The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen

Wow!  This book!  I'm really just glad that I was alone when I finished this book.  The tears were flowing, but it such a great way.  This story is about hope and perseverance and acceptance and family and friendship and so many other incredible things.  This one is several years old and I am just sad that it took me this long to discover it.  If you want a story that will fill you with hope, go pick up The Running Dream. 

The Running Dream is the story of Jessica, a star runner on her high school's track team.  Shortly after breaking the league record for the 400m, she is in a terrible accident, an accident that claims the life of one of her teammates along with Jessica's leg.  Now instead of dreaming about breaking records, she has to wonder if she will ever walk again.  But with the help of her coach, her teammates, her parents and friends, and a new found friendship with a classmate, Jessica can once again think about the future.  She can now see a future where she sees people for who they really are.  She can see a future where she runs again.  She can once again see a future where she steps up to the starting line.   

From Amazon:

When Jessica is told she’ll never run again, she puts herself back together—and learns to dream bigger than ever before. The acclaimed author of Flipped delivers a powerful and healing story.

Jessica thinks her life is over when she loses a leg in a car accident. She’s not comforted by the news that she’ll be able to walk with the help of a prosthetic leg. Who cares about walking when you live to run?

As she struggles to cope, Jessica feels that she’s both in the spotlight and invisible. People who don’t know what to say act like she’s not there. Jessica’s embarrassed to realize that she’s done the same to a girl with CP named Rosa. A girl who is going to tutor her through all the math she’s missed. A girl who sees right into the heart of her.

With the support of family, friends, a coach, and her track teammates, Jessica may actually be able to run again. But that’s not enough for her now. She doesn’t just want to cross finish lines herself—she wants to take Rosa with her.

“Inspirational. The pace of Van Draanen’s prose matches Jessica’s at her swiftest. Readers will zoom through the book just as Jessica blazes around the track. A lively and lovely story.” —Kirkus Reviews

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Wow!  It is so hard to put in to words the beauty of this novel.  The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is such a powerful and compelling story of not only race and discrimination, but the horrible atrocities that happened in a Florida reform school. 

Based on the experience of way too many boys at the all too real Dozier School for Boys, Whitehead tells us about it with the experience of Elwood Turner, a boy with a bright future who unfortunately ends up in reform school.  We see how these boys endure the physical and sexual abuse of those in charge, while at the same time hearing how not all boys were lucky enough to make it out alive.

This novel is powerful and heartbreaking.  It is maddening to know that this abuse went on for over a century while our country overlooked the atrocities that so many suffered.  While this is a fictional account, it is based on the real lives of so many boys who "attended" this institution in Marianna, Florida.  It should serve as a memorial not only for those whose lives were taken from them, but also for all of those who were fortunate enough to survive the cruel hands of those they were entrusted to. 



From Amazon:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men."

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.

The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy.

Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.