Everlost as they travel to New York and beyond. They have run-ins with dead spots, Mary Hightower, other dead children, and an eerie monster called the McGill.
Neal Shusterman is one of my favorite authors, and really made the world of Everlost come to life with his vibrant, innovative, and funny writing style. He really did a good job of making his characters seem real, which is one thing I liked about it–I could relate to the characters. Despite what it might sound like, it’s not really a scary book. It’s more of an adventure story! This book is one that you can read over and over again without getting tired of it, and it really makes you think. My favorite parts of the book were the ones with Lief after he had come out of the barrel and the ones with Hammerhead because they really made me laugh. I really liked the whole concept of Everlost, and would recommend this book to late elementary and middle school-aged kids.
